Where Does A Cleric Draw Faith?

Where Does A Cleric Draw Faith?

It has become imperative that we discuss about faith and where a cleric draw faith in this contemporary world.

Even as the world is fast demising, we have been exposed to a lot of threats even as Christians or Muslims.

The fact is, all these threats comes to make faith to become popular and for us to embrace it.

Without which, it will be difficult to live in this chaos world, world full of evil. ALSO READ: How serenity in prayer work

Less you think religion is a thing of the past, and we live in a new age of reason. If so, you might need to check facts: 84% of the world’s population identifies with a religious group.

Those who belong to this demographic are generally younger and produce more children than those who belong to none.

So, this is to say that the world is getting more religious, not less, even though there are significant geographical variations.

THE STATISTICS SHOWS THE DEMAND

Stats from 2015 figures show that Christians are the most significant religious group by some margin.

2.3 billion adherents constitute Christianity or 31.2% of the world population of 7.3 billion.

The next is Muslims (1.8 billion, or 24.1%), Hindus (1.1 billion, or 15.1%), and Buddhists (500 million, or 6.9%).

Another category is constituted by people who practice folk or traditional religions. There are 400m of them or 6% of the global population.

Loyal to lesser-practiced religions, like Sikhism, Baha’i and Jainism, constitute about 1% or 58m.

There are about 14m Jews around the world, and that’s about 0.2% of the global population. They are mostly concentrated in the US and Israel.

The third biggest category is not included in the list above; these are people who do not belong to any religion.

1.2 billion people worldwide, or 16%, said they had no religious affiliation in 2015. But this doesn’t mean that all of these people are committed, atheists.

EVERYONE BELIEVES THERE IS GOD

Most of them have a strong sense of spirituality or belief in God, gods, or guiding forces, just that they don’t identify with or practice an organized religion.

Most religions have subdivisions. Christians can be Roman Catholic (the most significant group with about 1.3 billion adherents), Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, or any other Christian sub-denominations.

Muslims might be Sunni (the majority), Shia, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya, or Sufi. Four significant groups constitute Hinduism: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism.

There are two main traditions in Buddhism- Theravāda and Mahayana, each with subgroups.

A Jew might belong to Orthodox (or ultra-Orthodox), Conservative, Reform, or smaller groups.

When it comes to religion, location plays a big role. Asia-Pacific is the most populous geographical region in the world and the most religious.

It is home to 99% of Hindus, 99% of Buddhists, and 90% of people who practice folk or traditional religions.

This region also has 76% of the world’s religiously unaffiliated people, and surprisingly, 700m are Chinese.

Which religions are growing, and where?

The one answer here is that religion is falling in western Europe and North America and growing in other parts of the world.

The median age of the world population is 28. Two religions have a median age below this figure Muslims (23) and Hindus (26).

Other main religions have an older median age: Christians, 30; Buddhists, 34 and Jews, 36. The religiously unaffiliated fall at 34.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion worldwide. This is more than twice as fast as the overall global population. Between 2015 and 2060, the world population is expected to increase by 32%.

At the same time, the Muslim population is expected to grow by 70%. However, Christians are also expected to outgrow the general population. With an estimated increase of 34%.

Christianity might lose its top spot in the world religion list to Islam by mid-century.

Hindus are expected to increase by 27%. In contrast, Jews are expected to grow by 15% thanks to the high birth rate among the Ultra-Orthodox.

Those with no religious inclination are estimated to increase by 3%.

This means that these religious groupings will be smaller than they are now. Buddhists are expected to drop by 7% of their current population.

BIRTH RATE OF SOME RELIGIONS

The main factors are birth and death and not necessarily religious conversion. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children.

This is above the average of all non-Muslims at 2.2. In comparison, Christian women have an overall 2.6 birth rate.

The growth is lower in Europe, where Christian deaths were greater than births by about 6 million between 2010 and 2015.

Recently, Christian deaths made up about 37% of the world’s death.

On the other hand, religiously unaffiliated people currently make up 16% of the global population.

Between 2010 and 2015, only about 10% of the world’s newborns were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers.

BIRTH RATE OF SOME RELIGIONS: 

In America, 23% of Muslims say they are converts to the faith. In recent years, Muslim refugees to Europe have continued to convert to Christianity.

It is estimated that China will have the largest Christian population by 2030 as it has seen a big religious revival.

The number of Chinese Protestants has increased by an average of 10% yearly since 1979. It has increased from 93 to 115 million.

On the contrary, Christianity is declining in Western Europe. The number of people identifying with Catholicism fell from 84.2% to 78.3% between the two censuses of 2011 and 2016 in Ireland, which is a staunch Christian country.

It continued to decrease to 54% among young people between the ages of 16 and 29.

Those with no religious affiliations increased to 9.8%. That is an increase of 71.8% in five years.

Also, a majority of people (59%) in Scotland, another country rooted in religious traditions, now identify as non-religious.

66% of the women and 55% of men here are turning away from organized faith.

70% of people under the age of 44 said they were non-religious. Sixty-five and above is the only age group in which the majority have a religion.

What about theocratic states?

There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the first country that comes to mind here.

The shah ruled the country until the 1979 revolution, which saw the emergence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the new leader.

A new political system based on Islamic beliefs was implemented and appointed the heads of the judiciary, military, and media.

There is an elected president at the moment in Iran, and it is one of the only two countries in the world that reserves seats in the legislature for religious clerics.

Vatican City is the only recognized Christian theocracy. The pope is the supreme power and commands all tiers of the Vatican government.

The Anglican church is recognized as the official church of England.

Israel is defined as a Jewish state with a majority of 80% of Jews, but the government is secular.

In 2015, more than 100 countries and territories had no official or preferred religion.

What religions are the oldest, and are there any new ones?

Hinduism is considered to be the oldest religion in the world. It dates back to about 7,000 BCE. Judaism is the second oldest, and it back to around 2,000 BCE.

It is following by Zoroastrianism, founded in Persia in the 6th century BCE with its roots back to 1,500 BCE.

Shinto, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Taoism bunch together around 500-700 BCE. After that came Christianity, followed by Islam 600 years later.

Some might say that the newest religion is no religion, even though non-believers have been around as long as humans.

But new religious movements spring up periodically, like Kopimism, an internet religion.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism (officially recognized by the New Zealand government but not the Dutch)

Terasem, a trans religion with the belief that death is optional and God is technological.

With this you could able to know the basic of all religions as a christian, this will give you edge to work better especially in the area of pushing for evangelism.

It would be baseless when you know all this and fumble to cross to the pathway of light.