Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 8, No. 4, August 2007
Religious diversity across the globe: a geographic
exploration
Barney Warf1 & Peter Vincent2
1
Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA,
bwarf@coss.fsu.edu and 2Geography Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK
This paper examines religious diversity at the global scale for 237 countries using data
from the World Christian Database. It explores the social forces driving religious
diversity, including national histories, demographic trends, and government policies,
as well as the relations between religious diversity and religiosity. It summarizes several
conceptual approaches to this topic. Empirically, four measures of diversity are employed:
the number of religions in each country; proportion of adherents in the largest faith; the
Shannon index; and the Simpson index. These are mapped using both conventional
choropleths and Dorling cartograms. The diversity measures show that China, India,
Russia, Japan, and Indonesia are among the world’s most religiously diverse states, and
contrary to received wisdom, are more diverse than the USA, which is often regarded as
the most diverse in the world.
Key words: geography of religion; diversity.
Introduction
The geography of religion has a long and
enchanting history within the discipline,
including the spatial distributions of different religious groups (Levine 1986; Sopher
1981; Valins 2000), the nature of sacred
spaces (e.g., Vincent and Warf 2002), and
religious landscapes within the USA
(Zelinsky 1961, 2001) and, to a lesser
extent, Britain. Kong (2001: 211) notes
that religion has recently attracted mounting
attention within geography. This body of
work has delved into variegated topics such
as the manner in which religion is intertwined with ethnicity, class and gender
relations and its powerful role in the
construction of local identities (HervieuLéger 2002; Kong 1990; Tong and Kong
2000; Wilson 1993). The upsurge in
religious fundamentalism that has occurred
worldwide over the last two decades has
made the topic timely and critical for an
analysis of global trends (Stump 2000).
Indeed, contrary to long-standing expectations of mounting secularization, contemporary globalization has witnessed a
desecularization of many societies (Berger
1999). However, despite the growing and
obvious role that religion plays in national
and international politics, geographers have
not turned to the subject in great numbers.
ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/07/040597-17 q 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14649360701529857
598 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
This paper addresses the spatiality of
religious diversity across the globe. The topic
is significant for a variety of reasons. Comparative international studies of religious
pluralism invoke the concept in analyses of its
role in economic development (Barro and
McCleary 2003; Lian and Oneal 1997), its
influence on the national structure of legal
institutions (Cole and Hammond 1974), the
rights of women (Donno and Russett 2004),
the diffusion of science (Schofer 2004), and
topics such as civil wars, educational systems,
and the prospects for successful democratic
political governance. Immigration has rendered
the religious landscapes of countries such as the
USA and the UK increasingly complex, with
implications for social cohesion or fragmentation, mobility, and inequality (Smith 2002). For
example, in the UK and France the growth of
Islam and the common xenophobic backlash
directed against it (often linked to support for
terrorism) has been a central political concern.
In addition to cultural and economic divides
that frequently pervade national and local
social formations, religious differences are
often a barrier to social integration and a
common source of strife. Nigeria and Indonesia, for example, both witnessed internecine
strife between Christians and Muslims; in
India, conflicts between Hindus and Muslims
have taken thousands of lives; Northern
Ireland has long suffered repeated conflicts
between Catholics and Protestants; Sri Lanka
has witnessed a prolonged and violent
confrontation between Hindus and Buddhists;
Thailand and the Philippines both have
Muslim insurgencies; and in Iraq, tensions
between Sunnis and Shiites threaten to
dissolve the fragile state. Africa today is an
arena of intense competition between Islam
and Christianity (see Steenbrink 1998).
The paper opens with an overview of the
conceptual dimensions that may be used to
understand religious diversity, including
national histories, demographic trends, and
government policies, as well as the contested
impacts of religious diversity on religiosity.
Second, it summarizes the data source utilized,
four different measures of diversity employed,
and introduces Dorling cartograms. The third
part elaborates upon the results. The conclusion summarizes the implications of this
analysis for further study of the spatiality of
religious life.
Forces driving religious diversity
Religion as a significant category of social
life—a set of discourses and situated practices
embedded within the power relations of social
formations—is obviously overlain upon and
intertwined with other sources of identity,
including class, gender, and ethnicity (Berger
1967; Park 1994; Stark and Rinke 2000).
Often, membership in linguistic and religious
groups is conflated: in Canada, for example,
French-speaking Quebecois are overwhelmingly Catholic, whereas their Anglophone
counterparts are predominantly Protestant.
In the former Yugoslavia, Croats and Slovenes
are predominantly Catholic, whereas Serbs are
typically Orthodox and Bosnians are primarily
Muslim. In Southeast Asia, Chinese minorities
are typically Buddhist, whereas Malays and
Indonesians are mostly Muslim, and Filipinos
are Catholic.
