The Biggest Religions in the World

religion whether you follow a specific religion or not odds are wherever you are in the world there is at least one or sometimes more than one major religion that a lot of people follow in your country it's something that has shaped our history cultures and societies for centuries or even millenniums whether we like them dislike them or see both good and bad things within them the point of this video isn't to discuss any specific religion or explain how they work or how they are different from each other that is a different topic in this video i'm simply going to show you the biggest religions in the world which religion is the majority in each country and which areas of the world are more catholic muslim or buddhist etc as well as the very few countries in the world whose population is in their majority not a follower of any religion or a follower of ancient tribal ones the biggest religions in the world in 2020 are the following in terms of adherence meaning people which consider themselves followers of those religions taking the first place is christianity with 31.2 percent of the world population next is islam coming in at almost one quarter of the world 24.1 percent next is unaffiliated at 16 percent then hinduism buddhism folk religions which i'll clarify in a minute other religions sikhism and judaism it's interesting to notice that unaffiliated meaning people who follow no religion ranks in third place worldwide we must also remember that these titles are general ways of grouping up religions for instance christians are then subdivided into roman catholics protestants and orthodoxes islam separates itself in sunni and sheed and even some other smaller groups buddhism also has various categories teravada mayana and vairiya anna i mispronouncing these and i actually had no idea they existed until i made this video and while it does make sense to group them up because their practices are generally similar they do have some important differences the three versions of christianity differ in a lot of aspects some of which are for instance when it comes to the authority of the pope orthodox christians recognize it as only the authority of the bishop of rome equal to any other bishop protestants see him as the leader of catholics alone having no authority to rule over all of christianity and catholics see him as having supreme authority within christendom orthodoxes and catholics usually see divorce as something to avoid while protestants are much more tolerant in that aspect with this i mean the doctrines of each church not the attitudes or opinions of its followers which can of course differ islam also differs a lot between the sunni and the shii with their main issue being over who should have succeeded muhammad in the year 632 the great majority of muslims are sunnis around 85 to 90 percent rasheeds consist of only around 10 to 15 percent in this map we can see that divide amongst countries of islamic religion with lebanon iraq and iran being the only of shia majority and apparently oman is of ibadi faith a third branch of islam much smaller than the other two so we can understand that within these main nine religious groups there are a lot of subdivisions the map on the thumbnail follows this logic of aggregation and simplification but this other map shows us these specific divides much better despite not having great image quality most of europe follows catholic christianity and as a consequence south america does as well due to portuguese and spanish colonialism however significant parts of europe are not catholic but instead protestant the united kingdom all of scandinavia finland iceland and greenland i won't get too much into it but essentially protestants exist because of an event called the reformation which began in 1517 when a german monk called martin luther protested against the catholic church his followers became known as protestants but within protestantism there are also some differences some are lutherans some are anglicans in the uk and some are calvinists with specific but small differences such as calvinism believing that salvation is predestined while lutheranism claims one can attain it through faith some rulers then adopted these ideas splitting from the catholic church and the authority of the vatican this tendency of protestantism spread to these countries former american colonies in the north of the continent with special attention to the united states canada has a mixture of protestantism and catholicism due to its mixture of british and french heritage we should also pay attention to countries in europe that have this type of split faith if you will such as germany switzerland and the netherlands the remaining parts of europe mostly in the east and the balkans as well as russia follow the orthodox faith with a couple exceptions in parts of albania and bosnia which have significant muslim followings probably a consequence of the occupation they suffered from the ottoman empire africa divides itself into muslim in the north and christian and the south pretty much everything below the sahara but again some are catholic and some are protestant mostly depending on which european nation colonize them in the middle east islam prevails with the exception of israel with judaism india and nepal or hindu mongolia bhutan laos cambodia thailand and myanmar follow buddhism although sometimes differently vietnam and china specific types of chinese religion although there are a lot of people with no religious adherence especially in china just like in korea and japan as well special notice to the philippines too which are catholic due to the influence of spanish colonialism so essentially we can understand that within each of the nine religious groups there are many subdivisions if we wanted to do this the other way around basing ourselves on the common origin that some of these religions have we could even reduce them down into fewer categories middle eastern or abrahamic which is the largest group containing christianity islam and judaism unified by being monotheist meaning they only worship one god in different ways indian which is the second largest group containing hinduism buddhism and sikhism among smaller ones east asian which consists of several east asian religions and it includes many chinese folk ones taoism and confucianism as well as korean and japanese religion which was influenced by chinese thoughts then we have the african religions which are mostly tribal in sub-saharan africa with the exception of ancient egypt which i'll mention in a second we also have indigenous which some also call folk religion or paganism also including traditional african ones not from the sub-saharan region native american practices australia's aboriginal ones or asian shamanism and iranian which includes zoroastrianism i don't really know what that is amongst other smaller religions this old map from 1833 shows us the world divided by religions defining muslim nations as india being the only hindu area and most of the world being catholic with parts of america indonesia and africa being i assume tribal in the eye of the map maker also defining china southeast asia and japan plus korea as being buddhist and if we wanted to group them up even more we could just do a split into two categories monotheism or polytheism monotheistic religions follow one single god while polytheistic follow many hinduism mayana buddhism confucianism taoism shintoism as well as tribal religions in africa and the americas are polytheistic and many other ones which eventually came to an end like the old norse religion ancient egypt's religion or the religion of ancient greece and the early roman empire which we now view as mythology after they