The 5 Biggest Religions in the World

The four most numerous religions have billions of believers spread across the planet: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Non-religious and atheists number about 1.2 billion people and are prevalent in countries like China.

1 – Christians

The Christianity is the religion with more followers – more than 2 billion – and was born of Judaism for almost 2000 years. All Christians follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, but understand them in different ways. Catholics, the most numerous, number more than 1 billion and have as their church leader the pope, who resides in the Vatican, Italy. Other Christians, however, do not accept the authority of the pope, such as evangelicals and orthodox.

Christianity is a fundamental element in Western culture to understand, for example, a part of artistic heritage.

2 – Muslims

The Islam is the second religion in the world in number of faithful. It was founded by the prophet Muhammad (Muhammad in Arabic) almost 1400 years ago, in Arabia. Muslims are in the majority from North Africa to Indonesia. Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians and Mauritanians are Muslims.

3 – Hindus

The Hinduism is the majority religion in India, the most populous country in the world after China. The followers of this religion are, today, more than 800 million. Hinduism has neither a founder nor a prophet: it is a very old religion, and its first sacred texts are more than three thousand years old.

4 – Buddhists

The Buddhism has a little more than 350 million followers worldwide. It is a religion founded 2500 years ago by Buddha, in India. Although it is mainly a religion in Asia, there are also Buddhists on other continents.

5 – The Jews

Despite the importance it has had throughout history, comparatively Judaism does not have many followers: in total, there are about 16 million. Of these, 4.78 million live in Israel and make up 75% of that country’s population. The United States is the country where most Jews live: 5.64 million (about 2.1% of the population).

6 – Non-religious and atheists

Non-religious people are difficult to count because many of them also appear as members of some religion. There should be about 1.2 billion non-religious and atheists in the world. There are countries, such as China and Russia, where the majority of the population has no religion.