The causes of religious diversity are numerous. Five are offered here, and others likely
exist as well. First, more populous countries
sustain larger numbers of religions than do
smaller ones, in no small part because their
very size allows for many groups to be
represented by significantly sizeable groups
of people in numerous faiths. Figure 1
indicates that there is a statistically significant
Religious diversity across the globe
599
Figure 1 Number of religions regressed against country population. Regression equation is Log
number of religions ¼ 0.7251 þ 0.0451 £ Log population (t ¼ 6.748). Source: calculated by the
authors from the World Christian Database, ,http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
relationship between the number of religions
present in a country and its total population
(r ¼ 0.43; t ¼ 6.748). Thus, the world’s three
most populous countries, China, India, and
the USA, also contain the largest number of
faiths (sixteen, thirteen, and seventeen,
respectively). This result indicates a
deep underlying structural relation between
population size and religious diversity that is
remarkably consistent across countries. The
relationship is implicitly analogous to the
species area curve in island biogeography
(MacArthur and Wilson 1967), which posits
that larger islands have more habitats and
hence more species. Without resort to simplistic biological reductionism, it is safe to
conclude that larger societies tend to be
relatively more multi-faith in nature. This
observation may reflect the ‘market-based’
view of religious competition, about which
more later.
Second, countries with sustained histories of
immigration tend to exhibit relatively high
degrees of religious diversity when immigrant
streams carry their religions with them.
Religion may play a significant role in the
degree of social mobility that immigrants face,
and in some societies may serve to isolate them
socially if not spatially (e.g., Filipino Catholic
workers in Saudi Arabia). Muslim immigrants
in Europe are typically detached from their
dominant national cultures by virtue of their
religion as well as their language and other
markers of ethnicity. Such trends tend to
undermine claims of national unity predicated
on religious unity.
Much received wisdom maintains the USA
is the most religiously diverse country in the
world (Eck 2001), given its long history of
relatively open immigration, national policies
that differentiate church and state, and
tolerance of cultural diversity. It is true that
600 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
from its origins, the USA has hosted a wide
array of faiths: Fischer (1989: 811) notes that
‘British America’s voluntary migration encouraged religious diversity rather than uniformity.’ In addition to these streams, the country
produced its own, indigenous faiths, including
what is perhaps the most well-known example, the Mormons (Church of Latter Day
Saints). However, as this paper will demonstrate, there are serious grounds for questioning the notion that the USA is the world’s most
religiously diverse society, a claim that rests
largely on the recognition of denominational
differences within its Christian majority and
one that ignores what are perhaps even more
meaningful variations to be found among,
rather than within, broad faiths elsewhere.
Most studies of religious diversity are qualitative in nature; by utilizing a statistical
analysis, this paper is positioned to cast
down on received wisdom.
Third, the history of colonialism has been
particularly important for the map of religious
diversity. Among other things, European
colonialism was often a religious project,
as witnessed by the global spread of Christianity via missionary efforts, which led to
higher levels of religious diversity in Africa
and parts of Asia (e.g., Vietnam). Of course,
this process greatly preceded capitalism: the
Crusades, for example, led to substantial
Christian minorities in Lebanon. Similarly,
Indian merchants carried Hinduism to Southeast Asia starting in 500 B.C., where it remains
dominant today in Bali. Colonially-based
religions may also induce syncretism and the
birth of new religions, such as the emergence
of Sikhism in the aftermath of the Muslim
invasion of South Asia. Religious conversions
and the weight that different faiths place on
attracting new followers are significant: some
religions, such as Islam, place a great emphasis
on proselytization; others, e.g., Judaism and
Buddhism, do not. Similarly, evangelical
Protestants have recently converted significant
numbers of followers in Brazil and Guatemala.
Fourth, government policies in many states
exhibit vast variations in their degree of
tolerance or support for different faiths,
ranging from virtual theocracies (e.g., Iran)
to the sustained attempts of Communist
regimes to minimize religion in the former
Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and North
Korea. Societies confronted with mounting
cultural and religious diversity must typically
find policy mechanisms for coping with the
strains that this tendency can generate,
ranging from democratic acceptance to officially sanctioned discrimination. In France, for
example, the wearing of head scarves by
Muslim schoolgirls led to a ban on all religious
apparel in schools. Religious diversity thus
speaks directly to the question of statesponsored assimilation or tolerance of religious minorities often viewed in xenophobic
terms.
Finally, in many countries, differential
natural growth rates among different faiths
contribute to diversity. Different religions
exhibit wide variations in their attitudes
toward fertility and intermarriage with others
of other faiths. For example, Judaism has long
suffered from low rates of natural increase
and high rates of intermarriage to gentiles,
resulting in a significant long-term decline
(Fishman 2000; Lipset 1990). In the USA,
Catholics frequently exhibit higher fertility
levels than do other religions. In countries
such as Russia or France, the relatively high
natural growth rates of Muslims have become
a matter of some concern among government
officials. In some contexts, significant differences in natural growth rates can reduce
religious diversity, as in Lebanon, where the
proportion of Christians has been declining
steadily.