converted to christianism while pretty much all of the other ones are monotheistic christianity islam judaism sikhism and even certain parts of hinduism today in terms of people here are the population numbers that those percentages we saw earlier refer to there are 2.4 billion christians 1.8 billion followers of islam 1.2 of hinduism and 0.5 buddhism these are the largest religious groups then we have the medium-sized 173 million follow taoism 100 million shinto 80 million falun gong 30 million sikhism 15 million judaism and 7 million confucianism it's interesting because in china alone there are at least three of these medium-sized groups while catholicism was able to assert itself through most of the western world although like i mentioned with some differences between catholics protestants and orthodoxes but what about per country this survey from 2008 shows us the importance that each country's population gives to religion the darker the red the more religious the country supposedly is now we all know polls are what they are i don't think they tend to be very accurate but they do translate a general idea of reality it's interesting because there seems to be a clear difference between the general northern and southern regions of the world south america tends to be more devout especially in brazil which has the world's second largest christian population in terms of absolute numbers 170 million behind only the united states at 230 and southern europe is apparently more dedicated to religion as well portugal italy greece and then poland up north coming in as well but the issue with these ratings is that they're highly inaccurate from my point of view a country's population might say they are catholic and that they think religion is important but then choose not to practice the religion at all which i feel like is honestly what happens in most cases africa is definitely the continent that grants most importance to religion at least according to this and southeast asia does as well however this is about the population of said countries because these days as i think it should be the vast majority of countries are secular meaning that their official government and state are fully neutral in matters of religion not supporting any specific faith or the lack of it essentially not letting matters of religion interfere with government worldwide the majority of countries are secular these days as we can see them here on this map in green some surprised me by not being so like argentina denmark sweden and iceland but this might just be a technical issue in which they don't fall exactly into the secular definition for instance argentina's constitution states the federal government supports the roman catholic apostolic religion yet it does not stipulate any official state religion but not a separation of church and state either but in practice it is a secular country the uk i guess isn't secular because they have their own anglican protestant faith in which the british monarch is the head of the church this other map is more accurate blue equals secular red equals state religion and gray equals ambiguous but essentially secular as well in terms of individual results i found a really cool interactive map that shows us the largest religious groups in each country but like the one in the thumbnail it doesn't distinguish subdivisions so christians protestants and orthodox are grouped together like all the other religions subdivisions six countries instantly jumped aside because they are according to this data the only ones in which the largest group are those who consider themselves non-religious china is shown as having 52 percent non-religious 22 percent indigenous and 12 percent buddhist japan 57 and 36 buddhists south korea mostly non-religious and surprisingly having about one-third of the population being christian i never understood this so if you know why please explain in the comments below the other two mostly non-religious countries are in europe czechia and estonia czechia is shown as having 76 of people non-religious the highest value worldwide and estonia reaches 59 percent as well other interesting cases in this map are albania which i previously mentioned having 80 percent being muslim guyana and suriname which have significant hindu following populations so far away from india and apparently this has to do with the fact that after the 1833 abolition act in the british empire the need for labor led to the recruitment of indians to work in the regions mauritius which is also hindu in an otherwise catholic region and vietnam and taiwan which according to this follow mostly indigenous religions a different description than what we saw in one of the previous maps which shows us that we should always have critical thinking and not instantly believe data we see unless it's from a fully reliable and verified source by proportion the countries with the highest percentages of catholics are the vatican pitcairn islands samoa romania which was surprising east timor american samoa malta venezuela and greece for muslims the top 10 all have 99 percent of adirance and they are in order afghanistan tunisia iran azerbaijan yemen mauritania morocco iraq and somalia the countries with the highest percentages of non-religious people are like we saw czechia and korea estonia japan china south korea latvia netherlands and uruguay uruguay is an odd example in south america a tremendously religious part of the american continent the top three hindu nations are nepal india and mauritius with a surprising result in the united arab emirates of 15 as well buddhists are the biggest part of the population in cambodia thailand myanmar bhutan and sri lanka it's also interesting that at a time of globalization and major religions being so overwhelming a few nations still continue to practice in great number indigenous faiths haiti and guinea-bissau at 50 percent cameroon at 40 togo at 33 and cote d'ivoire at 25. with special notice to new zealand with 15 as well due to their native maori population cuba and jamaica also have 10 of their population following spiritism the sikh faith is only around 1 to 2 percent of india the uk and canada's population but in the punjab state of india sikhs make up around 61 of the population in terms of judaism israel is the first with 73 of their population being jewish and the second place is gibraltar at a far away two percent with the us and canada following between one and two percent as well according to the pew research center all religions are projected to grow in number of adherents until the year 2060 with the exception of buddhism although they do not specify why with muslims christians and hindus being the ones projected to grow the most based on population growth trends in countries that follow these faiths so that was a quick and general overview at the biggest religions in the world how they can be grouped up or subdivided and how they are distributed along the world and each country showing us how certain areas are more catholic muslim or buddhist but how most countries also have significant percentages of their population following other faiths contributing to rich and diverse cultures if these are the type of topics that interest you let me know in the comments and i can do a few videos about religious history how each religion came to be how some ended and how they developed throughout time as well as the differences between those subdivisions that some have like catholicism protestantism and orthodoxism thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 486,258

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Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: uuLTy8RlPY4

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020