World Christianity 2023: A Gendered Approach

Abstract

This article marks the 39th year of including statistical information on World Christianity and mission in the International Bulletin of Mission Research. This year’s focus is on women in World Christianity, highlighting results of the Women in World Christianity Project from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (2019–2021). Although women make up the majority in Christian congregations worldwide, massive data gaps still exist that hinder women’s full recognition in Christian organizations. World Christianity can be considered a women’s movement because women are more likely than men to self-identify as Christian, participate in Christian activities, and actively pass the faith to the next generation. However, a chronic lack of gender-conscious data collection makes it extremely difficult to provide a nuanced picture of women’s full participation in Christian communities worldwide.

Keywords

World Christianity global Christianity mission statistics demography gender women men

In 1985 David B. Barrett produced the first statistical table in this series in the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. He produced this table three years after publishing his comprehensive and highly popular World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press, 1982; 2nd ed., 2001; 3rd ed., Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Its purpose was to lay out, in summary form, an annual update of the most significant global and regional statistics relevant to understanding the current status of global Christianity. The following tables in this article continue the tradition of the series, presenting the most recent overview of statistics related to global Christianity and mission. The data appear in comparative perspective and offer estimates for the years 1900, 1970, 2000, 2023, 2025, and 2050. Each set of tables since 1985 has provided a brief commentary to help situate the data, provide further context, and elaborate on implications of the data.

This article represents the 39th year of providing annual statistics in the International Bulletin of Mission Research. This year’s focus is on a key demographic factor of global Christianity that has been missing in the IBMR table for all those years: gender. David Barrett collected many variables related to global Christianity and mission including religious membership/affiliation, the spread of Christianity among the world’s ethnolinguistic people groups, and missionary sending and receiving. He did not, however, collect detailed information on age and sex distributions of religious populations, two key components of the demographic study of religion that allow researchers more nuanced perspectives of religious communities as well as the ability to make better-informed future projections.

In October 2006, Dana Robert asked the question in the IBMR, “What would the study of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America look like if scholars put women into the center of their research?”¹ In our IBMR call for further research in 2019, we identified a lack of comprehensive quantitative data on gender in World Christianity and mission studies.² This year, we’re answering that call by providing select results from the Women in World Christianity Project, funded by the Louisville Institute and the Religious Research Association from 2019–2021. Complete findings from this project will be available soon in Gina A. Zurlo, Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023).³

Women in World Christianity

In the production of the third edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia, researchers at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity sought to remedy the omission of gender by making extensive efforts to feature women in the narrative of World Christianity.⁴ The Encyclopedia thus includes examples of highly organized women’s movements worldwide, such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and Mothers’ Unions. It describes women who provide education, combat HIV/AIDS, advocate for women’s rights, and faithfully serve their congregations and local communities. The book includes influential Christian women of the past, such as the female followers of Jesus who arrived in modern-day France in 49 CE, female founders of African Independent Churches such as Christiana Abiodun Emmanuel (1907–1994) in Nigeria, and the unnamed nineteenth-century Bible women in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. This research sparked increased interest in the role of women in churches around the world and the desire to include a gender variable in the World Christian Database.⁵

The Women in World Christianity Project produced a dataset, for the first time, of the gender makeup of every Christian denomination in every country of the world. The project revealed that global church membership is 52% female, and that Mongolia reports the highest share of Christian women (63% of all church members in Mongolia are women). However, this study had severe limitations based on data availability. Many churches and denominations that collect data on their members and affiliates either do not collect data on gender, or they do not publicly report it. The chronic lack of data related to women in World Christianity makes producing a global gender analysis of World Christianity extremely difficult. For example, significant discrepancies exist between data obtained from government censuses and data from religious communities themselves or from more localized studies.⁶ In Brazil, the country with the second largest Christian population in the world (193 million, 90% Christian), women are 51% of the country’s population and, according to the 2010 census, Christians are 51.6% female. From this perspective, this does not appear to be a very interesting finding. However, when looking at more localized studies, a different picture emerges, one that is more female-focused. Consider:

According to the census, many Brazilian denominations have some of the highest female membership in the world, including the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (60% female) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (58% female).

