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Age and Christianity

cullennz

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cullennz
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Forgive me if there has already been 20 threads on this subject.

As you can see I don't post often.

And this may be a stupid question, but I'll ask it anyway as it interests me

I was just watching a documentary which was claiming there a 2 billion Christians in the world.

Does anyone have a link to better figures?

ie what ages these people fall into etc?

I have a feeling the older would out weight the younger and we are going to see a big decrease they are trying to avoid in the next 15 years or so.
 
cullennz said:
Forgive me if there has already been 20 threads on this subject.

As you can see I don't post often.

And this may be a stupid question, but I'll ask it anyway as it interests me

I was just watching a documentary which was claiming there a 2 billion Christians in the world.

Does anyone have a link to better figures?

ie what ages these people fall into etc?

I have a feeling the older would out weight the younger and we are going to see a big decrease they are trying to avoid in the next 15 years or so.
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Don't forget that those figures may include official registrations to a religion. For example, here in Germany you're paying Church taxes when you want to openly be a Christian Person recognized by the Church. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are a believer, even if you're registered to a Religion.
 
Without actually getting out my latest Britannica Year Book, "Christians" in the broadest term possible constitute around 33% of the worlds population. About half of these are Roman Catholics.

World Population of around 6.8 Billion would mean around 2.2 Billion Christians. Then of course within the 40,000 different Christain sects you get many who claim that others are "not true Christians" if major or even minor differences in dogma are apparent - there are many sects out these for example that claim RC's are not Christians, and everbody else hates the Mormons.

Depends on the true definition of Christian. Nor possible, I suspect.

ETA: As far as age goes, nominal Christians probably line up closely with the age demographics of the countries in which they are dominant. But again, the Charismatics (which attract a lot of younger people and are expanding. More traditional Christian churches (RC, CofE, well in Australia at least) have very elderly practicing congregations, and cannot even get enough priests to go around. Again, this comes back to who are "real" Christians. The Charismatics or the Uniting Church? Or both, or neither.

I do not think that figures could be very accurately calculated for anything more than "nominal" Christians which, as I have said would fall roughly into the age demographic of the country concerned.

Norm
 
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Here are some relevant US figures:

Another example of the dynamism of the American religious scene is the experience of the Catholic Church. Other surveys - such as the General Social Surveys, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago since 1972 - find that the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S. The result is that the overall percentage of the population that identifies as Catholic has remained fairly stable.
In addition to detailing the current religious makeup of the U.S. and describing the dynamic changes in religious affiliation, the findings from the Landscape Survey also provide important clues about the future direction of religious affiliation in the U.S. By detailing the age distribution of different religious groups, for instance, the study's statistics on religion show that more than six-in-ten Americans age 70 and older (62%) are Protestant but that this number is only about four-in-ten (43%) among Americans ages 18-29. Conversely, young adults ages 18-29 are much more likely than those age 70 and older to say that they are not affiliated with any particular religion (25% vs. 8%). If these generational patterns persist, recent declines in the number of Protestants and growth in the size of the unaffiliated population may continue.
Major changes in the makeup of American Catholicism also loom on the horizon. Latinos, who already account for roughly one-in-three adult Catholics overall, may account for an even larger share of U.S. Catholics in the future. For while Latinos represent roughly one-in-eight U.S. Catholics age 70 and older (12%), they account for nearly half of all Catholics ages 18-29 (45%).
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http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

And from the UK:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=955
 
Well, where is the "Christian Opportunist vs Christian Believer" chart? :(
 
I saw that documentary myself; I was very surprised to learn there are anly 2 billion Christians. I had always assumed, from the last figures I had seen, that there were almost 3.3 billion of the buggers.

Does this mean they are in decline? I also read that the last Muslim count was 1.8 billion strong. At this rate, Christianity wont be able to make its popularity claims.
 
Hux said:
I saw that documentary myself; I was very surprised to learn there are anly 2 billion Christians. I had always assumed, from the last figures I had seen, that there were almost 3.3 billion of the buggers.

Does this mean they are in decline? I also read that the last Muslim count was 1.8 billion strong. At this rate, Christianity wont be able to make its popularity claims.
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If there are still real believing Christians left, there probably aren't more than 1 million of them. So no matter what biased source tells you about the number of Chritians, it most probably doesn't include the hypocritical amount of people who call themselves Christians and don't believe in it ... at all.
 
Oliver said:
it most probably doesn't include the hypocritical amount of people who call themselves Christians and don't believe in it ... at all.
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All the Christians that I know fit into that category.
 
Hux said:
I saw that documentary myself; I was very surprised to learn there are anly 2 billion Christians. I had always assumed, from the last figures I had seen, that there were almost 3.3 billion of the buggers.

Does this mean they are in decline? I also read that the last Muslim count was 1.8 billion strong. At this rate, Christianity wont be able to make its popularity claims.
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Are you sure they're @ 1.8 billion? I remember all the hub bub about the Muslims (in general) finally surpassing the Catholics (specifically) a few months ago, and I know that Catholics don't make any more than 1.3 billion.
 
Hux said:
I saw that documentary myself; I was very surprised to learn there are anly 2 billion Christians. I had always assumed, from the last figures I had seen, that there were almost 3.3 billion of the buggers.

