Religion

WHAT'S NEXT?: Huge growth is expected over the next several decades as the world's Muslim population grows faster than every other major religious demographic, and as urbanization and rising incomes in developing countries with large Muslim populations mean more will be buying, rather than producing their own food.

• Earlier this year, Pope Francis warned that if the Catholic Church did not acknowledge its history of male domination and sexual abuse it risked becoming a museum.
• In the year 2070 Islam is expected to level out with Christianity, and will comprise 10% of Europe's population.
• The results of two years of packing federal courts with conservative judges will show how the scope of politicized religion in the U.S. is expanding.
• Christian groups have joined alongside Mukwege's crusade against sexual and gender-based violence in the DRC, where violence has threatened the population for decades.
• Buddhism, whose adherents make up only 7 per cent of the global faithful, is the only major religion whose population is not expected to grow in absolute numbers over the next few decades.
• Political Islam remained a dominant factor in the global conflict patterns in 2018, as has been the case for the last decade and will likely be the case for the next year.
• While the birth rate for Muslims in Europe is expected to decline over the next two decades, it will remain slightly higher than in the non-Muslim population, except for Dutch - Turks, who have a lower birthrate than the native Dutch population.
• If the current trends continue then, Islam is estimated to be 30% of the world's population by 2030: The growth in the Muslim population will boost the demand for Halal foods rapidly.
• Analysts at the United Nations warned that the Supreme Court ruling signaled a dark future for religious freedom in Russia.
• Indonesia, whose Muslim population put it in first place on the 2015 list measuring Islam, is projected to fall behind India by 2060, although Muslims are a religious minority among Indians.
• Add in simmering strains between Russia and the Ukraine, sanctions on Iran and a US president perhaps under siege at home, not to mention an era-ending change of leadership for Germany's Christian Democrats, and 2019 could well be another tumultuous year.
• In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world.
• The coming decades will demand boatloads of empathy as more and more places like Tangier lose their battles to the sea.
• Rouhani's meetings with top political, military, community, and religious leaders clearly signaled that Iran's relationship with Iraq will remain strong despite U.S. concerns.
• The Trump administration created a religious freedom division within the Department of Health and Human Services that will focus on enforcing already existing laws that protect health care workers who object to performing abortions and other procedures on religious grounds.
• In Japan, by the year 2025, half of the population will be over 50 years old, and even in 2018, over two million Japanese citizens were over 90 years old.
• Rogue cryptocurrency mining will probably surpass ransomware in terms of revenues for cybercriminals this year.
• Religion, particularly Buddhism, is relevant more than ever in today's China, whose government is expected to invest more than $1 trillion in its Belt and Road Initiative.
• Gender studies in Hungary hardly pose a risk to the social narratives espoused by Fidesz and the Christian Democrats.
• The rise of religious nationalism is already threatening freedom of expression and belief for religious minorities, and with general elections in South Asia next year, tensions are bound to get higher.
• By 2050 the number of Muslims (29.7%) will nearly equal the number of Christians (31.4%) across the world.
• In both the United States and Canada, governments and accreditors are threatening the ability of graduates of Christian universities to work in the professions for which they have been trained.

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Last updated: 14 October 2019