Religious diversity across the globe
Theorizing diversity
Different disciplines have offered varying
conceptions about the significance of religious
diversity. Religious pluralism is critical in
culturally diverse societies in which different
faiths reside shoulder to shoulder; contrasts
among different religions may strain social
bonds or lead members to examine other
options. In sociology, denominations have
often been likened to ‘firms’ competing for
believers in a religious market (Finke and Stark
1988; Roof 1999). To ensure the survival
and/or growth of their faith, advocates of
different faiths must seek to attract believers,
generally from other faiths, or promote natural
growth (cf. Bruce 2002 and Stark and Finke
2000 for more on religious economies).
Montgomery (1996, 2003) extended this line
of thought into rational-choice and gametheoretic approaches, in which adherents are
represented as choosing a given faith subject to
constraints of time and energy, much as if they
were shopping for commodities.
There are several problems with this view,
however. Religions are not firms or profitmaximizing institutions and should not necessarily be expected to behave in the same way,
particularly in societies in which markets the
norms of competition are relatively poorly
developed. Adherents belong to a given faith for
reasons that have largely to do with cultural
socialization, not simply the ‘price’ involved in
terms of time; the deeply psychological and
emotional roles that religion plays is overlooked
in this perspective. Neoclassical economic and
rational choice views of religion are thus
severely undersocialized, and are silent regarding the historical context, power relations, and
cultural discourses that inevitably accompany
and swirl around the domain of religion.
Social ecologists have also studied religious
diversity (McPherson 1983), emphasizing the
601
organizational dynamics and leadership structures of faiths, their relative ideological appeal
to different demographic segments, and the
manner in which different faiths construct and
maintain boundaries to perpetuate their religious identity. Such a view often compares
religion to ethnicity, i.e., an externally defined
category into which someone is born. As Chaves
and Giesel put it, ‘In the economic approach,
the basic image is one of organizations as firms
trying to sell products to individuals who are
customers. In the ecological approach, the basic
image is one of organizations as organisms
trying to maintain themselves by using individuals as resources’ (2000: 4).
Sociologists of religion have long engaged in
a heated debate about how religous diversity
might affect participation in religious activities, i.e., the degree to which diversity shapes
religiosity. While much of this discussion has
centered on the specific context of the USA, its
implications are significant for the analysis of
religious diversity internationally. Inspired by
Weberian approaches, the ‘secularization thesis’
holds that religious pluralism decreases religious participation as exposure to multiple
religions erodes the credibility of any particular faith (Berger 1967). However, the counterargument (Finke and Stark 1988, 1998)
maintains that religious pluralism stimulates
competition among faiths, offering individuals
a wider range of choices and thus leading to
greater participation in religious activities.
These conclusions were vigorously challenged
by Breault (1989a, 1989b), Olson (1998),
Chaves and Gorski (2001), and Voas, Olson
and Crockett (2002). For example, Olson and
Hadaway (1999: 491) hold that ‘religious
pluralism lowers religious involvement by
reducing the number of close social ties—
especially personal family and friendship
connections—that people maintain with
others who share a common religious identity.’
602 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
Clearly, no consensus about this debate has
been achieved in the literature. The present
analysis does not seek to enter this dispute,
particularly as it makes no attempt to assess
religiosity. Rather, from a geographical perspective, the paper seeks to shed light on how
the degree of religious pluralism varies widely
among countries, noting parenthetically that
there are also great variations within them.
Indeed, the use of the nation-state as a unit of
analysis obscures the great social and spatial
variations that occur internally. However,
whatever the causes and effects of religious
diversity may be, they are bound to be
geographically specific, and the distribution
of pluralism is inevitably bound up with social
and political relations among and within
countries around the globe.
Data and methodology
Reliable data on membership in different
religious faiths are notoriously difficult to
come by. Many governments simply do not
collect information on the topic; in the USA,
for example, the census lacks any questions
pertaining to religious faith. Fortunately,
other sources are available. This analysis
used data on self-identified followers of
religions in 2005 from the World Christian
Database,1 arguably the most accurate,
reliable, and widely used source in existence.
As the only dataset with consistent information on 237 countries, it has been
extensively deployed and subjected to widespread scrutiny. It forms the primary source
of data concerning the sizes and distributions
of religions internationally for newspapers
and encyclopedias (see Hsu, Reynolds, Hackett and Gibbon 2005 for a comprehensive
discussion of its strengths, weaknesses, and
examples of applications).
While the World Christian Database offers
reasonably accurate estimates of the numbers
of believers of different faiths in various
countries, it suffers significantly from its
deployment of broad definitional categories.
