Geographers recognize that religions are essential to understanding the spatial patterns underlying how humans occupy Earth. An essential element of culture, religion gives many people a sense of who they are, what they value, and how they relate to other people, the natural world, and questions of ultimate meaning.

Geographers document the places where various religions are located in the world and offer explanations for why some religions have widespread distributions and others are highly clustered in particular places. The predominant religion varies among regions of the world as well as among regions within North America.

Key Issue 1: Where Are Religions Distributed?

The distribution of religions throughout the world varies among and within regions. As religion is an essential component of culture, geographers observe the distribution of religions and offer explanations to account for why some religions are widespread and others remain clustered.

Religions & Geography In many cultures religion provides a source of identity. Migrants take their religion and language with them to new locations. Migrants may learn the language prevalent in their new location, but are less likely to change their religious beliefs as most religions require exclusive adherence.

The number of adherents to specific religions is difficult to ascertain. Self-reported statistics are gathered by organizations and governments around the world do not include census questions on religious membership or practice.

Classifying Religions The world’s religions are grouped into the following categories: four largest religions, folk religions, other religions, and unaffiliated.

• Four largest religions Seventy-eight percent of the world’s population follow one of these four religions: Christianity (2.4 billion people), Islam (1.9 billion people), Hinduism (1.2 billion people), and Buddhism (507 million people).

• Folk religions Six percent of the world’s population adhere to “folk religions,” although this count is hard to estimate. Chinese traditional, primal-indigenous, and African traditional religions are all prominent folk religions.

• Other religions One percent of the world’s population practice several other religions. In this group, Juche, Judaism, Sikhism, and Spiritism are the four claiming the most adherents, counting between 14 and 23 million in their ranks. Bahá’í, Cao Dai, Jainism, Shinto, Tenrikyo, and Zoroastrianism are religions with between 2 and 10 million adherents.

• Unaffiliated The remaining 16 percent of the world’s population consider themselves unaffiliated with any religion. Some folks in this group espouse atheism, which is belief that God does not exist, or agnosticism, which is belief that the existence of God can not be empirically proven.

Universalizing & Ethnic Religions Geographers distinguish between two types of religions mainly by analyzing their spatial extent.

• A universalizing religion appeals to people in a broad range of locations. The three universalizing religions with the largest number of adherents are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.

• Ethnic religions appeal to a particular group of people in a particular place. The largest ethnic religion by far is Hinduism, with folk religions also being classified as ethnic.

These two categories differ in their origin, diffusion, and distribution patterns, but some display characteristics of both types.

Global Distribution of Religions In most countries, the religion with the largest share of adherents is either Islam or Christianity. Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the Western Hemisphere and in most countries of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. In Southwest Asia, Central Asia, and North Africa, Islam is predominantly practiced. Buddhism and Hinduism are also widely practiced in Asian countries. China, the most populous country in the world, is home to the most unaffiliated people. Judaism is most heavily concentrated in Israel.

Regional Diversity of Religions The four regions with relatively more religious diversity are East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

• In East Asia, more than one-half of the people are unaffiliated with any religion. Most of the other one-half are divided about equally between Buddhism and folk religions.

• In South Asia, approximately two-thirds of the population practices Hinduism, while the remaining one-third adheres to Islam. At the national scale, divisions are more pronounced: India is 80 percent Hindu, while more than 90 percent of people in Bangladesh and Pakistan adhere to Islam.

• Overall in Southeast Asia, 40 percent are Muslims, 23 percent each Buddhists, and Christians. At the country scale the divisions among religions are more pronounced: Indonesia is 87 percent Muslim, while more than 90 percent of Cambodians and Thai are Buddhist, and the Philippines are more than 90 percent Christian.

• In sub-Saharan Africa, two-thirds of the people are Christian, while one-third are Muslim. There is a marked spatial division with Christians more predominant in the south and Muslims in the north.

