Europe and America lose millions of Christians, Africa now largest region with 697 million believers

For nearly two millennia, Christianity expanded outward from a small Jewish sect in the eastern Roman Empire to become the world’s largest religion. Imperial endorsement in the 4th century, medieval missionary networks across Europe and later colonial-era evangelisation in the Americas, Africa and parts of Asia steadily widened its reach. By 2020, it still accounted for the biggest share of humanity, 28.8% of the global population, or about 2.3 billion people.

Yet the newest demographic analysis from the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project shows a quieter transformation beneath that headline dominance. Christianity is still growing in raw numbers, but shrinking proportionally, losing followers in dozens of countries while expanding rapidly in others, and shifting geographically away from its historic European base toward sub-Saharan Africa.

The findings draw on more than 2,700 censuses and surveys across 201 countries and territories, tracking religious change between 2010 and 2020 and examining the forces driving it, especially fertility patterns and religious “switching,” people leaving the faith in adulthood.

From imperial religion to global majority

Christianity’s early spread relied on itinerant preachers and tightly knit communities offering social support and the promise of universal salvation. Its trajectory changed dramatically after Emperor Constantine legalised the faith in 313 AD, and later when it became the Roman state religion. Medieval missions carried it across Europe, and from the 15th century onward European expansion exported it worldwide.

Colonial powers, Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and Belgium, often paired territorial expansion with conversion. Missionaries established schools and medical services, translated scripture and, in some regions, used coercive systems of taxation and law to suppress indigenous religions. By the modern era, Christianity had become a global majority faith across multiple continents.

That long expansion explains its contemporary scale. Between 2010 and 2020 the number of Christians still rose by 122 million, from 2.1 billion to 2.3 billion, a 6% increase. But the global population grew faster, and non-Christians grew by 15%, causing Christianity’s share to fall from 31% to 28.8%, with all Christians counted under a single category, including Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestant denominations such as Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, and Pentecostals.

The geographic shift: Africa rises as Europe declines

The decade’s most striking change is geographic rather than numerical. Christianity’s historic centre of gravity, Europe, no longer holds the largest Christian population. The number (or count) of Christians fell in two regions. In Europe, Christians declined to 505 million (down 9%). In North America, they shrank to 238 million (down 11%). In every other region, the number of Christians grew. The count increased most in sub-Saharan Africa, to 697 million (up 31%).

• Sub-Saharan Africa: 697 million Christians (up 31%)
• Europe: 505 million (down 9%)
• North America: 238 million (down 11%)

By 2020, 31% of all Christians lived in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 22% in Europe. Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 24% of global Christians, and North America 10%.

The share of populations identifying as Christian also shifted:

• North America: 63% (down 14 percentage points)
• Europe: 67% (down 8 points)
• Latin America–Caribbean: 85% (down 5 points)
• Sub-Saharan Africa: 62% (up slightly, less than 1 point)

In Asia-Pacific and Middle East–North Africa regions, Christians remained under 10% of the population, declining by less than one point.

However, when measured by individual countries rather than regions, the United States still has the largest Christian population in any single nation. About 64% of Americans identified as Christian in 2020, roughly one-tenth of all Christians worldwide.

Also read: Is religion declining? 1 in 4 worldwide now non-religious, becomes third-largest group as Christianity falls

Where Christianity declined, and the one place it grew

Substantial change (defined as at least a five-percentage-point shift) occurred in 41 countries, more than for any other religion. In all but one, Christianity declined.

The largest drops:

• Australia: down 20 points
• Chile: down 18 points
• Uruguay: down 16 points
• United States: down 14 points
• Canada: down 14 points
• Benin: down 5 points

In several countries Christianity lost majority status:

• United Kingdom: 49%
• Australia: 47%
• France: 46%
• Uruguay: 44%

In each case, religiously unaffiliated people rose to 40% or more of the population.

Mozambique was the only country with a substantial increase, rising 5 points to 61%, following the end of an anti-religious government campaign in the 1980s.

Overall, Christians remained the majority in 120 countries and territories, down from 124 in 2010.

The mechanism: switching out of religion

The central driver of change was not birth rates alone but religious switching.

Christians experienced the largest net losses:
For every 1 person who joined Christianity, 3.1 left it.

Most did not join another religion; they became religiously unaffiliated. This movement explains both Christianity’s declining share and the simultaneous growth of the “nones”.

Globally, religious switching shows a clear direction: more people leave religion than adopt one. Among adults aged 18–54, 3.2 people leave religion for every one who joins.

Fertility still matters, Christians have relatively high birth rates, but switching offsets it. By contrast, Muslim population growth is driven mainly by a young age structure and higher fertility, not conversion.

A changing religious landscape

By 2020:

• Christians: 28.8% (2.3 billion)
• Muslims: 25.6%
• Religiously unaffiliated: 24.2%
• Hindus: 14.9%
• Buddhists: 4.1%

Globally, 75.8% of people identified with a religion, while 24.2% did not.

The data shows Christianity remaining the world’s largest religion, but increasingly concentrated in the Global South and increasingly shaped by disaffiliation in the West. Over the past century it spread across continents; in the past decade, its centre quietly moved.