For example, the source lumps together all
Christian denominations, overlooking the
considerable differences among Catholics,
Protestants, and Orthodox Christians; similarly, Sunni and Shiite Muslims are grouped
under the same label of Muslims. In the same
vein, there also many types of Jews (e.g.,
Orthodox, Reform, Liberal) and Buddhists
(Mahayana, Theravada, Lamaist), distinctions
that are annihilated by the World Christian
Database’s broad categorizations. Thus, the
analysis faces the formidable empirical problem of the appropriate degree of ‘splitting’ or
‘lumping’ of different faiths, an issue resolved
here entirely on pragmatic grounds, i.e., the
most detailed categorization afforded by the
dataset. Thus, the understanding of religious
diversity is inevitably confounded by the
empirical categories used to make sense of
them. Ideally, the data would allow for a more
detailed and refined taxonomy that did justice
to the diversity and complexity to be found in
each faith; unfortunately that option is not
available. Moreover, some religions do not
adhere to Aristotelian notions of mutually
exclusive categories: Shintoists, for example,
can also be Buddhists, and Confucianists are
often also Taoists. Despite these limitations,
these data offer some degree of insight into
the question as to how and to what degree
religious diversity varies spatially across the
globe.
The World Christian Database lists eighteen
different religions, including well-known ones
such as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Bahais, Confucianists,
Jains, Shintoists, Taoists, and Zoroastrians.
Other categories require clarification.
Religious diversity across the globe
The Encyclopedia Britannica2 defines ‘Chinese Universists,’ of which there are 400
million worldwide, as ‘Followers of a unique
complex of beliefs and practices that may
include: universism (yin/yang cosmology with
dualities earth/heaven, evil/good, darkness/
light), ancestor cult, Confucian ethics, divination, festivals, folk religion, goddess worship,
household gods, local deities, mediums,
metaphysics, monasteries, neo-Confucianism,
popular religion, sacrifices, shamans, spirit
writing, and Taoist and Buddhist elements.’
‘Ethnoreligionists’ include an enormous and
highly heterogeneous variety of tribal, shamanistic and animistic beliefs, typically found in
small ethnic groups located in rural and
economically
undeveloped
countries
(although Native American faiths in North
America also fall under this label). ‘Neoreligionists’ are ‘Followers of Asian 20th-century
neoreligions, neoreligious movements, radical
new crisis religions, and non-Christian syncretistic mass religions.’3 Finally, 13 million
‘Spiritists’ form an independent branch of
metaphysics that arose in France 150 years ago
that exhibits strong parallels to Christianity
but incorporates aspects of reincarnation.4
The relative sizes of these faiths are
indicated in Table 1. Various forms of
Christianity comprise one-third of the planet’s
6.4 billion people, while Islam accounts
for another 20 percent. Significant shares
are accounted for by Hindus (13 percent),
the nonreligious (11.9 percent), Chinese
Universists (6.2 percent), Buddhists (5.9
percent), and Ethnoreligionists (4.0 percent).
Smaller faiths, such as Sikhs, Jews, Bahais,
Confucianists, Jains, Shintoists, Taoists, and
Zoroastrians, account for less than 25 million
followers and 1 percent of the world’s people,
respectively.
Atheists and ‘nonbelievers’ (i.e., agnostics
or uninterested) together comprise over 14
603
Table 1 Estimated membership of major world religions,
2005
Religion
Christians
Muslims
Hindus
Nonreligious
Chinese Universists
Buddhists
Ethnoreligionists
Atheists
Neoreligionists
Sikhs
Jews
Spiritists
Bahais
Confucianists
Jains
Shintoists
Taoists
Zoroastrians
Total
Membership (millions)
%
2,135.78
1,313.29
857.78
768.60
404.13
377.64
256.33
151.55
108.13
25.37
15.15
13.03
7.61
6.47
4.59
2.79
2.73
2.65
6,453.62
33.1
20.3
13.3
11.9
6.3
5.9
4.0
2.3
1.7
0.4
0.2
0.2
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
100.0
Source: World Christian Database, , http://www.
worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/. .
percent of the world’s people. The distribution
of this population varies widely across the
globe (Figure 2), with a heavy representation
in former (or nominally) Communist countries
such as Russia and particularly China, where
150 million people describe themselves in
these terms. North Korea, Germany, Sweden,
Kazakhstan, Cuba, New Zealand, and, curiously, Uruguay, also have significant proportions. In contrast, the choice to reject or
ignore religion has comparatively little appeal
in South Asia, the Muslim world, most of
Africa, and much of the Americas.
