[Buddha-l] Buddhism, the second largest religion in the world

[L.S. Cousins]

Tim,

I think I will avoid the liar's paradox :-)

>    In South India many practicing Christians do *not* report their 
>Christian identity because they will then lose the government 
>subsidies that go along with their former caste status. So the 
>statistic that lists Christianity as 2.5% or 3% of India's 
>population is underrepresenting the situation.

The same is claimed by Buddhists. Both for Christianity and Buddhism 
the claim comes from groups who are enthusiastic about 
proselytization. So I would be cautious of this kind of anecdotal 
evidence.

>But, as Lance notes, some who use such data seem very willing to 
>provide generous estimates of Christians in these situations without 
>doing the same for Buddhists in contexts where we can be equally 
>confident that their numbers are underreported.

Yes, that is the problem.

>Regarding:
>
>David B. Barrett works at the World Evangelization Research Center

I do not know him, but we can read at 
http://www.gordonconwell.edu/ockenga/globalchristianity/staff.php:

>>Dr. David B. Barrett works for the Center offsite and was editor of 
>>the World Christian Encyclopedia's first edition and co-author of 
>>the second edition. Dr. Barrett has been an ordained foreign 
>>missionary of the Church of England since 1951, serving mainly in 
>>Africa. Since 1969, he has been Anglican Communion Research 
>>Secretary. His research has appeared in 70 books and 200 articles. 
>>At present he works as Research Professor of Missiometrics at 
>>Regent University. He founded the World Evangelization Research 
>>Centre in East Africa in 1965, relocating to Richmond, Virginia in 
>>1985.


>I know nothing about this man, but I'd like to point out that he is 
>the editor of the *World Christian Encyclopedia...* published by 
>Oxford University Press (1982).

I think it is clear (and would be accepted by many Christian 
scholars) that those involved in mission work (whether Christian or 
other) tend to be led to inflation of the results of their work.

>  This source is listed by Andrew Wall in his chapter on Christianity 
>in *The New Penguin Handbook of Living Religions* ed. by J. R. 
>Hinnells (1997, 1998).  I have found the charts that Wall provides 
>on pages 85-86 to be useful. The regions listed are Africa, E. Asia, 
>Latin America, Europe (p. 85) and N. America, Oceania, South Asia, 
>U.S.S.R. (p. 86).  These include numbers (in millions) for the dates 
>1500, 1980 and 2000.  They are arranged in a such a way that broad 
>trends are emphasized and this helps push the competition of 
>"who's-the-biggest" to the background.

It is entertaining to see a projected figure for the U.S.S.R. in 2000 !

>Wall's has another chart (citing Barrett's Encyclopedia) that lists 
>the 1980 percentage of Christians as 32.8% of the world's 
>population, while the 2000 number (projected in 1982, I suppose) is 
>listed as 32.3%.  The absolute numbers for these dates are 1,432.7 
>million and 2,019.9, respectively.

I don't believe these figures.

>  It's interesting to note in the context of this discussion that the 
>chapter on Buddhism in *The New Penguin Handbook of Living 
>Religions* contains no comparable presentation of demographics. 
>Perhaps this was wise!

I think it is wise in an academic context where one should be 
particularly wary of the error of 'spurious exactitude'. So I try 
always to give round figures where we do not have exact knowledge.

On p. 370 I gave a figure of about 125 million adherents for Southern 
Buddhism and 10 or 20 million for Northern Buddhism. The figures 
actually refer to the mid 1990s. Even so the figure for Northern 
Buddhism was certainly too low; I had trouble getting any solid data 
at the time.

For Eastern Buddhism, I wrote:
"It may be said that Buddhism is one of the most widely influential 
religious traditions within a population of the order of 1,500 
million."

But the problem is that it takes two to tango. Clearly, many 
understand a statement like the above as meaning that there are not 
really many Buddhists there - obviously, since if there were, I would 
list them. Whereas, what I actually meant is that they are there in 
very large numbers  - we just don't know how to give an exact figure.

Lance Cousins