Religion By the Numbers

Statistics can’t show everything, but they can help present a picture of religious life in France, especially when compared to America.

A couple things to note:

• France has a greater percentage of self-professed Atheists than America has of Evangelical Christians.
• Conversely, America has proportionally more Atheists than France has Evangelical Christians.
• France’s Muslim population is proportionally twice as large as all other religions in America combined.
• A generous estimate for all practicing Christians in France is around 8% while in America over 78% claim to be Christians.

We could scrutinize the numbers and question what counts as practicing, but the reality is the percentage of Christians in America is immensely greater than in France. America certainly needs more sold out followers of Jesus, but doesn’t that mean that the French need is that much greater? It isn’t so much about trying to raise the French numbers as it is about looking at the pool of available Christian workers for each country. Americans have large numbers to pull from, the French don’t. Jesus said that the harvest was plentiful, but the workers are few. It is workers that are needed. The French need workers, because their harvest is plentiful but their workers are few.