The present study employed four empirical
measures of religious diversity drawn from
different disciplines:
1 The number of religions present in each
country, n. In biology, this measure is called
species richness. As the simplest measure, it
summarizes the suite of options available
604 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
Figure 2 Choropleth map and Dorling cartogram of atheists and nonbelievers as a percentage of
total population. Circle sizes are proportionate to population in 2005. Source: calculated by the
authors from the World Christian Database, ,http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/. .
to individuals in given areas without regard to
their differing sizes. However, the precise
definition of a religion’s ‘presence’ is problematic, i.e., subject to arbitrary lower bounds:
what is the minimal number of adherents
who comprise a religion’s ‘presence’ in a
country? (In a personal communication,
World Christian Database representatives
could not justify their lower bound).
2 The proportion of total adherents who belong
to the country’s largest faith, i.e., nmax/N,
where nmax ¼ largest religion and N ¼ total
population. This is a measure of the degree
to which one faith may dominate a society
(as, e.g., in Afghanistan, where Muslims
comprise 97.9 percent of the population).
3 The Shannon index (H), derived from
entropy maximization and commonly used
Religious diversity across the globe
to measure species diversity in biology,
quantifies the diversity of religions based on
two components: the number of religions and
their proportional distribution, commonly
termed richness and evenness, respectively.
The Shannon index is calculated by adding
for each religion the proportion of adherents
multiplied by the natural logarithm of that
proportion, that is,
X
H ¼ 2 pi £ Inpi
ð1Þ
in which p is the proportion of a country’s
adherents found in religion i (Magurran
2004). The maximum value of the Shannon
index is reached when all religions have the
same spatial distribution.
4 The Simpson index (D), invented by Simpson
(1949), is based on probability theory,
specifically, the likelihood of two individuals
drawn at random from a country will be in
the same religion. It is defined as
D¼
X
p2i
ð2Þ
in which p is the proportion of a country’s
adherents found in religion i. It ranges from
zero to one. Of note is the fact that the
Simpson index and the well-known Index of
Dissimilarity and Gini coefficient are all
mathematically related.
To the extent that these measures reflect
different facets of religious diversity, they will
vary from one another; conversely, to the
extent that religious pluralism is robust and
constant across different representations of it,
they will be similar to one another.
These indices are illustrated using two types
of maps. The first, standard choropleth maps
based on nation-states, offers a conventional
perspective of the world’s religious diversity.
However, choropleth maps suffer from several
well-known disadvantages, i.e., the data within
each country may appear to be evenly dispersed
605
internally. Unfortunately, there is little that one
can do about this problem given the spatial
resolution of the available data. Second,
choropleth maps give undue influence to large
areal units as compared with small ones. For the
purposes of the present analysis, it is not the
physical size of countries that is of interest but
total population, which is far more relevant to
the issue of religious diversity. To circumvent
these problems, conventional maps were supplemented by a cartogram devised by Dorling
(1995). Cartograms differ from choropleth
maps in that the areal size of the mapping units
(here, countries) is proportional to the magnitude being mapped. As with choropleth maps,
boundary contiguity is preserved. Conventional
cartograms distort the shape of mapping units
(sometimes seriously) by simultaneously
attempting to maintain boundary contiguity
and striving to make map unit sizes proportionate to the value of a given variable. The
result can be distracting. Dorling (1995)
circumvented this problem by making all
mapping units into simple circles whose areas
are proportional to the value of a variable being
mapped; circle contiguity is preserved.
Discussion
The four measures of religious diversity
employed here offer different yet complementary perspectives on the degree to which people
throughout the world face varying degrees of
choice about their faith. When measured by
the total number of religions present in each
country (Figure 3), for example, the options
range from five to seventeen. Three countries—
China, the USA, and Australia—stand out
in this regard; the first two have large
populations (1.3 billion and 300 million,
respectively), and the USA and Australia are
both characterized by steady streams of
606 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
immigrants, who often carry their faiths with
them. The Dorling cartogram contrasts two
highly diverse countries, China and Australia,
but also emphasizes the enormous discrepancy
in their populations. Compared to China,
India, while similarly populous, is not quite as
diverse. A second tier of diversity is found in
South and East Asia, northwestern Europe, and
Brazil, all populous centers (the latter two also
substantial destination areas of immigrants).
In contrast, Russia, Eastern Europe, the large
swath of Muslim countries stretching from
central Asia across North Africa, central and
western Africa, and central America and the
Caribbean exhibit distinctly lower levels of
religious diversity. Most such states are
relatively small to medium-sized, as indicated
in the Dorling cartogram.