Distribution of Christians Universalizing religions can be divided into congregations, denominations, and branches. A congregation is a local assembly of people brought together for common religious worship. A denomination is a division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal and administrative body. A branch is a large, fundamental division within a religion.

Christianity has three major branches: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. However, these three major branches do not encompass all people who adhere to Christianity. Roman Catholics make up 50 percent of the world’s Christians, while Orthodox comprise 12 percent. The remaining 38 percent are split between Protestants and others, although sources cannot come to a consensus on the magnitude of each.

Distribution of Branches in Europe In Europe, 47 percent of Christians are Roman Catholics, 18 percent are Protestants, and 35 percent are Orthodox. Roman Catholicism is extensively practiced in the southwest and east, Protestantism in the northwest, and Orthodoxy in the east and southeast. Within countries, divisions between Roman Catholics and Protestants have sharp boundaries.

Distribution of Branches in the Western Hemisphere Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the Western Hemisphere. Christianity accounts for 86 percent of its population, In Latin America, 81 percent of the Christians are Roman Catholic and 18 percent Protestant. In contrast in North America, 63 percent of Christians are Protestant with only 32 percent are Roman Catholic. In terms of spatial distribution, Roman Catholics are in the northeast and southwest, Evangelical Protestants in the southeast, and adherents of the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) are, concentrated in Utah and neighboring states. Before 1800, historically black congregations were founded by free blacks and combined elements of Christianity and African spiritual traditions.

Distribution of Buddhists & Muslims In Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and North Africa, Islam is the predominant religion. Buddhism is clustered primarily in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Distribution of Buddhists Buddhism, the world’s third largest universalizing religion, is clustered primarily in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Three main branches comprise greater Buddhism: Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana. Mahayanists make up approximately 56 percent of Buddhists, primarily in China, Japan, and Korea. 38 percent of Buddhists are Theravadists, being primarily concentrated in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Vajrayanists (also known as Lamaists and Tantrayanists) comprise 6 percent of

Buddhists, with adherents located primarily in Tibet and Mongolia. It is difficult to estimate the number of Buddhists, because Buddhism is not an exclusive religion. People can practice both Buddhism and another religion. This is in contrast to Christianity and Islam which both require exclusive adherence.

Distribution of Muslims The word Islam in Arabic means “submission to the will of God,” and it has a similar root to the Arabic word for “peace.” One who practices Islam is known as a Muslim, which in Arabic means “one who surrenders to God.” While countries in Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and North Africa are home to majority Muslim populations, there are actually greater numbers of Muslims in South and Southeast Asia. Believers in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh comprise 40 percent of the world’s Muslims.

Islam’s Branches Islam is divided into two main branches: Sunni and Shiite (sometimes spelled Shia). 88 percent of Muslims adhere to the Sunni branch, and are the major branch in most Muslim countries in Southwest Asia and North Africa, as well as in Southeast Asia. There are various schools of thought in Sunni

Islam with corresponding geographic distributions – Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, and Shafi’i school are among the most widespread, named after their founders. Shiites are the largest branch in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. The Ithna Ashari, Ismaili, and Zaidi schools of thought are major sects of Shiite Islam.

Islam in Europe & North America In recent years, North American and European Muslim populations have increased. In Europe, 7 percent of the population are Muslim. Germany has the largest number of Muslims, 5.5 million, based on immigration from Turkey. France has the second largest number of Muslims in Europe, 5.4 million, also a result of immigration from its former colonies in North Africa. In Southeast Europe Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Serbia have about 2 million Muslims. Between 1 and 5 million Muslims currently reside in North America, a dramatic rise from just a few hundred thousand that were living there in 1990.

Distribution of Ethnic Religions The distributions of ethnic religions are generally more clustered than those of universalizing religions. While universalizing religions may diffuse from one culture to another, the adherents of ethnic religions have remained embedded in the culture where they first emerged.

