✧ Pre-historic, worldwide
Folk & traditional
Chinese folk religion, African traditional religions, Indigenous and shamanic practice — often held alongside another faith.
Adherents
325m
Share of world
4.2%
Median age
33
Net from switching
-12m
Where it is actually moving
Long-run losses to Christianity and Islam across West and Central Africa, offset by revival and reclassification in parts of China, Taiwan and the Andes.
Largest folk-religious populations
China
310m · 22%China holds the largest unaffiliated population on Earth — roughly 875 million people — alongside one of the fastest-growing Protestant communities.
Vietnam
44.5m · 45%Protestant Christianity has grown fastest among the Hmong of the northern highlands, from almost nothing in 1985 to several hundred thousand.
Brazil
6.5m · 3%Catholic share fell from 92% in 1970 to about 57% today, but most of that moved to Evangelical Protestantism rather than out of religion entirely.
Nigeria
4.5m · 2%Africa's most populous country is split almost exactly down the middle, Muslim north and Christian south, and is projected to hold the world's third-largest Christian population by 2060.
DR Congo
4.1m · 4%Traditional religions have moved from majority practice to under 5% in a century, the steepest folk-religion decline recorded in Central Africa.
Ethiopia
3.8m · 3%Home to Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, one of the oldest continuous Christian traditions, established in the 4th century.
Philippines
2.3m · 2%Asia's largest Christian nation, and the only Asian country where Catholicism has been the majority faith for over four centuries.
Kenya
1.6m · 3%Church-to-church switching dominates: most Kenyan religious change is Catholic and mainline Protestant adults moving to Pentecostal congregations.
Mexico
1.3m · 1%Still overwhelmingly Christian, but the unaffiliated share has roughly tripled since 2000, concentrated in Mexico City and the northern border states.
South Africa
1.2m · 2%African Independent Churches — locally founded, not missionary-planted — account for a larger share of South African Christians than any imported denomination.
Nepal
0.9m · 3%Nepal's Christian population has grown from a few hundred people in 1951 to over half a million — proportionally one of the fastest conversions to Christianity anywhere.
Thailand
0.7m · 1%One of the most religiously stable countries measured: 98% of adults raised Buddhist in Thailand remain Buddhist.