CHURCH PROGRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 7

CHURCH PROGRESS.

By Telegraph.—Press Association.Copyright. London, December 29. There are 5016 Congregational churches in Britain, with 493,583 communicants and 706,041 Sunday scholars, and there are 412,680 baptised Baptists in Britain and 576,448 Sunday scholars. There are 65,048 Baptist churches in the world, with a baptised membership of 6,715,211. ' Baptist congregations altogether total twenty millions. RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. The following estimates of the followers of the different creeds by M. Fournier do Flaix are the latest that have been made bya competent authority : — Christianity ... ... 477,060,158 Worship of Ancestors and Confucianism 256,000,000 Hindooism 190,000,000 Mahommedaniem ... 176,834,000 Buddhism ... 147,900,000 Taoism ... 43,000,000 Shintoism ... 14,000,000 Judaism 7,186,000 Polytheism 117,681,669 In the above statistics Christianity, in addition to the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches that are known in BritishSpeaking countries, includes the Orthodox Greek Church, Coptic and Armenian* Churches, Nestorians and Jacobites. The followers of the various English-speaking sections of the Christian Church are estimated as follows: — Episcopalians 29,200,000 'Methodists ... ... 18,650,000 Roman Catholics ... ... 15,500,000 •Presbyterians 12,250,000 •Baptists 9,230,000 •Congregationalists ... 6,150,000 Freethinkers 5,250,000 Lutherans, etc 2,800,000 Unitarians 2,600,000 Minor religious sects ... 5,500,000 Of no particular religion 17,000,000 English-speaking populTn 124,130,000 •Of all descriptions.