Religious minority community list

Indian Hindu devotees offer prayers on the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati, India, on Nov. 13, 2018. (Biju Boro/AFP/Getty Images) Religious pluralism has long been a core value in India, which has a large majority of Hindus and smaller shares of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and other groups. In recent years, the size of these communities and their future growth have been This Pew Research Center study describes the religious makeup of India’s population, how it changed between 1951 and 2011, and the main causes of the change. The analysis focuses on India’s three largest religious groups – Hindus, Muslims and Christians – and also covers Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains when suitable data is available. Population sizes over time come from India’s decennial census. The census has collected detailed information, including about religion, on India’s inhabitants since 1881. Data on fertility and how it is related to factors like education levels and place of residence is from Data on migration is primarily from the For more information, see the report’s India’s overall population more than tripled between 1951 and 2011, though growth rates have slowed since the 1990s. The total number of Indians grew to 1.2 billion in the 2011 census from 361 million in the 1951 census. The number of Hindus grew to 966 million (from 304 million in 1951), Muslims to 172 million (from 35 million), Christians to 28 million (from 8 million), Sikhs to 20.8 million (from 6.8 mil...

The American Religious Landscape in 2020 Seven in ten Americans (70%) identify as Christian, including more than four in ten who identify as white Christian and more than one-quarter who identify as Christian of color. Nearly one in four Americans (23%) are religiously unaffiliated, and 5% identify with non-Christian religions. [1] The most substantial cultural and political divides are between white Christians and Christians of color. More than four in ten Americans (44%) identify as white Christian, including white evangelical Protestants (14%), white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants (16%), and white Catholics (12%), as well as small percentages who identify as Latter-day Saint (Mormon), Jehovah’s Witness, and Orthodox Christian [2]. Christians of color include Hispanic Catholics (8%), Black Protestants (7%), Hispanic Protestants (4%), other Protestants of color (4%), and other Catholics of color (2%) [3]. The rest of religiously affiliated Americans belong to non-Christian groups, including 1% who are Jewish, 1% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 0.5% Hindu, and 1% who identify with other religions. Religiously unaffiliated Americans comprise those who do not claim any particular religious affiliation (17%) and those who identify as atheist (3%) or agnostic (3%). The Decline of White Christian America Slows Over the last few decades, the proportion of the U.S. population that is white Christian has declined by nearly one-third. As recently as 1996, almost two-thirds of American...

This study is Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth attempt to explore religion among Black Americans. Its centerpiece is a nationally representative survey of 8,660 Black adults (ages 18 and older), featuring questions designed to examine Black religious experiences. The sample consists of a wide range of adults who identify as Black or African American, including some who identify as both Black and Hispanic or Black and another race (such as Black and White, or Black and Asian). The Center recruited such a large sample in order to examine the diversity of the U.S. Black population. For example, this study is able to compare the views and experiences of U.S.-born Black Americans with those of Black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. It can compare Black adults born before 1946 (the Silent Generation and a very small number of those in the Greatest Generation) with Black adults born after 1996 (Generation Z). Because the study focuses on faith among Black Americans, it also examines Protestants who attend Black churches, Protestants who attend churches where the majority is White or another race, Protestants who attend multiracial churches, Black Catholics, Black members of non-Christian faiths and Black Americans who are religiously unaffiliated (identifying as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular). The survey was complemented by guided, small-group discussions with Black adults of various ages and religious leanings, as well as in-depth interview...

According to the research, the persecution of Christians has reached the highest levels since the World Watch List began nearly 30 years ago. “Across 76 countries, more than 360 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith – an increase of 20 million since last year.” 312 million Christians live in the top 50 countries alone.One in every seven Christians live under at least high levels of persecution or discrimination for their faith. Christians in Kandhamal, India meet outside of their rebuilt church. As a religious minority, the ... [+] Christian population of India totals in as less than 3% of well over 1 Billion people. Hindu nationalism of India has been labeled as the the main aggressor of social injustice against Christians by several human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch. Kandhamal, India. September 2018. (Photo credit: John Fredricks/NurPhoto via Getty Images) NurPhoto via Getty Images For the first time in years, the top of the list was taken by Afghanistan, rather than the usual culprit, North Korea. As the report suggests, since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Christian minorities in Afghanistan have had to flee or go into hiding. “Those whose names are known to the Taliban are being hunted down. If men are discovered to have a Christian faith they are executed. If women are discovered, they may escape execution but face a life of slavery or imprisonment.”Because of the dire situation in Afghanistan an...

This Pew Research Center study describes the religious makeup of India’s population, how it changed between 1951 and 2011, and the main causes of the change. The analysis focuses on India’s three largest religious groups – Hindus, Muslims and Christians – and also covers Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains when suitable data is available. Population sizes over time come from India’s decennial census. The census has collected detailed information on India’s inhabitants, including on religion, since 1881. Data on fertility and how it is related to factors like education levels and place of residence is from India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The NFHS is a large, nationally representative household survey with more extensive information about childbearing than the census. Data on migration is primarily from the References to Indian history, laws, border changes and survey delays are accurate as of Aug. 19, 2021. For more information, see this report’s India’s fertility rate has been declining rapidly in recent decades. Today, the average Indian woman is expected to have 2.2 children in her lifetime, a fertility rate that is higher than rates in many economically advanced countries like the Every religious group in the country has seen its fertility fall, including the majority Hindu population and Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain minority groups. Among Indian Muslims, for example, the total fertility rate has declined dramatically, from 4.4 children per woman in 1...

The nation’s population is growing more racially and ethnically diverse – and so are many of its religious groups, both at We looked at 30 groups – including Protestant denominations, other religious groups and three subsets of people who are religiously unaffiliated – based on a methodology used in our 2014 Pew Research Center If a religious group had exactly equal shares of each of the five racial and ethnic groups (20% each), it would get a 10.0 on the index; a religious group made up entirely of one racial group would get a 0.0. By comparison, U.S. adults overall rate at 6.6 on the scale. And indeed, the purpose of this scale is to compare groups to each other, not to point to any ideal standard of diversity. Seventh-day Adventists top the list with a score of 9.1: 37% of adults who identify as Seventh-day Adventists are white, while 32% are black, 15% are Hispanic, 8% are Asian and another 8% are another race or mixed race. Muslims (8.7) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (8.6) are close behind in terms of diversity, as no racial or ethnic group makes up more than 40% of either group. Blacks, whites (including some people of North African or Middle Eastern descent) and Asians each make up a quarter or more of U.S. Muslims, while blacks, whites and Latinos each make up a quarter or more of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Buddhists also rank high (8.4) on this measure of racial and ethnic diversity based on the 2014 Religious Landscape Study. But this group may be less diverse because Asian-...