In 2024, there are more than 1.1 billion Protestants worldwide,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][a] among approximately 2.5 billion Christians.[10][1][11][12][b] In 2010, a total of more than 800 million included 300 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 260 million in the Americas, 140 million in Asia-Pacific region, 100 million in Europe and 2 million in Middle East-North Africa.[2] Protestants account for nearly forty percent of Christians worldwide and more than one tenth of the total human population.[2] Various estimates put the percentage of Protestants in relation to the total number of the world's Christians at 33%,[5] 36%,[13] 36.7%,[2] and 40%,[3] while in relation to the world's population at 11.6%[2] and 13%.[8]
Changes in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant.[3][7][22] Since 1900, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America.[23][8][22] That caused Protestantism to be called a primarily non-Western religion.[7][22] Much of the growth has occurred after World War II, when decolonization of Africa and abolition of various restrictions against Protestants in Latin American countries occurred.[8] According to one source, Protestants constituted respectively 2.5% of South Americans, 2% of Africans, and 0.5% of Asians in 1900.[8] In 2000, these percentages had increased to 17%, more than 27%, and 5.5%, respectively.[8] According to Mark A. Noll, 79% of Anglicans lived in the United Kingdom in 1910, while most of the remainder were found in the United States and across the British Commonwealth.[7] By 2010, 59% of Anglicans were found in Africa.[7]China is home to the world's largest Protestant minority.[2][c]
The United States is home to approximately 20% of Protestants.[2] According to a 2019 study, Protestant share of U.S. population dropped to 43%, further ending its status as religion of the majority.[34][35][36] The decline is attributed mainly to the dropping membership of the Mainline Protestant churches [35][37] and even among Evangelical Protestant churches[38][39] while Black churches are relatively stable or continue to grow.[35]
According to Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, a review of American Nobel prizes winners awarded between 1901 and 1972 by Harriet Zuckerman, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates came from Protestant backgrounds.[40] Overall, Protestants have won a total of 84.2% of all the American Nobel Prizes in Chemistry,[40] 60% in Medicine,[40] 58.6% in Physics,[40] between 1901 and 1972.
By 2050, some project Protestantism to rise to slightly more than half of the world's total Christian population.[41][d] Hans J. Hillerbrand projects Protestants will be as numerous as Catholics.[42]
According to Mark Jürgensmeyer of the University of California, popular Protestantism[e] is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside the resurgent Islam.[43]
^ abcdefJay Diamond, Larry. Plattner, Marc F. and Costopoulos, Philip J. World Religions and Democracy. 2005, page 119. link (saying "Not only do Protestants presently constitute 13 percent of the world's population—about 800 million people—but since 1900 Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.")
^Gregory A. Smith, "About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated," Pew Research Center, 2021/12/14.
^David Brooks, "The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism," The New York Times, 6 February 2022, 4-5. Brooks notes the following: "In 2005, 23% of Americans were white evangelical Protestants, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. By 2020, that share was down to 14.5%. By 2020, 22% of Americans 65 and older were white evangelical Protestants. Among adults 18-29, only 7% were."
^ abcdHarriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States New York, The Free Press, 1977, p.68: Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination-)
^Hillerbrand, Hans J., "Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set", p. 1815, "Observers carefully comparing all these figures in the total context will have observed the even more startling finding that for the first time ever in the history of Protestantism, Wider Protestants will by 2050 have become almost exactly as numerous as Roman Catholics - each with just over 1.5 billion followers, or 17 percent of the world, with Protestants growing considerably faster than Catholics each year."
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