Asian atheism

Political boundaries of Asia

The current atheist population mostly resides in East Asia (particularly China) and in secular Europe/Australia among whites. See: Western atheism and race

According to the global news website Quartz:

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Atheists, agnostics, and other religious non-affiliates are a dying breed in Asia. According to a Pew Research Center study released last week, Asia’s shrinking pool of men and women who don’t identify with any religion are driving a drop in the proportion of “religious nones” in the world. The percentage of the unaffiliated in Asia Pacific—home to about 76% of the world’s unaffiliated—will fall to 17% in 2050 from 21%, Pew estimates. ...this drop in Asia and the growth of religious communities elsewhere will mean the unaffiliated will make up only 13% of the world’s population in 2050, down from 16% in 2010.

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Growth of Christianity in China

In front of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

See also: Growth of Christianity in China

According to Slate, "Protestant Christianity has been the fastest growing religion in China." Evangelical Christianity is especially growing sharply in China.

On November 1, 2014, an article in The Economist entitled Cracks in the atheist edifice declared:

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Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism... Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr. Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire.

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Growth of Protestantism in Russia

A large number of missionaries operating presently operating in Russia are from Protestant denominations.

According to a survey conducted at the end of 2013, 2% of surveyed Russians identify as Protestants or another branch of Christianity.

Russia Watch in an article entitled Is Russia Turning Protestant? wrote:

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Russia’s Justice Ministry has registered 14,616 Orthodox parishes, 4,409 Protestant parishes, and 234 Catholic parishes. But Anatoly Pchelintsev, a religion specialist and professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, estimates that for every registered Protestant congregation, there are at least two unregistered ones. Pchelintsev, who edits the Religion and Law publication here, concludes that Russia has about 15,000 Protestant congregations, roughly equal to the number of Russian Orthodox ones. He says the number of Catholic parishes is roughly the same as the official number. In Siberia, long a land of dissenters and discontents, there are believed to be more Protestants in church on Sunday mornings than Russian Orthodox. On one recent visit to Khabarovsk, the second largest city of the Russian Far East, I went to a packed Baptist church, only a kilometer from a sparsely attended Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The massive Cathedral had been built with federal funds.

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Evangelicalism and Russia

According to the Christian Broadcasting Network:

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The Orthodox Church's biggest competitors are the evangelical, charismatic congregations, which are experiencing tremendous growth. "So many Russians are leaving the Orthodox Church and joining the charismatic churches and they don't like it," Ryakhovski said. Ryakhovski gave CBN News a document produced by a leading Russian research group and backed by the Orthodox Church. The paper was titled, "Ways to weaken the potential of neo-Pentecostal sects and to help their victims.".... Once a persecuted minority, evangelical Christians in Russia and the surrounding countries that once made up the former Soviet Union, are now exerting more influence in society by displaying what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. "People are looking for meaning, they are looking for authentic lifestyles, authentic relationships," Sipko told CBN News. "And so in the midst of all the economic and social changes, we have the opportunity to demonstrate what a personal relationship with Jesus is like."

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Asian century and its implications

The Asian Century is the projected 21st-century dominance of Asian politics and culture by social scientists, based on current demographic and economic trends persisting. The characterization of the 21st century being an Asian Century parallels the 20th-century seen as the American Century, and the 19th century as the British Century.

A 2011 study conducted by the Asian Development Bank estimates that an additional 3 billion Asians could enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe today, and the region could produce over half of global economic output by the middle of this century. It did warn, however, that the Asian Century is not cast in stone and it is merely a projection based on current trends.

Traditional values in Asia and increased global cultural influence

Geographic regions which achieve increased economic dominance often increase their cultural influence in the world.

In the Western World the secular left promotes libertine morality (see: Moral failures of the atheist population) whereas Asian cultures often have more traditional/family values. And desecularization occurring Asia along with a growth of religious conservatives in Asia, could further deepen traditional/family values in Asia and the rest of the world.

See also

• Desecularization

• Growth of global desecularization