Independent denominations in Brazil have higher shares of women than Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox groups; overall, Independents in Brazil are 57% female (compared to 52% for Christians overall).

Women make up 70% of Catholic Charismatic participants in Brazil, which is the largest Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in the world.⁷

Women make up 70%–80% of Brazilian Catholic Base Ecclesial Communities membership.⁸

One of the largest denominations is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), which is very patriarchal in its leadership and hierarchy, with all male bishops and perhaps fewer than 1% female pastors. However, there are three to four times as many unpaid church laborers (obreiros) in the UCKG than pastors. These obreiros, typically elderly women, are “indispensable to the ritual functioning of the church.”⁹

Women in official pastoral leadership in Brazil varies from the Anglican Church where 30% of clergy are female,¹⁰ to the Assemblies of God—the largest Pentecostal church in the world—where there is just one known female pastor.

According to the latest wave of the World Values Survey, women attend religious services far more frequently than men, with 38.3% of men attending once a week or more, and 52.8% of women.¹¹

Three potential trends

It is difficult to make general observations about the data on gender in global Christianity. There is no natural relationship, for example, between the size of a Christian population and its gender makeup, or the level of religious freedom in a country and the Christian gender makeup. Nor is there a correlation between denominations that ordain women and the gender makeup of those congregations. Nevertheless, from the data that are available, three broad observations emerge.

First, the source of data is important in considering the gender makeup of denominations. Surveys and data collected from religious communities tend to report higher shares of women than government censuses. There are few surveys available for this kind of analysis, but some of the highest percent Christian female figures in the world are from Argentina and the United States, both sourced from surveys, and neither country includes a religion question on its national census for comparison. In Argentina, the religion survey by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council reported 80% female for Evangelical Baptists and 62% female for Pentecostals.¹² For the United States, the Pew Research Center reported 57% female for historically Black Protestants and 54% for Evangelical and mainline Protestants.¹³

Second, denominations that fall under the Independent category tend to report higher shares of women in their memberships than other traditions, regardless of source. Examples include the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Brazil), 60% female; Jehovah’s Witnesses (Brazil), 58% female; Church of the Lord (Prayer Fellowship) (Nigeria), 56% female; and the Assemblies of God (Zimbabwe), 56% female.¹⁴

Third, membership figures tend to show more gender parity, but attendance and participation data reveal a wider gap between men and women. For example, of the four denominations over 500,000 people in Australia, the National Church Life Survey reported percent female of attenders for three:¹⁵

Catholic Church in Australia: 58% female attenders

Anglican Church of Australia: 61% female attenders

Uniting Church in Australia: 63% female attenders

But, according to the 2016 Australian census:

Catholic Church in Australia: 52% female affiliates

Anglican Church of Australia: 54% female affiliates

Uniting Church in Australia: 56% female affiliates

In short, men and women tend to show parity concerning church membership, but looking at service attendance, regular participation, and integration in church life, women are much more involved than men.

Going forward

Tables 1 –5 in this article do not contain data on gender, because no longitudinal data exists for the female share of Christians, so we are unable to fill in data for 1900, 1970, and 2000. Furthermore, the Women in World Christianity Project did not research what share of missionaries are female—an undeniably much more difficult task given how decentralized missionary sending and receiving is worldwide. As described above, official statistics reveal that World Christianity is 52% female, but any on the ground study of any Christian denomination in any country of the world will likely reveal a much, much higher proportion of women. The Women in World Christianity Project confirmed this reality, echoing scholars who have studied Christianity all over the world, such as:

Philomena Mwaura: “The Church in Africa has a feminine face and owes much of its tremendous growth to the agency of women.”¹⁶

Donald Miller: “In my own observations of Pentecostalism, it is not unusual for two-thirds of the seats in worship services to be occupied by women.”¹⁷

Brendan Jamal Thornton: “If there’s a women’s movement among the poor of the developing world, Pentecostalism has a good claim to the title.”¹⁸

Philip Jenkins: “Women are critical to the growth of new churches across the global South.”¹⁹

Ann Braude: “The numerical dominance of women in all but a few religious groups constitutes one of the most consistent features of American religion, and one of the least explained.”²⁰

Table 1.

