Faith on the Map: Religion Around the World and Across the UK, from Pew Research Center Estimates, the UK Censuses and OpenStreetMap

I bring together three open sources to describe religious affiliation around the world and across the United Kingdom, and publish them as an interactive atlas. Pew Research Center's estimates for 201 countries and territories show that between 2010 and 2020 the number of Muslims grew by 20.7% and the religiously unaffiliated by 16.5%, against 12.3% for the world's population, while the Christian share fell from 30.6% to 28.8% and sub-Saharan Africa overtook Europe as home to the largest share of the world's Christians (30.7% against 22.3%). Harmonised census data for the four UK nations show Christian affiliation in England and Wales falling from 59.3% in 2011 to 46.2% in 2021, no religion the most common answer in 75 of 361 local authorities, a majority with no religion in Scotland (51.1%), and a steep age gradient: 77% of people aged 75 and over in England and Wales are Christian against 31% of those aged 25 to 34. A series for Northern Ireland from 1861 shows Catholics outnumbering the three largest Protestant churches combined since 2001. Finally, 1,624,818 places of worship mapped in OpenStreetMap give a picture of religious landscapes and denominations, but one shaped by very uneven mapping: 77.5 mapped places per 100,000 people in North America against 7.1 in sub-Saharan Africa. The study is descriptive and makes no judgement about any religion or none. Interactive version: https://maps.tristanhotham.com/religion-map/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/religion-map. Pew Research Center data are used with attribution; Pew Research Center is not responsible for the analyses or interpretations presented here.