Religion: Worshippers of the World

The headlong sweep of Christianity from its founding down to the present day was depicted in a cunning mosaic of statistics last week in the American Lutheran by Dr. George Linn Kieffer. A scholarly, bespectacled Lutheran who is president of the Association of Religious Statisticians of America and author of an annual church membership survey for the Christian Herald, Dr. Kieffer pieced together censuses and researches as follows:

100 A. D.: There were 500,000 Christians in the world.

1000: 50,000,000 Christians.

1500: Europe’s 100,000,000 souls were 80% Roman Catholic, 20% Jewish, Hussite, Waldensian, Lollard. But Europe was already pregnant with Protestantism.

By 1880 there were 74,000,000 Protestants in the world. The Catholic population had increased to 149,000,000.

1933: There are 335,482,881 Catholics, an increase of 125.2% since 1880. There are some 163,000,000 Protestants, an increase of 120.3%.

In the U. S., the progress of Protestantism since 1800 has been tremendous, “far exceeding anything ever seen elsewhere, even in the Apostolic era.” All religious bodies increased 416% from 1830 to 1930, while the nation’s population increased only 255%. Of three groups—Evangelical, Liberal and Catholic—the Evangelical showed the greatest ratio of growth until 1880, when it yielded somewhat to the others and to “atheistic and godless movements.”

Jews have increased from 3,000 in the U. S. in 1818 to 4,228,029 in 1927.

Catholics, from 100,000 in 1800 to 20,146,168 in 1932.

Evangelicals, from 364,872 in 1800 to 34,533,768 today.

Liberals, beginning with a comparatively small number of Universalist, Unitarian and New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) churches, have come to include also the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and all such “Philosophical Cults” as Baha’i, Spiritualism, Theosophy. Present membership: 1,074,675.