Figure 3 Choropleth map and Dorling cartogram of total number of religions present in each
country. Circle sizes are proportionate to population in 2005. Source: calculated by the authors
from the World Christian Database, , http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
Religious diversity across the globe
More meaningful than the simple number of
religions present is the distribution of populations among religions, as indicated by the
proportion adhering to the largest faith in each
country (Figure 4). (Note darker shades here
indicate lower degrees of diversity.) In this
light, the relatively high diversity in China
and, to a lesser extent, India, is notable: in
China, the largest ‘faith’—no faith—accounts
for 40 percent of the population, or 525
million people; there are another 104 million
607
self-declared atheists. The World Christian
Database also lists almost equal numbers of
Buddhists (111.3 million) and Christians
(110.9 million) in China. In India, 798 million
Hindus comprise 72.8 percent of the
population. In Indonesia, the world’s fourth
most populous state, Muslims comprise 54
percent of the population. All of these
countries exhibit more diversity than does
the USA, where Christians constitute 84
percent of the total. In contrast, the hegemony
Figure 4 Choropleth map and Dorling cartogram of percentage of population adhering to
largest religion in each country. Circle sizes are proportionate to population in 2005. Source:
calculated by the authors from the World Christian Database, , http://www.
worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
608 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
of Islam in central Asia, the Middle East, and
North Africa is evident (particularly Pakistan,
which exceeds Russia in population, as
indicated by the Dorling map). The dominance
of Catholicism in Latin America, France,
Spain, and Italy is clearly evident and reflected
in the low degrees of diversity found in those
states; in these regions, the dominant faith
typically accounts for more than 90 percent of
the population. Uruguay, again, remains
anomalous in South America by virtue of its
large proportion of nonbelievers.
The Shannon index, which measures not
only the concentration of people in one faith
or another but also their distribution among
multiple faiths, yields a similar portrait
(Figure 5). In this approach, the components
of diversity—i.e., the number of religions
present—are weighted by their relative sizes.
Among the most religiously diverse societies
(with indices exceeding unity) are China,
India, Russia, Indonesia, and Malaysia as
well as several West African countries (e.g.,
Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Togo, Liberia).
Figure 5 Choropleth map and Dorling cartogram of the Shannon index of religious diversity.
Circle sizes are proportionate to population in 2005. Source: calculated by the authors from the
World Christian Database, , http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
Religious diversity across the globe
Such countries tend to be large in population
(China, India, Indonesia) and/or have occupied niches in the world-system in which they
have been exposed to a variety of outside
forces, including colonialism and immigration.
Japan, widely assumed to be culturally
homogenous, in fact demonstrates a remarkably
high degree of religious diversity, which
reflects the number of Buddhists (54 percent),
Neoreligionists (25.8 percent), atheists and
nonreligious people (13 percent), Christians
(3.4 percent), and Shintoists (2.1 percent).
In contrast, relatively low diversity is
encountered in much of the Muslim world
and particularly Latin America (indices less
than 0.47). Such a result points to the fact that
commonly acknowledged stereotypes often
mask the heterogeneity revealed by this
analysis.
Similarly, the Simpson index also points to
the diversity of faiths found in China, which
dominates the Dorling cartogram by virtue of
its large population (Figure 6). High diversity
is also found in some other parts of East Asia,
and to a considerably lower degree, India.
Africa emerges as a complex hodgepodge of
different faiths, testimony to its long history of
colonialism and rich heritage of indigenous
belief systems. In contrast, the Americas,
particularly Latin America, exhibit much
lower degrees of diversity. Unlike the choropleths, the Dorling cartograms in Figures 5
and 6 emphasize the enormous numbers of
people who live in religiously diverse societies
in Eastern and Southern Asia, in contrast to
the less populous, and less diverse, Western
hemisphere, including the USA.
Concluding thoughts
Popular understandings of religion often
point to the numerous differences to be
609
found among different forms of Christians,
Jews, and Muslims. To be sure, real social
and spatial variations exist within each of
these faiths. Yet when contrasted with other
major world religions and with those who
choose no faith, the geographic portrait of
diversity takes on new dimensions. For
example, despite the diversity of Christian
denominations in the USA, which has long
prided itself on its tolerance and multiplicity
of faiths, that state exhibits an unexpectedly
low degree of religious diversity due to the
predominance of Christianity. The four
measures of religious diversity deployed
here exhibit significant agreement with one
another, indicating that while it is difficult to
measure diversity, the concept is sufficiently
robust to exhibit common patterns assessed
with different indices. However, it should be
cautioned that to no small extent, the
observations offered here are products of
the particular categorization found in the
World Christian Database; differing categorizations, were they available, may generate
somewhat different outcomes.
This paper calls into question the popular
claim that the USA is the most religiously
diverse country in the world (e.g., Eck 2001),
a claim that rests primarily upon the
recognition of the considerable differences
to be found among its Christian denominations. In contrast, East Asia emerges as a
remarkably diverse set of societies, an
observation often missing from Eurocentric
accounts that fail to do justice to the region’s
ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity.
China, in particular, is highly diverse despite
a half-century of Communist rule, with large
numbers of atheists and nonbelievers (48
percent), Chinese Universists (29 percent),
and Buddhists and Christians (8.5 percent
each); in this light, China exhibits considerably more diversity than does the USA.