Does this mean they are in decline? I also read that the last Muslim count was 1.8 billion strong. At this rate, Christianity wont be able to make its popularity claims.
Click to expand...
The number of actual muslims is likely lower as most surveys often, count all inhabitants of islamic countries as muslim and assume that all descendants of immigrants from those countries are muslim as well.
 
Actually, AFAIK you don't have to pay the tithe to be counted as a Christian.

At the very least for the catholics, there's really no way out. Once you've been baptized -- something even a lot of atheists do to their children -- you're a Catholic for life. Just stopping believing in Jesus or God, you'd think that could kinda be hard to reconcile with being a Catholic, but you will still be counted by the catholics as one of their (stray) sheep.

You can stop paying the tithe, nail your resignation from that faith to a cathedral door (like Luther did with his theses), wear one of those "Mary Was A Virgin Only If You Don't Count Anal" t-shirts from T-Shirt Hell to mass, and run an abortion clinic, and you'll still be a Catholic. You could join the Taliban or be the local high priest of a Wicca coven, and you'll still be a Catholic. Maybe a bad catholic. Maybe you'll get excommunicated if you really make yourself a visible nuissance. But you'll just be an excommunicated Catholic :p
 
As others have implied it all depends on how you count the Christians. Options
1. Ask them "what religion are you?"
2. Ask them "have often do you go to church? If so which religion?"
3. Count how many people go to church.
4. Ask "have you been baptised?"
5. Do you follow these religious practices?

All will give completely different answers.
 
HansMustermann said:
Actually, AFAIK you don't have to pay the tithe to be counted as a Christian.

At the very least for the catholics, there's really no way out. Once you've been baptized -- something even a lot of atheists do to their children -- you're a Catholic for life. Just stopping believing in Jesus or God, you'd think that could kinda be hard to reconcile with being a Catholic, but you will still be counted by the catholics as one of their (stray) sheep.

You can stop paying the tithe, nail your resignation from that faith to a cathedral door (like Luther did with his theses), wear one of those "Mary Was A Virgin Only If You Don't Count Anal" t-shirts from T-Shirt Hell to mass, and run an abortion clinic, and you'll still be a Catholic. You could join the Taliban or be the local high priest of a Wicca coven, and you'll still be a Catholic. Maybe a bad catholic. Maybe you'll get excommunicated if you really make yourself a visible nuissance. But you'll just be an excommunicated Catholic :p
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I think the Pope very recently reasserted the Dogma of the Catholic church and said, in effect, this is what it takes to be a Catholic. Disbelieve any of these and you cannot be a Catholic.

There's so many of them pick and choose already that I'd guess its easy to get out of Catholicism. If you remain, nominally a Catholic, Id say thats against the spirit of being one.
 
Every Christian I have met seems to have their own version of what Christian and/or Christianity means. Usually it's made-up from whole cloth, blatant cherry-picking with random 'interpretation' or just plain ignorance of the Bible.

Variation in belief seems to be as diverse as fingerprints leaving an outside observer mystified.

To add to the puzzle, Jesus apparently goes by several names and, as you would expect, there seems to be little agreement about which one is correct; some, all or none.

The only conclusion I can come to is that a Christian is one that believes in Jesus under one or more of his many names; with no agreement between sects, denominations, cults or, often, even between two people on what he said, did or represents. This even goes as far as key events about his birth, life, death and re-birth (or whatever you want to call it). The Bible rarely agrees and it's no surprise that neither do people.

So, the number of Christians must include all those that believe in Jesus with the above caveats.

Oddly, from holy scribblings alone, that includes Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Hindus.

That's a lot of Christians.

:D
 
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H3LL said:
Every Christian I have met seems to have their own version of what Christian and/or Christianity means. Usually it's made-up from whole cloth, blatant cherry-picking with random 'interpretation' or just plain ignorance of the Bible.

Variation in belief seems to be as diverse as fingerprints leaving an outside observer mystified.

To add to the puzzle, Jesus apparently goes by several names and, as you would expect, there seems to be little agreement about which one is correct; some, all or none.

The only conclusion I can come to is that a Christian is one that believes in Jesus under one or more of his many names; with no agreement between sects, denominations, cults or, often, even between two people on what he said, did or represents. This even goes as far as key events about his birth, life, death and re-birth (or whatever you want to call it). The Bible rarely agrees and it's no surprise that neither do people.

So, the number of Christians must include all those that believe in Jesus with the above caveats.

Oddly, from holy scribblings alone, that includes Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Hindus.

That's a lot of Christians.

:D
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Is it not that to be a Christian you have to believe in the resurrection? and that would preclude Muslims, Buddhists jes and Hindu's. I once had an argument with a Christian elsewhere that Mormons were not Christians. I think it was wishful denial on his part.
 
Hux said:
Is it not that to be a Christian you have to believe in the resurrection?
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Unless they are a Christian that doesn't.

Or a Muslim that believes he ascended to live in heaven and will return again later.

Or a Buddhist or Hindu that .... well ... you get the picture.



.
 
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This is a question about the wording on census forms.

If there is no "Atheist" box, then there are no atheists in that country.

Simple.
 
HansMustermann said:
Actually, AFAIK you don't have to pay the tithe to be counted as a Christian.

At the very least for the catholics, there's really no way out. Once you've been baptized -- something even a lot of atheists do to their children -- you're a Catholic for life.
Snip
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Not true in my country. Our statisticians count the people without religious confession and the RC church doesn't deny the status of the unbelievers.
 
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