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There are several different religions claimed to be the “fastest growing religion”. Such claims vary due to different definitions of “fastest growing”, and whether the claim is worldwide or regional. There are also many unreliable claims and rumours, especially for conversion rates, that often spread as urban legends.
Hard data is difficult to come by.

Contents

Different definitions of “fastest growing”

The difficulty of gathering data

Claims to the fastest growing religion

Buddhism

Hinduism

Falun Gong

Christianity

Islam

Non-Religious

Wicca

See also

References

External links

Different definitions of “fastest growing”

Religions can grow in numbers due to conversion or due to higher birth rates in a religious group (assuming that children take on the religion of their parents). Religions in particular countries can grow due to immigration.
So the fastest growing religion could refer to:

★ The religion whose absolute number of adherents is growing the fastest (by whatever means).

★ The religion which is growing fastest in terms of percentage growth per year (by whatever means).

★ The religion which is gaining the greatest number of converts.
Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions; measures counting percentage growth the smaller ones. For example, if a religion had only 10 followers, a single addition would be a 10% increase, and would therefore dwarf the percentage growth rates of the larger religions.

The difficulty of gathering data

Statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey^[1] in the USA, or census data from Australia (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911). Worldwide data is more difficult to gather than data on a particular country.
Statistics for rates of conversion are the most difficult to gather and the least reliable: they are often distorted by social taboos such as the ban on apostasy in Islam, or the reporting of commitments where the individual does not persist. This means that a lot of the data on growth of religions is derived from birth and immigration rates.
There are a large number of people who self-identify themselves as associated to a specific religion, but who are not religiously active. If, for example, asked to choose between Christianity and other religions they would say they were Christians; if asked to choose between Christianity, other religions and "Not religious", they would say "Not religious". This may make categorization difficult.
In countries with mandatory religions, official statistics will only reflect the official position of the government.

Claims to the fastest growing religion

Note that it would be an argumentum ad populum to claim that being the “fastest growing religion” has any logical consequences about the truth of that religion.
Whilst it is possible to find claims that almost any religion is the fastest growing, it is much harder to find ones backed up by scientific data. A selection of the more credible claims are given below, but even these are often contradictory, and most of them only cover a single region of the world.

Buddhism

The Australian Bureau of statistics claimed Buddhism to be the fastest growing religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000).^[2]

Hinduism

The Australian claim for Buddism above has now been superseded by the 2006 census data, which gives the highest percentage gain to Hinduism, with a 193% increase over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006. This is, however, from a small base.^[3]

Falun Gong

No reliable data is available for the number of adherents of Falun Gong but as this religion was only established in 1992 most of the growth must have been by conversion. Estimates for the number of adherents for 1999 range from 2 million^[4] to 100 million.^[5]

Christianity

★ The U.S. Center for World Mission claimed a growth rate of 2.3% for the period 1970 to 1996, (slightly higher than the world population growth rate at the time). This increased the percentage of Christians from 33.7% to 33.9%.

★ The US department of state estimates that Protestant Christianity may have grown 600% over the last decade in Vietnam.^[6]

★ In Asia, Christianity is spreading rapidly in China and South Korea.^[7]. In the case of South Korea, Christianity has grown so fast that South Korea is now the second largest exporter of Christian missionaries, after the U.S.

Islam

Data for Islam reveal that the growing number of Muslims is due primarily to the higher than average birth-rates and consequent population growths of Muslim countries and communities.

★ In 2006, countries with a Muslim majority had an average population growth rate of 1.8% per year (when weighted by percentage Muslim and population size).^[8] This compares with a world population growth rate of 1.12% per year.^[9]

★ According to the "Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life", Islam is already the fastest-growing religion in Europe. Driven by immigration and high birthrates, the number of Muslims on the continent has tripled in the last 30 years. Most demographers forecast a similar or even higher rate of growth in the coming decades.^[10]

★ According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Christian Database as of 2007 estimated the six fastest growing religions of the world to be Islam (1.84%), the Bahá'í Faith (1.7%), Sikhism (1.62%), Jainism (1.57%), Hinduism (1.52%), and Christianity (1.32%), ^[11].

Non-Religious

★ The American Religious Identification Survey gave Non-Religious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers - 14,300,000 (8.4% of the population) to 29,400,000 (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990 to 2001 in the USA.^[12].

★ In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics gives "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006. from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question).

Wicca

★ The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% / 11,454 for the period 1990 to 2001 (8,000→134,000 - ''U.S. data'' / similar for Canada & Australia).

★ The validity of this figure may be in question, due to general misuse and misunderstanding of the term Wicca. Neo-paganism may be a better term to use in this case. See the topic on Wicca for further information.

See also

★ Argumentum ad populum

★ Trends in adherence to religion

★ Major religious groups

References

1. American Religious Identification Survey, Key Findings The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
2. Year Book Australia, 2003 Australian Bureau of Statistics
3. Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 census Religious Affiliation by Age - Time Series Statistics

4. Falun Gong Is a Cult Embassy of the People's Republic of China
5. Answers to Commonly Asked Questions about Falun Gong Falun Dafa Clearwisdom.net
6. Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2005 - Vietnam
7. Report on growth in Christianity in China
8. Averaging of individual country figures from CIA factbook see also Demographics of Islam
9. CIA Factbook
10. [1]The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
11. The List: The World’s Fastest-Growing Religions Staff
12. American Religious Identification Survey, Full PDF Document The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

External links

★ Tables from David A. Barrett, World Christian Encyclopaedia, 2001

★ FAQ from Adherents.com describing why it is difficult to measure the fastest growing religion

★ Estimate from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace using data from World Christian Database