Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2026).
| Religion | Definition |
|---|---|
| agnostics | Persons who lack a religion or profess unbelief in a religion. The term includes (1) ‘classical’ agnostics (who hold that it is impossible to know for certain whether God – or deity of any kind – exists); (2) those who profess uncertainty as to the existence of God; and (3) other nonreligious persons such as secularists. |
| atheists | Persons who reject the idea of any deity. The term also includes opponents of theism and of organised religion who otherwise might be considered agnostics (qv). |
| Baha'is | Followers of the Baha’i World Faith, founded in 1844 by Baha’u’llah in what is now Iran. |
| Buddhists | Followers of the Buddha, mostly across Asia, including three main traditions: (a) Mahayana (Greater Vehicle); (b) Theravada (Teaching of the Elders); (c) Tibetan (Lamaists); plus (d) traditional Buddhist groups, but excluding neo-Buddhist new religions or religious movements. |
| Chinese folk-religionists | Followers of traditional Chinese religion (comprising a mixture of some or all of the following: local deities including Daoist ones, ancestor veneration, Confucian ethics, Chinese universism, divination and magic, some Buddhist elements). |
| Christians | Followers of Jesus Christ of all kinds: all traditions and confessions and all degrees of commitment. |
| Confucianists | Followers of the teachings of Confucius and Confucianism. Sometimes spelt Confucians. |
| Daoists | Followers of the philosophical, ethical and religious traditions of China, sometimes regarded as part of Chinese folk-religion. Also spelt Taoists. |
| Ethnic religionists | Followers of a pre-Christian religion tied closely to a specific ethnic group, with membership restricted to that group; usually animists, polytheists or shamanists. |
| Hindus | Followers of the main Hindu traditions: Vaishnavism; Shaivism; Shaktism; neo-Hindu movements and modern groups; and other Hindu reform movements. |
| Jains | Followers of the two traditions, Svetambara and Digambara; originating in India as a reform movement from Hinduism in the 5th or 6th century BCE. |
| Jews | Followers of the various schools of Judaism: in the United States: Orthodox, Conservative and Reform; in Israel: Haredi, Orthodox, Traditional, Observant and secular; ethnically, Ashkenazi (Eastern Europe), Mizrachi (Middle Eastern), Sephardic (Iberian Peninsula). |
| Muslims | Followers of Islam, in two primary branches: (a) Sunni; and (b) Shia. Other, significantly smaller, branches include Kharijite, Sanusi, Mahdiya, Ahmadiya, Druzes and Sabbateans. |
| New Religionists | Adherents of Hindu or Buddhist groups or offshoots, or new syncretistic religions combining Christianity with Eastern religions. |
| Shintoists | Followers of the indigenous religion of Japan, a collective of native beliefs and mythology dating back to 660 BCE and includes worship at public shrines in devotion to a number of gods. |
| Sikhs | Followers of the Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. Traditions include Akali, Khalsa, Nanapanthi, Nirmali, Sewapanthi and Udasi. |
| Spiritists | Non-Christian spiritists or spiritualists, or thaumaturgicalists; high spiritists, as opposed to low spiritists (Afro-American syncretists), followers of medium-religions, medium-religionists. |
| Zoroastrians | Followers of a religion founded in Persia in BC 1200 by the prophet Zoroaster teaching the worship of Ahura Mazda. |
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