ABSTRACT
Grouping a diverse set of religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Animism, and Shinto, among others, into a single category is unsatisfying.1 Yet only 32 of the countries included in the RAS dataset, which includes all countries with populations of 250,000 or more, have neither Christian nor Muslim majorities. This relatively small number of states without Muslim or Christian majorities is even more pronounced when, as shown in Table 13.1, Muslims, Christians, or both are among the largest groups in all 13 states that have no majority religions, and another state, Cuba, while being classified as communist, can be said to have a Catholic majority. Thus, only 18 countries in the world can be said to have a majority religious group that is neither Christian nor Muslim. This is especially startling considering that Muslims and Christians together account for about 54 percent of the world’s population.2 Perhaps part of the explanation is that the world’s two most populous states, China and India, while both having large Muslim minorities, are among those states whose majority is neither Christian nor Muslim. These two states combined have a population of over 2.5 billion.3