Global Population, Global Cities, and Urban Mission, 1900–2050

	1900	1970	2000	% p.a.*	mid-2023	2025	2050
Global Population
Total population	1,619,625,000	3,695,390,000	6,148,899,000	1.18	8,045,311,000	8,191,988,000	9,709,492,000
Adult population (over 15)	1,073,646,000	2,302,129,000	4,290,579,000	1.50	6,041,672,000	6,189,012,000	7,699,095,000
Adults, % literate	27.6	63.8	76.7	0.41	84.1	84.3	88.0
Global Cities and Urban Mission
Urban population (%)	14.4	36.5	46.7	0.90	57.4	58.2	68.0
Urban poor	100 million	650 million	1,400 million	3.09	2,820 million	3,000 million	4,100 million
Slum dwellers	20 million	260 million	700 million	2.22	1,160 million	1,220 million	1,520 million
Global urban population	232,695,000	1,347,106,000	2,869,247,000	2.09	4,615,446,000	4,766,367,000	6,604,546,000
Christian urban population	159,600,000	660,800,000	1,220,985,000	1.49	1,714,359,000	1,749,585,000	2,408,909,000
Cities over 1 million	20	145	371	2.27	622	653	950
Under 50% Christian	5	65	226	2.23	375	396	500
New non-Christians per day¹	5,200	51,100	140,000	0.39	153,000	154,000	129,000

New non-Christians per day migrating to urban centers.

Column % p.a. trend. Average annual rate of change, 2000–2023, as % per year.

Sources: World Population Prospects: The 2022 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2022); World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2018);

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2005–13); and Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, accessed August 2022).

Table 2.

Global Religion, 1900–2050

	1900	1970	2000	% p.a.*	mid-2023	2025	2050
Global Religion
Religious diversity¹	2.7	4.3	4.5	-0.06	4.4	4.4	4.4
Religionists	1,616,370,000	2,986,913,000	5,358,897,000	1.26	7,147,900,000	7,291,508,000	8,846,157,000
Christians	558,346,000	1,216,131,000	1,988,770,000	1.18	2,604,381,000	2,662,979,000	3,342,878,000
Muslims	200,301,000	574,379,000	1,309,479,000	1.87	2,007,352,000	2,070,970,000	2,817,253,000
Hindus	202,976,000	467,434,000	828,498,000	1.20	1,090,304,000	1,105,393,000	1,228,708,000
Buddhists	126,946,000	233,383,000	448,897,000	0.77	535,545,000	538,380,000	548,803,000
Chinese folk-religionists	379,974,000	238,188,000	424,208,000	0.34	458,580,000	456,032,000	397,718,000
Ethnoreligionists	117,313,000	171,476,000	221,773,000	1.16	288,866,000	291,909,000	319,713,000
New Religionists	5,986,000	39,557,000	62,675,000	0.26	66,488,000	66,566,000	64,489,000
Sikhs	2,962,000	10,668,000	20,156,000	1.56	28,756,000	30,079,000	42,180,000
Jews	11,725,000	13,959,000	12,948,000	0.70	15,210,000	15,389,000	17,412,000
Nonreligionists	3,255,000	708,478,000	790,002,000	0.56	897,412,000	900,481,000	863,335,000
Agnostics	3,028,000	543,321,000	650,408,000	0.61	748,054,000	750,408,000	711,566,000
Atheists	226,000	165,156,000	139,594,000	0.29	149,358,000	150,073,000	151,770,000

Note: Religions do not add up to the total because religions with fewer adherents are not listed.

