World Map of Religions

A picture says more than a thousand words, and that goes for this world map as well. This map, both panoramic and detailed, conveys not just the size but also the distribution of world religions, at both a global and national level.

Strictly speaking it’s an infographic rather than a map, but with the right combination of cartography, it performs the service of giving information to people. The circles represent countries, their varying sizes reflect population sizes, and the slices in each circle indicate religious affiliation.

The result is both panoramic and detailed. In other words, this is the best, simplest map of world religions ever. Some quick takeaways:

• Christianity (blue) dominates in the Americas, Europe and the southern half of Africa.
• Islam (green) is the top religion in a string of countries from northern Africa through the Middle East to Indonesia.
• India stands out as a huge Hindu bloc (dark orange).
• Buddhism (light orange) is the majority religion in South East Asia and Japan
• China is the country with the world’s largest ‘atheist/agnostic’ population (grey) as well as worshippers of ‘other’ religions (yellow).

But the map also allows for some more detailed observations:

• Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago are the only American nations with significant shares of Hindus, as well as the largest share of Muslim populations – and consequently have the lowest share of Christians in the Americas.
• Christianity is still the biggest belief system in most European countries, but the atheist/agnostic share is strong in many places, mainly in Western Europe.
• Islam represents a significant slice in France, Germany and the UK, and is stronger in the Balkans: The majority in Albania, almost half in Bosnia and around a quarter in Serbia.
• Israel is the world’s only majority-Jewish state (75%, with 18% Muslim). The West Bank, shown separate, also has a significant Jewish presence (20%, with 80% Muslim).
• While Islam is dominant in the north and Christianity in the south of Africa, Nigeria, due to its large population and even split between Islam and Christianity, has more Muslims and more Christians than most other African nations.

• Because countries are sized for population rather than area, some are much bigger or smaller than you’d expect – with some interesting results: There are more Christians in Muslim-majority Indonesia than there are in mainly Christian Australia, for example.
• North Korea is shown as three-quarters atheist/agnostic, but this is debatable, on two counts. In what is often referred to as the last Stalinist state on Earth, religious adherence is probably underreported. And the state-sponsored ideology of ‘Juche’, although in essence based on materialism, makes some supernatural claims. For instance: despite having died in 1994, Kim Il-sung was declared ‘president for eternity’ in 1998.

Of course, clarity comes at the cost of detail. The map bands together various Christian and Islamic schools of thought that don’t necessarily accept each other as ‘true believers’. It includes Judaism (only 15 million adherents, but the older sibling of the two largest religious groups) yet groups Sikhism (27 million) and various other more numerous faiths in with ‘others’. And it doesn’t make the distinction between atheism (“There is no god“) with agnosticism (“There may or may not be a god, we just don’t know“).

This map found here at map infographic designer Carrie Osgood‘s page. Information based on 2010 figures for religious affiliation, World Religion Database.

Source: This is the best (and simplest) world map of religions