Page 360 - ILIAS ATHANASIADIS AKA RO1

According to 2015 figures, Christians form the biggest religious group by some
margin, with 2.3 billion adherents or 31.2% of the total world population of 7.3

billion.

Next come Muslims (1.8 billion, or 24.1%), Hindus (1.1 billion, or 15.1%) and
Buddhists (500 million, or 6.9%).

The next category is people who practise folk or traditional religions; there are

400m of them, or 6% of the global total.

Adherents of lesser-practised religions, including Sikhism, Baha’i and Jainism,
add up to 58m, or well below 1%.

There are 14m Jews in the world, about 0.2% of the global population,

concentrated in the US and Israel.

But the third biggest category is missing from the above list. In 2015, 1.2
billion people in the world, or 16%, said they have no religious affiliation at

all.

This does not mean all those people are committed atheists; some – perhaps
most – have a strong sense of spirituality or belief in God, gods or guiding

forces, but they don’t identify with or practise an organised religion.

Almost all religions have subdivisions. Christians can be Roman Catholic (the

biggest group with almost 1.3 billion adherents),

Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Anglican or many other sub-
denominations.

Muslims might be Sunni (the majority), Shia, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya or Sufi.
Hinduism has four main groups: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and
Smartism.

There are two main traditions in Buddhism – Theravāda and Mahayana, each

with subgroups. Jews can be Orthodox (or ultra-Orthodox), Conservative,
Reform or belong to smaller groups.