Copyright@shravancharitymission
By Kamlesh Tripathi
By Kamlesh Tripathi
Time has come for epiphany of ‘unaffiliated religion.’ A sizable population of the world today lives without aligning with any religion as you will read in this narration. The question is how? And how do they manage in this simmering world of religious intolerance. We all know religion is good for the essence of life but what about religious intolerance and where does unaffiliated religion fit in. Well no one has ready answers to these question but one can definitely see the changing paradigms.
Today, radicalism in every religion has increased manifold.
There are fringe groups that have formed in almost every religion that shows
intolerance towards other religions. But within all of this there are still some
spunky people who believe in the charisma of ‘unaffiliated religion.’ The
population of ‘unaffiliated religion’ is around 16 % of the world population.
The religiously unaffiliated number is 1.1 billion, accounting for about
one-in-six (16%) people worldwide. It includes atheists, agnostics and people
who do not identify with any particular religion.
However, many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold some religious or spiritual beliefs.
Apart from
unaffiliated religion there is also Irreligion which is the absence of
religion, indifference towards religion, rejection of religion or even
hostility towards religion. When termed as the rejection of religious belief,
it engulfs explicit atheism, religious dissidence and secular humanism. And
when characterised as hostility towards religion it includes anticlericalism,
anti-religion and antitheism.
According to Pew Research Center’s 2012 global study of 230
countries, 16% of the world’s population is not affiliated with any religion,
while 84% are affiliated. The interesting fact finding in Pew Research Center’s
2012 global study is: out of the global non-religious population, 76% reside in
Asia and the Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (12%), North America
(5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), Sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the
Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%).
According to Pew Research Center projections, the population
of the non-religious, though temporarily increasing, will ultimately decline
significantly by 2050, because of lower reproductive rates and ageing.
Being non-religious, is not necessarily equivalent to being an atheist
or agnostic. Pew Research Center's global study from 2012 noted that many of
the non-religious actually have some religious beliefs. For example, they
observed that "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese
unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated
U.S. adults."
If we were to analyse it
country and zone wise the statistics (pertaining to unaffiliated religion) are
even more interesting:
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Out
of a total unaffiliated religious population of around 1.1 billion the ten most
populous countries in respective order of population are China 700 million (52%
of population), Japan 70 million (57%), USA 50 million (16%), Vietnam 26
million (30%), South Korea 22 million (46%), Germany 20 million (25%), France 18
million (28%), North Korea 17 million (71.3%), Brazil 15 million (7.9%), &
U.K. 13 million (21%). This population totals up to 955 million which is 85% of
the total population of unaffiliated religion.
-
If we
were to take the first ten countries highest by respective order of percentage
share of (Unaffiliated religion) population they would be: Czech Republic 8
million (76%), North Korea 17 million (71%), Estonia (Baltic state) 0.8 million
(60%), Japan 70 million (57%), Hongkong 0.4 million (56%), China 700 million
(52%), South Korea 22 million (46%), Latvia (Baltic states) 1 million (44%),
Netherlands 7 million (42%), Uruguay 1.4 million (41%). They comprise of 834 million which is 74% of
their population.
-
There are
six countries where the religiously unaffiliated make up a majority of their
population: the Czech Republic (76%), North Korea (71%), Estonia (60%), Japan
(57%), Hong Kong (56%) and China (52%).
-
The
religiously unaffiliated are heavily concentrated in Asia and the Pacific,
where more than three-quarters (76%) of the world’s unaffiliated population
resides. The remainder is in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America
and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North
Africa (less than 1%).
-
Although a
majority of the religiously unaffiliated live in Asia and the Pacific, only
about one-in-five people (21%) in that region are unaffiliated. More than
one-in-six people in Europe (18%) and North America (17%) are religiously
unaffiliated. The unaffiliated make up smaller shares in the remaining regions.
For instance, less than 1% of those who live in the Middle East-North Africa
region are unaffiliated.
-
More than
six-in-ten (62%) of all religiously unaffiliated people live in one country,
China.11 The
largest populations of the religiously unaffiliated outside China are in Japan
(6% of all unaffiliated), the United States (5%), Vietnam (2%) and Russia (2%).
-
The population of unaffiliated religion in India is
only 0.87 million which is 0.07% of the entire population of the country.
-
But there is a definite co-relation between the system
of governance, ethos of live and religious fundamentalism and unaffiliated
religion. For example take communist countries like China & North Korea
where you will find the population of this community to be around 717 million which
is about 64% of the entire population of unaffiliated religion. This is because
of the regimentation of mindset that has forced people to stay non-aligned. If you
take Islamic states, you will find the percentage of unaffiliated religion to
be low because of religious fundamentalism.
Median Age
Globally, the religiously unaffiliated are older (median age of 34)
than the overall global population (median age of 28). Among the five regions
for which data are available, sub- Saharan Africa has the youngest population
of religiously unaffiliated people (median age of 20), followed by Latin
America and the Caribbean (26), North America (31) and Asia and the Pacific
(35). Europe has the oldest unaffiliated population, with a median age of 37.
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