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Global growth of religions

(56 Posts)
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soontobe Fri 10-Apr-15 13:32:38

absent is talking about the world, thatbags.
It is easy to think of things in terms of UK only.

I am not surprised by those findings absent. My children[who are all religious] are going all over the place, and meeting and working alongside and living with people of a multitude of nations.
What they are finding is what absent says. Religion in other countries, not necessarily the uk is growing a lot.

My theory, for what it is worth, is that there is a general breakdown amongst families. And lots of troubles in the world in general.
That causes people to feel the need of religion, as some sort of guide and comfort and belonging to a group.

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Eloethan Fri 10-Apr-15 00:28:30

I think that people often start aligning themselves with a particular religion when they feel that other religions with which they feel no cultural connection are a threat to them.

Frankly, I am not a fan of any religion - though I feel sure there are many people of all religions who try to live good lives. Unfortunately, it often seems to be those people who are unable to see the good in anything but there own religion and who insist on its superiority who are given the most attention. But perhaps that is a natural consequence of religious faith - that, even when there is no malign intent, it divides people into "us" and "them".

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absent Thu 09-Apr-15 23:15:26

thatbags Presumably those figures apply only in the UK. You would find a very different percentage in the USA, for example. Btw importance of religion or otherwise wasn't mentioned, just affiliation.

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thatbags Thu 09-Apr-15 23:03:33

Sorry about the grammatical mistakes.

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thatbags Thu 09-Apr-15 23:03:04

72% of 18-24 year olds say religion is not important to them and 62% say religion is they are not religious according to UK Yougov surveys, so I'm sceptical about what you heard today, absent.

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absent Thu 09-Apr-15 22:20:14

I have just watched an item on this morning's news about research into the growth of religions. (It's morning where I live.) I didn't catch who had done the research. A professor from Massey University in New Zealand was discussing the research but, as in all news programmes, he was allocated a fairly short slot.

What he did say was that it seems that Islam will become the biggest religion in the world by the end of this century, that Christianity is increasing but at a much slower rate than Islam and, perhaps most surprisingly, the number of those with no affiliation to any religion is decreasing world wide except in three countries. New Zealand is one of the three.

Africa seems to be central in the growth of Islam as tribal beliefs break down. He also said that the fact that Moslem families tend to be bigger than Christian ones these days needs to be taken into account when looking at reasons for the growth of this religion.

While the Catholic church has a global agenda focused on both Africa and Asia, he thinks that other Christian churches tend to concentrate more on what he called their own patches. The research suggests that Africa will have the largest Christian population in the world by 2050.

As an atheist I found the no affiliation decrease particularly interesting but there wasn't time to discuss that. I would suspect that there are lots of people who claim a loose affiliation with a religion – like always ticking C of E in the religion box on old-fashioned forms – rather than being actively involved. Perhaps the uncertainty of global politics, especially the extent of recent terrorist activity, has also made people "storm converts".

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