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People with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest global group
in a new study of the size of the world's faiths, placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus.
The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010,
also showed Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand
in the future while Jews have the weakest growth prospects.
It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present in all regions of the world,
while Hinduism is the least global with 94 percent of its population in one country, India.
Overall, 84 percent of the world's inhabitants, which it estimated at 6.9 billion, identify with a religion,
according to the study entitled "The Global Religious Landscape"
issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on Tuesday.
The "unaffiliated" category covers all those who profess no religion,
from atheists and agnostics to people with spiritual beliefs but no link to any established faith.
"Many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold religious or spiritual beliefs," the study stressed.
"Belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of unaffiliated Chinese adults,
30 percent of unaffiliated French adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it said.
http://www.charismanews.com/world/34979 ... ns-muslims
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The Global Religious Landscape
A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010
Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group.
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted
by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion
