Religions
Where each faith began, and how it travelled: with missionaries and merchants, armies and exiles. Each one is drawn on the atlas in the places it held, year by year.
c. 1000 BCE – today
The faith of the Jewish people, centred on one God, his covenant with Israel and the Torah. Rooted in the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah, it was reshaped by the Babylonian exile and the loss of the Temple in 70 CE, and lived on in a diaspora that reached every continent before Israel's founding in 1948.
14.8 million followers in 2020
A faith centred on Jesus of Nazareth, whom his followers proclaimed the Messiah and Son of God after his crucifixion in Jerusalem. Carried by apostles along the roads of the Roman Empire, it became Rome's state religion in 380 and later reached every continent through medieval and colonial-era missions.
2.3 billion followers in 2020
A faith in one God taught by Muhammad, who from 610 preached in Mecca the revelations collected in the Quran. Arab conquests carried it from Spain to Central Asia within a century, and traders, Sufis and later migrants took it across Africa, Asia and, in modern times, the world.
2 billion followers in 2020
A faith founded by Bahá'u'lláh, an Iranian exile who in 1863 declared himself the messenger foretold by the Báb. It teaches the oneness of God, of the religions and of humankind. Persecuted in Iran and exiled to Ottoman Palestine, it made Akka and Haifa its world centre and spread worldwide in the 20th century.
about 8 million followers in 2020 · the community's own count
The faith of ancient Iran, taught by the priest-poet Zoroaster, whose hymns call people to choose between truth and the lie and to worship Ahura Mazda. It was the religion of three Persian empires; after the Arab conquest it shrank to Yazd and Kerman and to the Parsis of India, and lives on in a worldwide diaspora.
112,000–122,000 followers in 2012
A faith founded by Mani, a prophet of 3rd-century Babylonia who taught that the world mixes light and darkness and that the soul's light must be freed. Spread by missionaries from Roman Africa to China, it was persecuted almost everywhere and had died out by about the 17th century.
No followers today
c. 1500 BCE – today
A family of traditions with no single founder or creed, rooted in the Vedic religion of north India and joined over centuries with the worship of Shiva, Vishnu and the Goddess, temple rites, devotion and teachings of karma and liberation. Brahmins and traders carried it across South and Southeast Asia, and migrants carried it worldwide.
1.2 billion followers in 2020
c. 599 BCE – today
An Indian faith of non-violence and self-discipline, taught by Mahavira, whom Jains revere as the last of 24 tirthankaras. Monks and merchant patrons carried it from the Ganges plain to Karnataka, Gujarat and Rajasthan, and diaspora families now keep it in East Africa, Britain and North America.
4.45 million followers in 2011 · in India, home to nearly all Jains
A path to freedom from suffering taught by Siddhartha Gautama in the Ganges plain. Carried by monks, kings and merchants, it spread to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, along the Silk Road to China, Korea and Japan, and to Tibet and Mongolia, while fading in the land of its birth.
324 million followers in 2020
A faith in one God founded by Guru Nanak in the Punjab and shaped by the nine Gurus after him, who gave it its scripture and the Khalsa order. Centred on Amritsar, it was the ruling faith of Ranjit Singh's empire, and soldiers and migrants later carried it across the British Empire and beyond.
about 25 million followers in 2010
A tradition of ethics, ritual and learning drawn from the teachings of Confucius, stressing family duty, humane rule and the rites to ancestors and Heaven. Many call it a philosophy rather than a religion. Through schools and civil exams it shaped the states of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Not counted · its teachings are followed alongside other faiths, or none
c. 142 CE – today
China's native religious tradition, centred on the Tao, the Way behind all things, as taught in the Daodejing ascribed to Laozi. Its organised religion began with the Celestial Masters in the 2nd century and grew into orders of priests and monks, temples and sacred mountains across China and its diaspora.
about 8.7 million followers in 2010 · who name it as their faith; many more keep Taoist rites
c. 300 CE – today
The worship of kami, the spirits of nature, places and ancestors, at shrines across Japan. It has no founder or single scripture; it was joined with Buddhism for a thousand years, made a state cult from 1868 to 1945, and lives on in shrine festivals and household rites.
about 3 million followers in 2010 · who name it as their faith; shrines count about 87 million parishioners
A Vietnamese faith founded in 1926 through spirit séances, which honours one God, Cao Đài, as the source of all religions, and venerates the Buddha, Laozi, Confucius and Jesus with saints such as Victor Hugo. Its Holy See is at Tây Ninh. Banned by the new government in 1975, it was recognised again in 1997.
556,000 followers in 2019 · who named it in Vietnam's census; its churches count millions more
No single source counts every faith, and sources count different things: a worldwide study or a census counts those who name a faith as their own, a faith's own survey counts its members, and shrines count those on their rolls. Each card says what its count is of where that matters. The counts come from: