Not in the immediate future -- but the day when Muslims outnumber Christians is approaching. A Pew researcher expects Muslim women to give birth to more babies than Christian women within 20 years.
“If we continue the projections out to year 2075,” says Conrad Hackett, “by that point we expect the number of Muslims of all ages in the world will exceed the number of Christians of all ages.”
Hackett is senior demographer for Pew Research Center. His report finds there are 2.3 billion Christians today, compared to 1.8 billion Muslims. The transition is happening much more rapidly in Europe than in the rest of the world.
Another thing accelerating the transition is the way people self-identify.
“A lot of people who grew up Christian,” he says, “have now switched to not identifying with any religion.”