Percentage of Christian Population Throughout History

[Jay NotApplicable]

I wonder if anybody has ever done an estimate of the percentage of Christians that there were over the past 2,000 years. I'm imagining a graph.

 

[mjintellichristian]

I don't know of any graph like this existing. But it seems like during the non-persecution times in any country, up to 90% of the population call themselves Christian. But most of those don't really follow Christianity much. During persecution times, it goes down to about 10%.

 

[Albion]

I wonder if anybody has ever done an estimate of the percentage of Christians that there were over the past 2,000 years. I'm imagining a graph.

The number of formal Christians as a percentage of the world's population? It would probably have spiked about 100 years ago, but I'm thinking it would be hard to estimate in percentages.

 

[lesliedellow]

Number of Christians Through History

The estimates on that site are in terms of absolute numbers, rather than percentages. However, I have seen elsewhere estimates of the world population as being 250 million at the time of Christ, 500 million by 1500, 1 billion by 1900, and today, of course, it is 6 billion.

 

[1watchman]

Most recent figures show the world pop. as a bit over 7 billion, and a number of educated guesses speculate only 10 % are real Christians ("born again" souls). Actual numbers could not be known by man. Only God knows, and I don't need to.