World Religions, Part 2

Here is my column for Sunday as we explore world religions:

On February 4th at about 2:00 in the afternoon, the world population was 6,758,379,337 people. That is a lot of people. In fact, just in the short time that you have been reading my scribbling, the population of the world has increased. The world’s population is expected to increase by 1.188% in 2009.

We live in a diverse world. Just over 13% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin. About 5% speak Spanish. Just over 4% speak English. There are 266 countries. The average person can expect to live 66 years. Women a little longer. Men a little less. 2,168,433,600 people have a cell phone. I thought that the number would be smaller than that, but my intuition has been wrong before and will certainly be wrong again. There are about 50,000 airports. 85 million passengers flew through Atlanta in 2008.

It is no surprise that the world has great diversity in religion as well. Christianity at 33.32% of the world’s population is by far the largest religion. Next are the Muslims at 21.01%. Hindus at 13.26% and Buddhists at 5.84% are the only other religion representing over 1% of the world’s population. Jewish people make up 0.23% of the world’s population. Non-religious people make up 14% and various other religions are about 12% of the world’s population. Christianity is the largest religion. In raw numbers, it is also the religion that is growing the fastest. But, Christians are not a majority of the population, or even close.

In Nebraska, the religious diversity that we see is more likely to be diversity within the Christian faith: some are Catholics, some are Methodist, some are Lutheran, etc…. Even within the Lutheran Church there are four or five different varieties. The largest change in population in Nebraska has been the growth of the Hispanic population. Most Hispanics are Christians.

But times are changing. Advances in technology, media, and mobility have made the world a smaller place. Most of us have more contact with people of other religions than we did ten or twenty years ago. We will certainly have more contact with people of other religions in the next ten or twenty years than we do today. Because of the number of people of people who worship with us each week, it comes as no surprise that people of other religions and people of no religion are worshipping among us on this morning.

Religious diversity is a heavy topic that can’t be covered even partially in 30 minutes on a Sunday morning. I have a feeling we will be devoting 4 to 6 weeks in the near future to further examine what other religions believe and practice and simultaneously explore what Christians believe and practice. But for this morning, for those of us who are Christians, I hope that we will be able to better understand other religions and better relate to followers of other religions. For those who are not yet Christians, I pray that you will see the beauty, power, and possibilities in the Christian faith.

Training Update:

10.25 miles in the hills at an easy pace: about 7:30 per mile or so. Nice day. Shorts and sunglasses.