"By 2015, deaths will surpass births in the EU, study reveals"

The suicide of the West.

Commentary: Vatican admits Muslims more numerous than Catholics

The story:

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.
Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.

A clarification (because you can make a catchy headline out of practically any set of statistics):

"Islam" should be taken as an umbrella term much like "Christianity." Islam does not have a central authority, and divisions of Islam are many. Islam is primarily divided into Sunnis (~940 million) and Shiites (~170 million).

Thus, It would be more accurate to compare "Islam" with "Christianity" and compare "Catholicism" with, say, the Sunni branch of Islam. In both these cases, Christianity and Catholicism remain more numerous than their respective counterparts.

Of course, this grammatical precision does not dismiss the demographic reality here: Muslims are having children at rates far exceeding Christians (and Jews, for that matter). It's a sad reality that of the three "Abrahamic Faiths", only Islam appears to fully live out God's promise of fertility.

Furthermore, this population shift is not just taking place in clearly identifiable areas. I remember being in Ireland one weekend in 2003, the first weekend that the number of people attending a Mosque exceeded the number of people attending Anglican services in the UK.

For any questions about world religions and demographics, Philip Jenkins is the scholar to read. I don't always agree with his ecclesiology, but his knowledge of the worldwide landscape is unparalleled, and especially the situation in Africa. His 2006 article for First Things, "Believing in the Global South" is a good place to start.

For those who are looking for a book-length treatment, one might read "The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South", "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" or "God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis" (in which he claims that the "Islamification" of Europe is being over-dramatized, but Richard John Neuhaus disagrees).

I think that sufficies for a reading list.

Oh, and having Christian babies would help matters as well.

update: more commentary from Monsignor Vittorio Formenti (who compiled the statistics):

Formenti said the information on Muslim numbers had been released by the United Nations, while the Vatican's data on Catholics was based on questionnaires sent out to dioceses worldwide.

"Latin America remains the stronghold for Catholicism, while the American continent as a whole has 49.8% of the world's total," he said.

Formenti said that the number of Catholic priests was on the rebound, particularly in Asia, "where there are few Catholics, but they are driven by great spirit".

He described Africa as a "grand resource" for the church, while Europe and North America were struggling. The number of nuns was undergoing a "drastic reduction".
As for the enrolment of seminarians, Guadalajara in Mexico had the largest number, with two seminaries "packed full".

France, the Netherlands and Belgium were bottom of the league, while Italy was seeing a "small, very small reprise". (source: Rome office of UK Guardian.)

Pew Forum presents picture of fluid U.S. religious affiliation

Allright, back to things more properly AmericanPapist.

This article is quickly making the rounds (Time Mag's version here, AssociatedPress here):

More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.

Infographic:

Our numbers:

The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.

The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.”

... which means we have plenty of work to do.

Get the original report here at the Pew Forum. They have a summary with links here.

To add a little context, the UK Times reports that "Over half of Britons claim no religion."

I'll save my comments until I have some time to wade through the data.

update: In the meantime, see what Amy has to say, CNA, and BettNet.

video: "Pew Forum Director Luis Lugo gives an overview of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and talks about some of its key findings" (source):