World Religions statistics & pie charts





Christians: 2,100,000,000 adherents - tending to decline in terms of global percentage



Muslims: 1,500,000,000 persons - tending to increase in terms of global percentage



Of no religion: 1,100,000,000 Human Beings - tending to decline in terms of global percentage



Hindus: 900,000,000 adherents - stable in terms of global percentage



Chinese folk religionists: 400,000,000 persons



Primal religionists: 400,000,000 Human Beings



Buddhists: 375,000,000 adherents - stable in terms of global percentage



Sikhs: 24,000,000 persons



Jews: 14,500,000 Human Beings



Baha'is: 7,400,000 adherents



Jains: 4,300,000 persons



Shintoists: 4,000,000Human Beings



Taoism: 2,700,000 adherents





















A selection of "Central Spiritual Insights" gleaned from Christian sources

A Disdain for Materialism Some have Me in their mouths, but little in their hearts.

There are others who, being enlightened in their understanding and purified in their affection, always breathe after things eternal, are unwilling to hear of earthly things, and grieve to be subject to the necessities of nature; and such as these perceive what the Spirit of Truth speaketh in them.

For it teacheth them to despise the things of the earth and to love heavenly things; to disregard the world, and all the day and night to aspire after heaven.



Thomas a Kempis - Of the Imitation of Christ Book 3 Ch. 4 v. 4







A Distrust of Intellect So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.



St. Paul







Spiritual Insights are possible! What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.



St. Paul







Charity Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.



St. John







Purity of Heart Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, "children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation." Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life...



St. Paul







Humility Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.



Jesus







Meekness Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.



St. James









"Central Spiritual Insights" drawn from "non-Christian" Inter-Faith sources

A Disdain for Materialism Chuang Tzu put on cotton clothes with patches in them, and arranging his girdle and tying on his shoes, (i.e. to keep them from falling off), went to see the prince of Wei.

"How miserable you look, Sir!" Cried the prince. "It is poverty, not misery", replied Chuang Tzu. "A man who has TAO cannot be miserable. Ragged clothes and old boots make poverty, not misery".



Chuang Tzu - (Taoism)







A Distrust of Intellect Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.



Rumi - (Islam)







Spiritual Insights are possible! The intelligence of the mean man does not rise beyond bribes and letters of recommendation. His mind is beclouded with trivialities. Yet he would penetrate the mystery of TAO and of creation, and rise to participation in the ONE. The result is that he is confounded by time and space; and that trammelled by objective existences, that he fails apprehension of that age before anything was. But the perfect man, - he carries his mind back to the period before the beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite.



Chuang Tzu - (Taoism)







Charity He that does everything for Me, whose supreme object I am, who worships Me, being free from attachment and without hatred to any creature, this man, Arjuna!, comes to Me.



Bhagavad Gita ~ (Hinduism) ~ also known as ~ (Vedanta).



And my soul is absorbed

In the Love of My Lord.

Bow humbly to the saint

That is a pious act.

Bow to the ground before him

That is devotion, indeed.



The faithless know not,

The joy of the love of the Lord;



From Sohila-Arti ~ a bed-time prayer

This section of which is attributed to Guru Ram Das - (Sikhism)







Purity of Heart The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.



Solomon - (Judaism)







Humility Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.



Ansari of Herat - (Islam)







Meekness Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth! Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.



Dhammapada - (Buddhism)









This pie chart is based on statistics listing peoples self-admitted adherence to one of the major world religions, or to other faiths, or to people stating that they are of no religion.As you will see the pie chart only mentions percentages of the world's population whose religiously related self-admission places them in each category.To get a better idea of the numerical population size statistics please consult the following list of the major world religions.This listing of figures hopefully gives a good approximation of the world's populations self-professed adherence to major world religions, other religions, or their self-professed state of not being religious.The above World Religions pie chart is sourced from WikipediaThe Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish faiths all feature differencesof faith interpretation, outlook, or practice, which are or similar significanceto the Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Other divergences within Christianity. Trends in adherence to the major World Religions are probably linked to differing rates by which populations are changing in the World's various regions of "prevailing historical religious beliefs" or of the "marked onset of secularism".Population statistics show relatively rapid increases of overall population in Africa and Asia and relative population decline in Europe. Likewise with secularism which seems to have had a particular onset in Europe.Interestingly, many people have tried to assess whatever "common ground" there might be between the major world religions - not so much in terms of their founding prophetic figures or their revered Holy Books but moreso in terms of an identifiable commonality of their respective spiritual teachings:-Some~ a brief selection of "Central Spiritual Insights" gleaned from Christian sources closely followed by another brief selection of "Central Spiritual Insights" drawn from "non-Christian" Inter-Faith sources ~ are set out below, (to be again closely followed by what seems to be a comparable selection of "Central Poetry Insights").These Christian quotations have been selected based on their inherent Spiritual Impact, (rather than whether they might be deemed to be Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox), and come from The New International Version of The Bible and from the 'Of the Imitation of Christ'; a fifteenth century devotional work that has long been the second most widely read Christian book after The Bible itself.