610 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
Figure 6 Choropleth map and Dorling cartogram of the Simpson index of religious diversity.
Circle sizes are proportionate to population in 2005. Source: calculated by the authors from the
World Christian Database, , http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
Notably, diversity does not equate with
religious freedom, as indicated by the need
by many Chinese Christians to worship in
secret. The least diverse places in the world,
from the perspective of options of faith, are
those dominated by Catholicism or Islam,
i.e., Latin America and the Muslim belt
across North Africa into Central Asia.
Europe, a predominantly Christian but
increasingly secular continent infused by
strands of Islam, Hinduism, and other faiths,
emerges somewhere between these two poles.
More broadly, these comments serve as a
reminder that the cultural complexity of
many non-Western societies is often invisible
to observers in the West, a notion with
origins in Orientalist discourses and one
replicated in simplistic accounts of the ‘clash
of civilizations’ (Huntington 1993), which
exaggerate the cultural differences between
societies at the expense of the heterogeneity
within them.
In the wave of global desecularization and
religious fundamentalism that has erupted
Religious diversity across the globe
since the end of the cold war, religious
diversity assumes increasing significance.
It may be no surprise, for example, that the
most militant advocates of their respective
religions originate from states with relatively
low degrees of diversity, e.g., the Muslim
world. In contrast, Europe, which evinces a
series of moderately sized societies and a
diversity of faiths, has turned toward
increasing secularism. Such observations
indicate that in an era of intense globalization accompanied by widespread ethnic
conflict, there remains much to appreciate
about religious diversity.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank two anonymous reviewers
for their helpful comments.
Notes
1
2
3
4
See ,http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/ . .
See,http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9399686 . .
See,http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9399686 . .
See ,http://www.spiritismonline.net . and ,http://
www.theseekerbooks.com/articles/spiritists.htm . .
References
Barro, R. and McCleary, R. (2003) Religion and economic
growth across nations, American Sociological Review
68: 760 –781.
Berger, P. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a
Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Doubleday.
Berger, P. (1999) The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Washington,
DC: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Breault, K. (1989a) New evidence on religious pluralism,
urbanism and religious participation, American Sociological Review 54: 1048–1053.
Breault, K. (1989b) A re-examination of the
relationship between religious diversity and religious
611
adherents: reply to Finke and Stark, American
Sociological Review 54: 1056–1059.
Bruce, S. (2002) God is Dead: Secularization in the West.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Chaves, M. and Giesel, H. (2000) How should we study
religious competition? , http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/
soc/groups/ccsa/chaves.PDF . .
Chaves, M. and Gorski, P. (2001) Religious pluralism and
religious participation, Annual Review of Sociology 27:
261–281.
Cole, W. and Hammond, P. (1974) Religious pluralism,
legal development, and societal complexity: rudimentary forms of civil religion, Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion 13: 177– 189.
Donno, D. and Russett, B. (2004) Islam, authoritarianism,
and female empowerment: what are the linkages?,
World Politics 56: 582–589.
Dorling, D. (1995) A New Social Atlas of Britain.
Chichester: Wiley.
Eck, D. (2001) A New Religious America: The World’s
Most Religiously Diverse Nation. San Francisco:
HarperCollins.
Finke, R. and Stark, R. (1988) Religious economies and
sacred canopies: religious mobilization in American
cities, American Sociological Review 53: 41– 49.
Finke, R. and Stark, R. (1998) Religious choice and
competition (reply to Olson), American Sociological
Review 63: 761–766.
Fischer, D. (1989) Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in
America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Fishman, S. (2000) Jewish Life and American Culture.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hervieu-Léger, D. (2002) Space and religion: new
approaches to religious spatiality in modernity, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26:
99–105.
Hsu, B., Reynolds, A., Hackett, C. and Gibbon, J. (2005)
Estimating the religious composition of all nations: an
empirical assessment, unpublished manuscript, ,http://
www.princeton.edu/~bhsu/..
Huntington, S. (1993) The clash of civilizations?, Foreign
Affairs 72: 22–49.
Kong, L. (1990) Geography and religion: trends and
prospects, Progress in Human Geography 14: 355– 371.
Kong, L. (2001) Mapping ‘new geographies’ of religion:
politics and poetics in modernity, Progress in Human
Geography 25: 211 –233.
Levine, G. (1986) The geography of religion, Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 11: 428–440.
612 Barney Warf & Peter Vincent
Lian, B. and Oneal, J. (1997) Cultural diversity and
economic development: a cross-national study of 98
counties, 1960 –1985, Economic Development and
Cultural Change 46: 61–77.
Lipset, S. (ed.) (1990) American Pluralism and the Jewish
Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
MacArthur, R. and Wilson, E. (1967) The Theory of
Island Biogeography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Magurran, A. (2004) Measuring Biological Diversity.
