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Christianity is growing faster in Africa than any other place in the world.
This is according to a newly released report by Lifeway Research, a US-based organization that seeks to among other things provide today’s Church with relevant insights and information that will lead to greater levels of ministry growth, health and effectiveness.
“In 2000, 814 million Christians lived in Europe and North America, while 660 million Christians called Africa and Asia home. This year, 838 million live in the global North, while almost 1.1 billion Christians live in Africa and Asia alone,” said the report.
Lifeway Research published its findings online titled 7 Encouraging Trends of Global Christianity in 2022 from data collected by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at the Massachusetts-based Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
The organization’s report also revealed that the global growth of Christianity outpaces atheists.
The statistics gathered proved that while the number of all religious people is growing at a 1.27% rate, the growth rate of nonreligionists is less than half that—0.52%, well below the total population growth percentage.
In particular, the number of atheists is almost stagnant, only growing 0.18% per year, according to Lifeway.
Moving on, the evangelical research firm noted there are fewer atheists around the world today (147 million) than in 1970 (165 million).
According to the Gordon-Conwell center’s report, the number of atheists is forecast to continue to decline by 2050.
“The percentage of unevangelized people around the world continues to fall. In 1900, more than half of the world’s population (54.3%) was unevangelized. That has now fallen to 28%,” said the report.
More than 90 million Bibles will be printed this year.
As Christianity continues to grow, the report stared that the printing of Bibles will continue to grow along with it.
“This year, 93 million copies of God’s word will be printed, up from 54 million in 2000 and 5 million in 1900. By 2025, 100 million Bibles will be printed each year. Currently, almost 1.8 billion Bibles are in circulation around the world. That will climb to 2.3 billion by 2050,” revealed the report.
Lifeway Research has helped Christian ministries support churches by conducting custom research projects that accurately describe needs, beliefs, and ministry practices.
Read the rest of Lifeway’s findings here.
