Is Buddhism declining or growing

Answer 1

Buddhism, according to recent reports, is neither growing or shrinking. It has about 500 million adherents in the world. China has about 150 million of the believers.

Answer:

In many western countries affiliation to and interest in Buddhism is growing. The Canadian Census data is typical indicating "Affiliation to the Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, and Sikh religions is growing significantly. (1991 Census)"

Similar data is available for other countries:

• Buddhism is ranked among the fastest growing religions in many Western European countries.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics through statistical analysis held Buddhism to be the fastest growing spiritual tradition/religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000).
• Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England's jails, with the number of followers rising eightfold over the past decade.

Answer 2

Statistics Canada, the group that organizes Canadian census data, indicates an 84% increase in the number of Buddhists in Canada. This includes immigrants and converts.

An increasing number of respondents reported "No religion" as a response to the question

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Answer 3

Buddhism is definitely decliining. There is a consorted effort made by Christian evangelists to bring a quick demise of Buddhism via economic and educational briberies. Buddhists are specially targetted for conversion and this usually happens in the guise of charity works. What happened during the Summatra earth quake is a case in point. There were literally thousands of Christian Evangelists from Korea, Canada and US enticing destitute flood victims with material gifts and promise of more help if they convert to Christianity. One Canadian woman I talked to was proud in her success of converting 31 families with the budget allowed for 15 families.

Already buddhists are minority in Korea now and Christian evangelists are very active in Mongolia. Within a few years, buddhists will be minority there too. Unless buddhists people do something, Buddhism will be all done within a few decades.

Answer 4

Stats Canada, the group that runs the Canadian census, indicate that Buddhism is increasing rapidly. This growth is paralleled in the USA.