This year’s report continues to document the resurgence of reli- gion. At first glance, however, religion seems to be on the wane. A comparison of 1900 (99.8 percent religious) and 2011 (88.6 percent religious) shows that the world is less religious today than it was 100 years ago. (Add lines 13 and 17 and then divide by line 1 for the percentage of the world that is not religious in a particular year. Subtracting this figure from 100 percent then gives the percentage that is religious.) If we consider the figure for 1970 (80.8 percent religious), however, we can see that the world is more religious today than it was four decades ago. Furthermore, our projections for 2025 point to a more religious world in the future (up to 90.5 percent). What is behind these trends? The main factor is the collapse of Communism. While secularization has been slowly at work around the world, espe- cially in Europe, the largest number of agnostics and atheists emerged under Communism in the Soviet Union and China. The high point of nonreligious adherence was thus around 1970. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, large numbers of the nonreligious returned to religion. One of the most profound examples is Albania, formerly a bastion of atheism, which today is almost entirely Muslim or Christian.
