8 Encouraging Trends in Global Christianity for 2024 - Lifeway Research

There are more Christians on earth right now than ever before. Paul was right: “This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is changing lives everywhere, just as it changed yours.”9

If Christianity today is the religion growing most rapidly and most widely throughout the world, it is also – not coincidentally – the most persecuted religion in the world.

If Christianity today is the religion growing most rapidly and most widely throughout the world, it is also – not coincidentally – the most persecuted religion in the world.

One difference that continues to animate the dynamics of many regions is religion. No religion claims a majority of the world’s people. Nearly a third of the world’s population, or 2.3 billion people, are Christians, while close to a quarter of humanity, 1.8 billion people, are Muslims. Just over 1 billion are Hindus, nearly 500 million are Buddhis

Ever since it was a colony, Brazil has been predominantly a Catholic country. Initially introduced in the nineteenth century by European and North American missionaries, Protestantism grew slowly at first. As recently as 1980 only eight million Brazilians – the equivalent of 6.6 per cent of the population – said they were Protestants. By 2010, when

Carey argued, Christians must expect great things — and not only must we expect them; we must attempt them. No matter how small the beginning, no matter how complicated the task, in the power of the Spirit, under the authority of the risen Christ, we can have absolute confidence in the success of our mission. In commissioning his church, Jesus had

Sociologists Peter Berger and Grace Davie report that “most sociologists of religion now agree” that the secularization thesis—that religion declines as a society becomes more modern—“has been empirically shown to be false.”63 Countries such as China are becoming more religious (and Christian) even as they modernize.