Distribution of Hindus Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, is the ethnic religion with the largest number of followers by a large margin, with 1.2 billion adherents. Compared to the world’s universalizing religions, adherents to Hinduism are geographically clustered in one country, India (97 percent). Hindus live in the bordering countries of Nepal (2 percent) and Bangladesh (1 percent) with small numbers scattered elsewhere. Hinduism allows for adherents to worship a god or concept from a wide spectrum of possibilities. Despite this diversity of choice of deity, 80 percent worship Vishnu (Vaishnavism), a loving god incarnated as Krishsna. The second largest contingent of Hindus worship Shiva, a protective and destructive god.

Primal-Indigenous Ethnic Religions Several hundred million people practice what Adherents.com has classified as primal-indigenous religions. People who practice these religions primarily live in Southeast Asia or on South Pacific islands, particularly in Vietnam and Laos. Practitioners of primal-indigenous religions believe that God is present in all things, and that nature is spiritual. Shamanism and Paganism are included in these religions. Shamans believe that invisible forces or spirits affect the lives of the living. Paganism encompasses many different beliefs, although it is mostly associated with the practices of ancient people, such as the Greeks and Romans.

Chinese Traditional Ethnic Religions Religions based in East Asia are illustrative of the difficulty of categorizing ethnic religions and calculating the number of adherents. Chinese traditional religions are syncretic, meaning they combine several traditions. In China, these syncretic religions combine Buddhism with Confucianism, Taoism, and other traditional Chinese practices.

Confucianism Confucius was a philosopher and teacher from the Chinese province of Lu. His teachings emphasize the importance of the Chinese tradition of li, which can be translated roughly as “propriety” or “correct behavior.”

Taoism Originating with the government administrator Lao-Zi (also spelled Lao Tzu), Taoism prioritized the mystical and magical aspects of life over the importance of public life, which is emblematic of Confucianism. Tao, which means “the way” or “the path,” cannot be comprehended by reason and knowledge because not everything is knowable.

African Traditional Folk Religions Roughly 35 million Africans are estimated by Pew Research Center to follow folk religions, sometimes called animism. Animists believe that inanimate objects such as plants and stones, or natural events such as thunderstorms and earthquakes, are “animated,” or imbued with discrete spirits and conscious life. In present day Africa, 51 percent of the continent’s population is Christian, while 43 percent is Muslim. In the past, folk religionists made up a much larger share of the population; in 1900,

70 percent of the continent’s population adhered to these beliefs, while as recently as 1980 one-half was still classified as practicing folk religions. Remaining folk religionists live in a belt that separates predominantly Muslim North Africa and predominantly Christian sub-Saharan Africa.

Distribution of Other Religions In the following sections, 10 religions are outlined in order of the estimated number of adherents. Most of these religions are clustered in one or two countries, except for Bahá’í.

Religions with 14 to 23 Million Adherents Four religions have an estimated 14 to 23 million adherents: Sikhism, Juche, Spiritism, and Judaism.

Sikhism All but 3 million of the 23 million Sikhs around the world are clustered in the Punjab region of India. Guru Nanak (1469–1538) founded Sikhism near present-day Lahore, Pakistan. God was revealed to Nanak as The One Supreme Being, or Creator, who rules the universe by divine will. The followers of Guru Nanak became known as Sikhs, Hindu for “disciples.” The Guru Granth Sahib (the Holy Granth of Enlightenment), compiled and edited by Guru Arjan in 1604, is the Sikh holy book.

Juche Most North Koreans are categorized by Adherents.com as following Juche, which is Korean for “selfreliance.” Juche was organized by Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea between 1948 and 1994. Some sources classify Juche as a government ideology rather than a religion. In contrast, Pew Research Center and Religious Database classifies 71 percent of North Koreans as unaffiliated, 12 percent as folk religionists, and 13 percent as other.

Spiritism Spiritism is the belief that the human personality continues to exist after death and can communicate with the living through the agency of a medium or psychic. Most Spiritists live in Brazil.

