Global Survey Ranks Most and Least Religious Countries in the World: UK Among Least; Only 56 Percent of Americans Identify as Religious
A global survey by WIN/Gallup International has ranked the most and least religious countries in the world, with the U.K. ranking among the least. In the United States, only 56 percent of the respondents said that they are religious.
Jean-Marc Leger of WIN/Gallup claimed, however, that religious affiliation continues to hold strong numbers on a worldwide scale.
"Religion continues to dominate our everyday lives and we see that the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious is actually relatively high," Leger said, according to The Telegraph.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"Furthermore, with the trend of an increasingly religious youth globally, we can assume that the number of people who consider themselves religious will only continue to increase."
The survey queried nearly 64,000 people from 65 countries about their beliefs, giving them the option of describing themselves as "a religious person," "not a religious person," "a convicted atheist," or "do not know."
The U.K. joined countries such as Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan and China on the least religious list, with only 30 percent of Britons describing themselves as religious — while 53 percent said that they are not religious, and 13 percent said that they are atheists.
Morocco, Georgia, Bangladesh, Armenia, and Thailand made up the list of countries where people most often described themselves as religious.
From the worldwide total, 63 percent of of the people who answered the survey said they were religious; 22 percent said they were not religious; 11 percent identified as convicted atheists, and 4 percent did not give an answer.
In the U.S., 56 percent of respondents claimed that they are religious, compared to 33 percent who said they were not, and 6 percent who chose to identify as atheists.
Another global study on religion released by Pew Research Center earlier this month found somewhat different statistics, though also worded its questions differently. It found that the total number of religiously unaffiliated people in the world is 16 percent, and projected that by 2050 that share will fall down to 13 percent. The study also reported that more than three-quarters of the American population describes themselves as Christian, though that share was predicted to go down to two-thirds by 2050.
Among the other statistics presented by WIN/Gallup International, Africa was found to be the continent with the highest number of religious people, at 86 percent of the population. Western Europe and Oceania on the other hand reported the lest religious populations.
Wealthier people were also found to be less religious than poorer ones, with those in the "medium high" and "high" income brackets reporting less religious belief than those in "medium," "medium low," and "low."
Those numbers somewhat correlated with the education levels, however, as people without an education and those who had only completed primary school were found to be more religious than those with higher educations.
