Denominational Demographics

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[Click here for a YouTube video on key denominational variations]

Christian denominations can roughly be divided into three major categories: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox. There are about 2.4 billion Christians in the world. Of these, about 1.2 billion are Roman Catholic, about 900 million are Protestant, and about 300 million are Eastern Orthodox.Protestants are further divided into more specific denominations such as Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist. A Venn diagram of Christian denominations is shown in the figure below.

The number of members of different Christian denominations is somewhat elusive, but general approximations can be made. I have assembled some rough estimates based on the websites listed at the bottom of this post. In terms of major divisions, the breakdown is as follows:

DenominationMembers%
Roman Catholic1,285,000,00047.6%
Protestant920,000,00034.1%
Eastern Orthodox356,000,00013.2%
Anglican/Episcopal110,000,0004.1%
Other29,000,0001.1%
TOTAL2,700,000,000100.0%

A further breakdown of the “Protestant” Category is as follows:

DenominationMembers%
Baptist           100,000,00010.9%
Lutheran             80,000,0008.7%
Reformed             70,000,0007.6%
Methodist             70,000,0007.6%
Adventist             22,300,0002.4%
Pentecostal           280,000,00030.4%
Nondenominational             90,000,0009.8%
African Initiated             60,000,0006.5%
Chinese Initiated             25,000,0002.7%
Other           122,700,00013.3%
Total           920,000,000100.0%

These tables are based on the following websites:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/christian-denominations-by-the-numbers.html

https://religion.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members#Reformed_churches_(Calvinism)_%E2%80%93_60%E2%80%9380_million

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2 responses to “Denominational Demographics”

  1. Ron Nelson Avatar
    Ron Nelson

    The denominations section is very interesting! Google tells me that the current world population is 8 billion, so the Christian denominations comprise less than half. There are fewer protestants than catholics, but not that much fewer.

    A question that has puzzled and intrigued me is, under a sovereign God, why all the denominations, and the accompanying disunity? It reminds me of the tower of Babel. It is an obvious question that must not be lost on the secular world. How would they even approach considering Christianity in this bewildering context? It is a good question for us to grapple with answering not only for ourselves, but for them.

  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    Yeah – this is a interesting one. We are supposed to be “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” It is confusing in one sense, but is somewhat understandable when looking at the historical situation that resulted in each denomination. I don’t like reading history textbooks, but Justo Gonzalez has a 2-volume work on church history that is pretty readable.

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