Judaism About 40 percent of the world’s 14 million Jews reside in the United States and another 40 percent in Israel. The name Judaism derives from Judah, one of the patriarch Jacob’s 2 sons (Israel is another biblical name for Jacob). The Tanakh tells the ancient history of the Jewish people and the laws of the Jewish faith. Judaism is the first recorded religion to espouse monotheism, belief that there is only one God. Judaism offered a sharp contrast to polytheism, or the belief in more than one god. Christianity and Islam find some of their roots in Judaism.

Religions with 2 to 10 Million Adherents Six religions have an estimated 2 to 10 million adherents: Bahá’í, Tenrikyo, Jainism, Shinto, Cao Dai, and Zoroastrianism.

Bahá’í Bahá’í is a universalizing religion, distributed between India, other Asian countries, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. Bahá’í was established in Shíráz, Iran, in 1844. It developed from the Bábi faith, under the leadership of Siyyid Ali Muhammad, known as the Báb. Shiite Muslims reacted violently to the birth of the Bahá’í faith, executing the Báb and 20,000 of his followers in the mid-nineteenth century. Husayn Ali Nuri, one of the Báb’s disciples, became known as Bahá’u’lláh and recognized by followers of Bahá’í as the prophet and messenger of God. Bahá’u’lláh believed that he was sent by God to overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith through abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices.

Tenrikyo Formerly viewed as a branch of Shinto, Tenrikyo was organized as a separate religion in 1854 by a woman named Nakayama Miki (1798–1887). Adherents of Tenrikyo believe that God expressed the divine will through Nakayama’s role as the Shrine of God. Adherents.com estimates that there are 2 million adherents of Tenrikyo worldwide, with 95 percent clustered in Japan.

Jainism Jainism emerged in South Asia approximately 2,500 years ago. With the rise of Buddhism and Hinduism in the region, Jainism faced a decline in importance, especially since Jains believe that nonviolence and self-control are the means to achieve liberation. Four million Jains, comprising 95 percent of the total Jain population, reside in India. Jains are also distributed in the United States, with 25 of the 50 states having Jain centers.

Shinto The cultural history of Japan is firmly grounded in the country’s ethnic religion, Shinto. The Japanese government reports that the country is home to roughly 100 million Shintos, or nearly 78 percent of Japan’s population. Despite this figure, only 4 million Japanese identify themselves as Shinto in response to opinion polls. Some Japanese people view Shinto as a cultural feature rather than a religion.

Cao Dai Cao Dai originated in Vietnam in the 1920s. The name is attributed to adherents’ belief in God as the Supreme Being, Creator, and Ultimate Reality of the Universe. Cao Dai existed in opposition to the French colonial administration and Communists that came to rule the country throughout the twentieth century. With the recognition of Cao Dai by the Vietnamese government in 1997, the number of adherents grew to an estimated 4 million, with the vast majority living in Vietnam.

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism was founded around 3,500 years ago by the Prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra). Zoroastrianism was more formally organized around 1,500 years ago in the Persian Empire and was the state religion for several ancient empires in Central Asia. The number of adherents decreased in response to the rise of Islam in the region. There are between 2 and 3 million Zoroastrians worldwide, with concentrations in India, Iran, and the United States. It is hard to estimate their numbers as Zoroastrians are said to be reserved in identifying themselves.

6.1

Agnosticism The belief that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven empirically.

Animism The belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Architecture The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.

Atheism The belief that God does not exist.

Congregation A local assembly of persons brought together for common religious worship.

Missionary An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion.

Monotheism The doctrine of or belief in the existence of only one God.

Polytheism Belief in or worship of more than one god.

Secularism A philosophy that interprets life on principles taken solely from the material world, without recourse to religion.

Syncretic Combining several religious traditions.

Syncretism The blending traits from two different cultures to form a new trait

Universalizing religion A religion that attempts to appeal to all people and has a worldwide focus as opposed to a regional focus