Know who you are speaking to
World Religions
A short, honest briefing on each of the world's major faiths: what they believe, where they came from, how many follow them, and how to open a respectful conversation.
Each tradition here is described the way its own followers describe it. Follower numbers carry a named source and year. The Islamic view is kept in its own clearly marked section so the description stays honest.
Abrahamic faiths
Judaism and the main branches of Christianity — the traditions you meet most often on the street in Britain, Europe and the Americas.
Judaism
The covenant, the Torah and the people of Israel
The oldest of the Abrahamic faiths: one God, a covenant with the descendants of Abraham (PBUH), and a revealed Law that shapes daily life.
About 14–15 million
Christianity
One name, four very different churches
The world's largest religion — and the one most often treated as a single thing when it is really four traditions with different Bibles, different authorities and different worship.
About 2.4 billion — roughly 31% of humanity
Roman Catholicism
Pope, sacraments and tradition
The largest single Christian body, holding that Christ gave Peter an office that continues in the pope of Rome.
About 1.4 billion
Eastern Orthodoxy
Councils, icons and the liturgy
The churches of the Christian East — Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian and others — bound by the first seven councils rather than by a pope.
About 220 million
Oriental Orthodoxy
Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches
The ancient churches that parted from the rest of Christianity in 451 — and the ones a da'i in Britain is most likely to meet through Eritrean, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Armenian communities.
About 60 million
Protestantism
Scripture alone, faith alone
The Western churches that broke from Rome from 1517 onward, holding that scripture alone is the authority — and then dividing over what scripture says.
Roughly 900 million to 1 billion, counting independent and non-denominational churches
Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity
Being born again, and the gifts of the Spirit
The most active and fastest-growing form of Christianity worldwide, and the most likely to be doing street outreach on the same pavement as you.
Roughly 600 million counting Pentecostal and charismatic Christians across denominations
Jehovah's Witnesses
One God named Jehovah, and no Trinity
A 19th-century American movement that rejects the outright — which makes conversation with them unlike conversation with any other Christian group.
About 8.8 million active publishers, with roughly 20 million attending the annual Memorial
Mormonism (Latter-day Saints)
A new scripture and a restored church
A 19th-century American restorationist movement with its own prophet and its own scripture, claiming the original church was lost and has now been restored.
About 17 million on the rolls; active participation is lower
Indian traditions
Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism — together well over a billion people.
Hinduism
Many paths, many forms, one underlying reality
The world's third-largest religion and its oldest living one: not a single church or creed, but a family of traditions sharing scripture, ritual and a view of the soul's long journey.
About 1.2 billion — roughly 15% of humanity
Buddhism
Suffering, its cause, and the way out
A path built around ending suffering through discipline and insight — and, in its classical form, one that does not deal with a creator God at all.
About 500 million, with far more who observe Buddhist practice alongside other traditions
Sikhism
One God, honest work, service to all
A strictly monotheistic faith from 15th-century Punjab: one formless God, rejection of caste and ritualism, and a strong ethic of service.
About 25–30 million
Jainism
Non-violence carried to its furthest point
A small, ancient and highly disciplined Indian tradition whose central principle — harm no living thing — is followed further than anywhere else on earth.
About 4.5 million, overwhelmingly in India
East Asian traditions
What people in China, Korea and Japan actually practise and believe.
Chinese folk religion
Ancestors, heaven and the gods of everyday life
What most religious people in China actually practise: not a named religion with a creed, but ancestors, local gods and heaven, mixed freely with Confucian ethics, Taoist ritual and Buddhist devotion.
Roughly 400–450 million people take part in some form of Chinese folk practice; the figures are unreliable because most participants would not call themselves religious
Confucianism
An ethical order more than a religion
Less a religion than a moral and social order: how to be a good son, a good neighbour and a good ruler. It shapes East Asia even where nobody calls themselves a Confucian.
Not measurable as membership; its ethics inform daily life for hundreds of millions in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam
Taoism (Daoism)
The Way, and moving with it
The Tao is the nameless way things are. Taoism exists both as a philosophy of living in accord with it and as a full temple religion with priests, gods and ritual.
Roughly 12 million formally, though Taoist practice reaches far more through Chinese folk religion
Shinto
The way of the kami
Japan's indigenous tradition: spirits present in mountains, rivers, trees and ancestors, approached through purification and shrine ritual rather than through doctrine.
Around 100 million people in Japan take part in Shinto rites, though most would not describe themselves as believers
Other traditions
African traditional religions, the Bahá'í Faith and Zoroastrianism.
African traditional religions
A supreme God, the ancestors and the spirits between
Not one religion but many: hundreds of distinct traditions across Africa, most of which share a supreme Creator who is distant, and ancestors and spirits who are near.
Around 90–100 million follow them as their primary religion; far more practise elements alongside Islam or Christianity
The Bahá'í Faith
Progressive revelation and the unity of religions
A 19th-century Persian movement teaching that all the great religions are stages of one unfolding revelation, and that Bahá'u'lláh is its latest messenger.
About 5–8 million
Zoroastrianism
Good thoughts, good words, good deeds
One of the oldest revealed religions, once the faith of the Persian empires, now very small — but its ideas about judgement, heaven and hell shaped the region for centuries.
Roughly 100,000–200,000, one of the smallest surviving world religions
No religion
Atheism, agnosticism and secular humanism — the fastest-growing group in the West.
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