Global Christian Population Decline: Trends by Region

Christianity is the world’s largest religious group, and Christians are a majority in every region except the Asia-Pacific and Middle East-North Africa regions, a study by the Pew Research Center finds. Recent research has shown, though, that the Christian share of the global population is shrinking as large numbers are becoming religiously unaffiliated—part of a broader demographic shift observed across faiths.
The number of Christians worldwide grew by 6 percent, from 2.1 billion in 2010 to 2.3 billion in 2020, while non-Christians grew by 15 percent. As a result, Christians shrank as a percentage of the global population, with their share falling from 31 percent to 29 percent, according to a Pew Research study.
Christian population change varied widely by region between 2010 and 2020. The number of Christians fell in two regions:
• In Europe, Christians declined to 505 million (down 9 percent).
• In North America, they shrank to 238 million (down 11 percent).
• In every other region, the number of Christians grew. The most significant increase occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number rose to 697 million (up 31 percent). This growth in Africa is a defining feature of global Christianity’s future.
In North America, Christians now make up 63 percent of the population (down 14 percentage points), while in Europe they make up 67 percent (down 8 points). In the Latin America-Caribbean region, Christians make up 85 percent of the population (down 5 points). The good news is there appears to be recent stabilization of the Christian population in the U.S.
Christians made up less than 10 percent of the total population in both the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East-North Africa regions in 2010; that share has since dropped by less than 1 point in each region.
Between 2010 and 2020, sub-Saharan Africa surpassed Europe as the region with the largest Christian population. It comes even in the face of increasing persecution. As of 2020, sub-Saharan Africa was home to 31 percent of all the Christians in the world (up 6 points since 2010), while Europe held 22 percent of the global Christian population (down 4 points). Many Christians also live in the Latin America-Caribbean region (24 percent of all Christians, down 1 point from 2010 to 2020) and North America (10 percent, down 2 points).
The United States has more Christian residents than any other country. About one-tenth of the world’s total Christian population lives in the United States, where an estimated 64 percent of people (of all ages) were Christian in 2020. This shift is part of a continuing decline in religious affiliation and church attendance in the U.S.
Although media stories often suggested that China was on the cusp of having the largest Christian population in the world, surveys indicate that China’s Christian population remains outside the 10 largest in the world. Based on religious self-identification measured in surveys, there were roughly 25 million Chinese Christians in 2020.
The largest drop in the Christian share of a country’s population occurred in Australia (down 20 points), where Christians made up a little less than half of the population in 2020. Christians also declined steeply in Chile and Uruguay (down 18 points and 16 points, respectively). Christians in the United States and Canada declined at similar rates (down 14 points in each place).
As for Islam, it’s growing at about three times the rate of Christianity and will surpass Christianity in the next decade.
–Dwight Widaman