(0–10, 10=most diverse). The Religious Diversity Index methodology is described in Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim, The World’s Religions in Figures (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell), ch. 3.

Column % p.a. trend. Average annual rate of change, 2000–2023, as % per year.

Source: Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, accessed August 2022).

Table 3.

Global Christianity by Tradition, 1900–2050

	1900	1970	2000	% p.a.*	mid-2023	2025	2050
Total Christians, % of world	34.5	32.9	32.3	0.00	32.4	32.5	34.4
Affiliated Christians	522,440,000	1,112,204,000	1,888,245,000	1.20	2,482,982,000	2,540,904,000	3,210,963,000
Roman Catholics	265,756,000	656,431,000	1,024,925,000	0.93	1,268,858,000	1,286,547,000	1,514,411,000
Protestants¹	134,196,000	251,902,000	429,290,000	1.58	615,676,000	636,516,000	881,256,000
Independents	8,859,000	89,480,000	284,423,000	1.65	414,526,000	431,364,000	616,022,000
African	40,000	16,782,000	71,900,000	2.28	120,788,000	127,072,000	206,153,000
Asian	1,906,000	15,370,000	95,856,000	1.24	127,148,000	131,253,000	168,031,000
European	185,000	6,571,000	13,640,000	1.80	20,562,000	21,431,000	30,951,000
Latin American	33,000	8,963,000	27,949,000	2.36	47,741,000	50,371,000	84,749,000
Northern American	6,673,000	41,438,000	74,339,000	1.17	97,105,000	100,003,000	124,292,000
Oceanian	22,000	356,000	740,000	2.06	1,182,000	1,235,000	1,845,000
Orthodox	116,199,000	139,037,000	257,470,000	0.53	290,594,000	293,148,000	307,239,000
Unaffiliated Christians	35,906,000	103,927,000	100,524,000	0.82	121,400,000	122,074,000	131,915,000
Evangelicals²	80,912,000	108,841,000	270,702,000	1.79	406,886,000	420,870,000	620,963,000
Pentecostals/Charismatics³	981,000	57,630,000	442,641,000	1.88	679,085,000	703,639,000	1,031,500,000
Denominations	2,000	13,100	31,100	1.84	47,300	49,000	64,000
Congregations	400,000	1,329,000	3,000,000	1.47	4,200,000	4,300,000	5,400,000

Note: Categories below do not add up to affiliated Christians because of double affiliation (between traditions).

Including Anglicans. Past tables have listed Anglicans separately.

Churches and individuals who self-identify as evangelicals by membership in denominations linked to evangelical alliances (e.g., World Evangelical Alliance) or by self-identification in polls.

Church members involved in the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Independent Charismatic renewal in the Holy Spirit, also known collectively as "Renewalists."

Column % p.a. trend. Average annual rate of change, 2000–2023, as % per year.

Source: Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, accessed August 2022).

Table 4.

Christians by Continent and Christian Mission and Evangelization, 1900–2050

	1900	1970	2000	% p.a.*	mid-2023	2025	2050
Christians by Continent
Global North	459,901,000	692,870,000	816,065,000	0.12	838,293,000	832,919,000	751,039,000
Europe (including Russia; 4 regions)	380,647,000	490,507,000	561,881,000	0.04	566,423,000	561,811,000	494,477,000
Northern America (1 region)	79,254,000	202,363,000	254,184,000	0.29	271,870,000	271,108,000	256,563,000
Global South	98,445,000	523,261,000	1,172,704,000	1.80	1,766,089,000	1,830,060,000	2,591,838,000
Africa (5 regions)	9,640,000	137,866,000	384,290,000	2.76	718,096,000	756,035,000	1,286,083,000
Asia (5 regions)	21,966,000	97,390,000	281,121,000	1.62	406,555,000	424,376,000	595,070,000
Latin America (3 regions)	62,002,000	269,960,000	482,926,000	1.03	611,370,000	619,341,000	678,828,000
Oceania (4 regions)	4,837,000	18,045,000	24,367,000	0.92	30,068,000	30,307,000	31,857,000
Christian Mission and Evangelization
National workers (citizens)	2,100,000	4,600,000	10,900,000	0.97	13,600,000	14,000,000	17,000,000
Foreign missionaries¹	62,000	240,000	420,000	0.20	440,000	450,000	600,000
Christian martyrs per 10 years²	344,000	3,770,000	1,600,000	-2.47	900,000	900,000	1,000,000
% in Christian countries³	95.0	75.8	59.0	-0.42	53.6	53.0	50.0
Non-Christians who know a Christian (%)	5.4	13.4	17.4	0.22	18.3	18.8	20.2
Unevangelized population⁴	879,998,000	1,653,520,000	1,845,839,000	0.87	2,250,856,000	2,295,444,000	2,756,377,000
Unevangelized as % of world population	54.3	44.7	30.0	-0.31	28.0	28.0	28.4

‘Foreign mission sending agencies’ was retired this year because of the increase of independent groups and NGOs and the importance of in-country mission agencies.

Ten-year total for decade ending in the given year. World totals of current long-term trend. See David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2001), pt. 4, "Martyrology."

Percentage of all Christians living in countries ⩾80% Christian.

Defined in World Christian Trends, pt. 25, "Macroevangelistics."

Column % p.a. trend. Average annual rate of change, 2000–2023, as % per year.

Source: Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, accessed August 2022).

Table 5.

Christian Media and Finance, 1900–2050

	1900	1970	2000	% p.a.*	mid-2023	2025	2050
Bibles ¹
Bibles printed per year	5 million	25 million	54 million	2.52	95 million	100 million	120 million
Bible density (copies in place)	108 million	443 million	1,400 million	1.05	1,780 million	1,800 million	2,300 million
Christian Finance (in US$, per year)
Personal income of Christians	270 billion	4,100 billion	18,000 billion	5.06	56,000 billion	57,000 billion	75,000 billion
Giving to Christian causes	8 billion	70 billion	320 billion	4.82	945 billion	1,000 billion	2,200 billion
Churches’ income	7 billion	50 billion	130 billion	4.77	380 billion	400 billion	900 billion
Parachurch and institutional income	1 billion	20 billion	190 billion	4.89	570 billion	600 billion	1,300 billion
Ecclesiastical crime²	300,000	5,000,000	19 billion	5.30	62 billion	70 billion	170 billion
Income of global foreign missions	200 million	3 billion	18 billion	5.05	55 billion	60 billion	120 billion

Four lines under ‘Christian media’ (now ‘Bibles’) were retired this year because they were based on pre-Internet print data. These were Books about Christianity, Christian periodicals, Scripture selections, and users of radio/TV/Internet.

Amounts embezzled by top custodians of Christian monies (US dollar equivalents, per year).

Column % p.a. trend. Average annual rate of change, 2000–2023, as % per year.

Source: Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, accessed August 2022).

World Christianity is a women’s movement because it was built and is sustained by women, and the majority of its members, participants, and affiliates are women, whether or not they are recognized and counted as such. It is our hope that gender-conscious research will continue in global Christianity, but most importantly, that Christian organizations, denominations, and congregations will begin to seriously consider the gendered implications of their work and report it in their official statistics. Christian women’s commitment appears to be much more robust than men’s, leaving the future of the faith in their hands. Furthermore, with 77.5% of all Christians likely to live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands by the year 2050, it is women of the Global South who will likely take on more visible roles and lead the way in Christian scholarship, service, and mission.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

This article was prepared by staff at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA; from left to right: Gina A. Zurlo, codirector; Todd M. Johnson, codirector; and Peter F. Crossing, data analyst. For more information, visit , follow us on Twitter @CSGC and facebook.com/centerforglobalchristianity.