Oxford: Blackwell.
McPherson, M. (1983) An ecology of affiliation, American
Sociological Review 48: 519–532.
Montgomery, J. (1996) Dynamics of the religious
economy: exit, voice, and denominational secularization, Rationality and Society 8: 81– 110.
Montgomery, J. (2003) A formalization and test of the
religious economies mode, American Sociological
Review 58: 782–809.
Olson, D. (1998) Religious pluralism in contemporary
U.S. counties, American Sociological Review 63:
759–761.
Olson, D. and Hadaway, C. (1999) Religious pluralism
and affiliation among Canadian counties and cities,
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38:
490–508.
Park, C. (1994) Sacred Worlds. New York: Routledge.
Roof, W. (1999) Spiritual Marketplace. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Schofer, E. (2004) Cross-national differences in the
expansion of science, 1970–1990, Social Forces 83:
215–227.
Simpson, E. (1949) Measurement of diversity, Nature 163:
688.
Smith, T. (2002) Religious diversity in America: the
emergence of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others,
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41:
577–585.
Sopher, D. (1981) Geography and religion, Progress in
Human Geography 5: 510–524.
Stark, R. and Rinke, R. (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining
the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Steenbrink, K. (1998) Muslim–Christian relations in the
Pancasila State of Indonesia, The Muslim World 88:
320–325.
Stump, R. (2000) Boundaries of Faith: Geographical
Perspectives on Religious Fundamentalism. Boulder,
CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
Tong, C.K. and Kong, L. (2000) Religion and modernity:
ritual transformations and the reconstruction of space
and time, Social & Cultural Geography 1: 29–44.
Valins, O. (2000) Institutionalised religion: sacred
texts and Jewish spatial practice, Geoforum 31:
575–586.
Vincent, P. and Warf, B. (2002) Eruvim: Talmudic places in
a postmodern world, Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers 27: 30– 51.
Voas, D., Olson, D. and Crockett, A. (2002) Religious
pluralism and participation: why previous research is
wrong, American Sociological Review 67: 212–230.
Wilson, D. (1993) Connecting social process and space in
the geography of religion, Area 25: 75–76.
Zelinsky, W. (1961) An approach to the religious
geography of the United States: patterns of church
membership in 1952, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 51: 139– 193.
Zelinsky, W. (2001) The uniqueness of the American
religious landscape, Geographical Review 91:
565–585.
Abstract translations
La diversité religieuse à travers le globe: une
exploration géographique
Cet article se penche sur la diversité religieuse dans
237 pays à l’échelle du globe à partir de données
issues de la World Christian Database. Il explore les
forces sociales qui soutiennent la diversité religieuse, y compris les histoires nationales, les
tendances démographiques, les politiques gouvernementales, en plus des relations entre la diversité
religieuse et la religiosité. Il propose une synthèse
des différences approches conceptuelles sur ce sujet.
Au plan empirique, quatre mesures de la diversité
sont utilisées: le nombre de religions par pays; la
proportion d’adeptes de la religion la plus
répandue; l’indice Shannon; et l’indice Simpson.
Celles-ci sont cartographiées en utilisant des cartes
choroplèthes conventionnelles et des cartogrammes
Dorling. Les mesures de la diversité montrent que la
Chine, l’Inde, la Russie, le Japon et l’Indonésie
comptent parmi les états du monde les plus
diversifiés sur le plan de la religion et, contrairement
à l’opinion courante, ils présentent une plus grande
diversité qu’aux États-Unis, lesquels sont reconnus
Religious diversity across the globe
par plusieurs comme étant le pays le plus diversifié
du monde.
Mots-clefs: géographie de la religion, diversité.
Diversidad religiosa a través del planeta: una
exploración geográfica
Este papel examina la diversidad religiosa a nivel
mundial para 237 paı́ses, usando datos de la Base de
Datos del Mundo Cristiano. Explora las esfuerzas
sociales que conducen la diversidad, incluyendo la
historia nacional, tendencias demográficas y polı́ticas gubernamentales ası́ como las relaciones entre la
diversidad religiosa y la religiosidad. Describe
613
resumidamente varios enfoques conceptuales para
este tema. Empı́ricamente, emplea cuatro indicadores de diversidad; el número de religiones en cada
paı́s; la proporción de partidarios de la religión más
popular; el ı́ndice Shannon y el ı́ndice Simpson.
Estos son mapeados usando tanto mapas ‘choropleth’ como cartogramas Dorling. Las medidas de
diversidad indican que la China, la India, Rusia,
Japón e Indonesia cuentan entre los estados más
diversos del mundo en términos religiosos, y son
más diversos que los Estados Unidos, muchas veces
considerado el paı́s más diverso del mundo.
Palabras claves: geografı́a de religión, diversidad.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment