By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A new report issued by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research in New Haven, Connecticut has found that 270 Christians die for the faith every day.
According to InsideCatholic.com, the report, entitled “Status of Global Mission” is published annually and documents the situation of Christians throughout the world. The latest report found that one million Christians were martyred for the faith in the last 10 years, which averages out to 270 new martyrs every day.
“Martyrs” are defined in the report as those “who lose their lives violently for their faith.”
Numerous other interesting statistics are contained in the report. For instance, there are an estimated 2.3 billion Christians in the world with about 1.5 billion of them being regular church goers. Catholics are the largest denomination of Christians at 1.16 billion, followed by Protestants (Lutherans, Calvinists, etc.) at 426 million. Orthodox Churches come in third at 271 million followed by Anglicans at 87 million. The fifth group is comprised of 378 million “independents” who don’t belong to any particular denomination. The sixth and final group are the 35 million “marginal Christians” whose “Christology is doubtful relative to what is in the published texts of the Bible.”
By comparison, there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world followed by 951 million Hindus, 468 Buddhistsm, 458 million adherents of Chinese religions and 137 million atheists.
Even though 270 Christians die a day for their faith, which amounts to nearly 100,000 a year, they are replaced by 80,000 new Christians a year, of which 31,000 are Catholic.
The “most breathtaking Christian growth” is occurring right now in Africa. In 1900, there were 8.7 million Christians but by 2010, that number had grown to 475 million and is expected to reach 670 million by 2025.
Another interesting statistic from the report regards Christian unity. In 1900, there were 1600 different Christian denominations. By 2010, that number had jumped to 42,000. The Catholic Church, with its worldwide scope, has the largest network of Diocese of all Christian denominations and among all other world religions, it is the only universal Church and universal religion.
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