Appendix: Religious Demography

This appendix provides brief analyses of the religious demography of the 10 countries included in the Forum's 2006 pentecostal survey. These demographic profiles draw on three sources that include religious adherence figures: national censuses, demographic and health surveys, and general population surveys. Readers should be aware that all three sources are limited by their coverage of the population, the choices of religious identity offered in the questionnaires and the accuracy of the coding for open-ended responses on religious affiliation.

Sources
National censuses are the best starting point for the number of religious adherents because they generally cover the entire population and are conducted on a fairly regular basis. Some censuses, such as Brazil's and South Africa's, even provide layers of detail under the major religious traditions. Censuses, however, can be affected by methodological decisions, political bias and social concerns that affect how the data are managed and whether respondents feel free to be truthful.

In the absence of reliable census data on religion, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)¹ provide nationally representative data on religion that is highly regarded by most experts. DHS usually sample and visit at least 7,000 households, and are often repeated at multiple time points. DHS generally survey people ages 15 to 49 and oversample (and sometimes only sample) women. This is a limitation, since religious adherence differs, albeit slightly, by sex and age.

General population surveys such as the Pew Global Attitudes Project² and the World Values Survey³ also provide valuable information on the percentage of the population belonging to major religious groups. However, since general population surveys typically involve only 1,000 to 2,000 respondents, they cannot provide accurate detail on the size of smaller religious groups. Even larger surveys such as the American Religious Identification Survey, which has as many as 50,000 respondents,⁴ can miss regional concentrations of smaller religions (e.g., Muslims) and religious groups that may not have landline telephones (e.g., the Amish).

Forum's Pentecostal Survey
Results from the Forum's 2006 surveys of pentecostals are presented and discussed in the last part of the analysis of each country's religious demography. Readers should note that the Forum's surveys were not intended primarily to be a demographic survey of each country, rather the surveys aimed to compare renewalists - pentecostals and charismatics - and the general population of each country (or regions of a country, in the case of India). Nonetheless, survey results are presented on the general religious makeup of each country as well as on the number of renewalists in the areas surveyed. Given the limited sample size and coverage of the surveys, these findings should be viewed as broad approximations.

The Forum's survey report uses the terms "pentecostal" and "charismatic" in a way that may differ from how other demographic sources use the terms. The term "pentecostal" is used in the Forum report to describe individuals who belong to classical pentecostal denominations, such as the Assemblies of God or the Church of God in Christ, as well as those who belong to newer pentecostal denominations or churches.

"Charismatics," by contrast, are a much more loosely defined group. The term generally refers to Christians who have experienced the "in-filling" of the Holy Spirit but who are not members of pentecostal churches. Indeed, most charismatics are members of mainstream Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox denominations. In the surveys, respondents were categorized as charismatic if they met one of three criteria: (1) they describe themselves as "charismatic Christians"; or (2) they describe themselves as "pentecostal Christians" but do not belong to explicitly pentecostal denominations; or (3) they say they speak in tongues at least several times a year but they do not belong to pentecostal denominations.⁵

1. The MEASURE DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys) project has provided technical assistance to more than 200 surveys in 75 countries since 1984. DHS is funded by USAID and other donors, and is a recognized leader in collecting and disseminating accurate, nationally representative data (http://www.measuredhs.com/).
2. http://pewglobal.org/
3. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
4. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm
5. For the precise question wording used to identify and oversample pentecostals and charismatics, see questions 4, 5c, 5d, and 6b in the topline results included at the end of the survey report.