How many Pagans are there worldwide?

Question

I was just watching a show the other night that gave the amount of people of different religions in the world. One that really caught my attention was the 14 million Jews in the world. I knew the number was small, but not that small. It got me wondering, are there more or less Pagans than Jews in the world? Can you at least give a ballpark figure how many Pagans there are in the world?

Answer 1

how are you defining pagan? if you consider pagan any non-abrahamic religion, then the number is huge. if you exclude eastern religions from 'pagan', then it's pobably less than the number of jews... for now.

Answer 2

If, as they insist, we count ALL non-Abrahamic Religions as being pagans then Pagans are the single largest Religion on the Planet.

I DO know that the U.S. Bureau of Statistics has Wicca as the 17th largest Religious denomination in the United States. Theer are more Wiccans than there are Jehovahs Witnesses. LOL. A bubious distinction, for sure. LOL

Brightest Blessings,
Raji the Green Witch

Answer 3

There are billions. Out of a total population of 6 billion approximately 1.2 billion are Christian, and about 1 billion are Muslim.

That leaves 4 billion many of whom would fit someone's definition of Pagan. It gets very complicated though. If you include Hinduism as "pagan" the number is enormous. If you include some sort of "pan-theism" the number is even larger still.

Of the 1.2 or so billion Chrsitians, a number still retain some of their "pagan" beliefs and practices, as they have only convereted in the last generation or so and a blending of traditions is common when that is the case. This is not so much the case with Muslims as they tend to be less tolerant of "pagan" tradition.

You must remember though, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are "pagan" by the definition of many other religions.

Answer 4

What you have to understand is that there are a lot of religions that fall under the pagan category (more if you consider pagan to mean non-abrahamic, which I don't though I digress). It's pretty hard to give a good estimate, just because of the somewhat "underground" nature of paganism, meaning there aren't a ton of organizations and a lot of pagans prefer to remain "in the closet".

Answer 5

12

Answer 6

How are we defining pagans?

The problem is in with the wording. If we're talking about neo-pagans then thats a smaller number than pagan as in "Anything other than a Jewish/Christian/Muslim based faith."

Neopagans are hard to count, because a lot are low key, or don't really classify themselves in any way. More traditional paganism in the strictest sense (including things like Hinduism) are a little easier to figure.

Answer 7

I don't think anyone knows for sure, since we encompass so many different traditions and there is some dispute as to whether some religions are "Pagan" or something else altogether. Many of us practice our religion in private and aren't countable in any sense, so it makes it hard to know for sure. There are estimates as to numbers, but I don't know what they are. Perhaps someone else here has those handy.

Answer 8

If you're asking about people who identify themselves as "Pagan," by which we generally mean Neo-Pagan, then the answer is a couple million. (Wicca alone is pushing toward one million)

If you're meaning the dictionary definition of pagan - non-Judeo-Christians - then the answer is 3 billion.

Answer 9

Impossible to do,. There is no pagan census

Answer 10

There is only one million. Estimated of course.