Many people have speculated about the future of religion. Now Pew Research Center has undertaken the first formal demographic projections exploring the future of religion using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for major religious groups around the world. These projections provide new answers to important questions – Will the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated or the affiliated grow faster in the coming decades? And among the affiliated, which religions will grow fastest and which are expected to decline?

This talk will discuss the latest data on the changing global religious landscape, how change is expected to vary by region, as well as the causes and consequences of these changes.

This research, funded the The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies. Other religious demography research from the Center has analyzed the Religious Affiliation of International Migrants, the Global Religious Landscape, Religion and Education Around the World and the Gender Gap in Religion Around the World.

Dr. Conrad Hackett is a senior demographer and associate director at Pew Research Center. His expertise is in international religious demography, sociology of religion, and how religion relates to characteristics including gender, fertility and education. Hackett received his doctorate from Princeton University’s Department of Sociology and Office of Population Research. He is an author of research reports on the future of world religions, the global religious landscape, the gender gap in religion, religion and education around the world and various other studies of religious demography. Washingtonian magazine named his Twitter feed as one of Washington’s best.

Pew Research Center is an independent, non-profit “fact tank” that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

A link to one of Dr Conrad's reports on the subject can be found here.