Which countries are the strongest each for the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox branches?

[Blue3]

Which countries are the strongest each for the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox branches?


Protestantism - I'd say definitely the United States. Maybe a few countries in Africa would be runner-ups.

Catholicism - Before I would have said a country in Latin America but now it seems to be on the decline there, so maybe Poland or the Philippines or one of the places it's growing in Africa? Italy and Ireland are still steeped in Catholic culture but I'd say some of these other countries have surpassed them.

Orthodox - I'd guess Greece... maybe Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Armenia, or Moldova. I don't think the Russians are actually that strong of believers in the Orthodox faith.

[wnwnwn]

In Latin America the Catholic Church is just not focused on gaining new followers. Mexico seems like a strong place for the religion, especialy with a Marian veneration as strong as Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the other hand, latinoamerican catholicism is a semi-syncretic religion. Andean peruvian catholicism has strong influences of native cults, altrought catholic priests try to push for a more "european-like" Christ oriented observance.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mexico or the Philippines are good answers for Catholicism; Mexico hasn't had quite the same Evangelical explosion as most other Latin American countries. The most culturally Protestant part of the world is probably Scandinavia and the most religiously Protestant might very well indeed be somewhere in the American heartland. Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy I'm less sure about; parts of Ethiopia for the latter, maybe?

[DavidB.]

Georgia and Serbia seem like two important contenders for Orthodox Christianity.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Mexico or the Philippines are good answers for Catholicism; Mexico hasn't had quite the same Evangelical explosion as most other Latin American countries. The most culturally Protestant part of the world is probably Scandinavia and the most religiously Protestant might very well indeed be somewhere in the American heartland. Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy I'm less sure about; parts of Ethiopia for the latter, maybe?

That one is quite easy. Armenia.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

For Protestantism I would guess one of the Pacific Island nations which were converted by evangelical missionaries in the 19th century.

Romania apparently has the healthiest church of any traditional Eastern Orthodox country.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mexico or the Philippines are good answers for Catholicism; Mexico hasn't had quite the same Evangelical explosion as most other Latin American countries. The most culturally Protestant part of the world is probably Scandinavia and the most religiously Protestant might very well indeed be somewhere in the American heartland. Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy I'm less sure about; parts of Ethiopia for the latter, maybe?

That one is quite easy. Armenia.

Oh yes, that slipped my mind; thanks!

[Sol]

How strong is the church in Armenia though? Has it had a substantial post-communist revival?

[Associate Justice PiT]

Georgia and Serbia seem like two important contenders for Orthodox Christianity.

     Georgia takes it easily, which is why it amuses me that it was not mentioned in the OP. After all, this is a country that experienced a baby boom when the primate of the local church started baptizing the babies of couples who had 3+ children.

     Romania comes in a close second, judging by attendance. Greece really is not a contender for this title, as evidenced by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece agreeing to move Pascha on account of the pandemic in 2020.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Georgia and Serbia seem like two important contenders for Orthodox Christianity.

     Georgia takes it easily, which is why it amuses me that it was not mentioned in the OP. After all, this is a country that experienced a baby boom when the primate of the local church started baptizing the babies of couples who had 3+ children.

     Romania comes in a close second, judging by attendance. Greece really is not a contender for this title, as evidenced by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece agreeing to move Pascha on account of the pandemic in 2020.

Was gonna say... Romania tends to show up the strongest of Eastern European countries (or of European countries in general) on maps where a metric often associated with religion or social conservatism (such as belief in Hell) is displayed.

[RINO Tom]

Mexico or the Philippines are good answers for Catholicism; Mexico hasn't had quite the same Evangelical explosion as most other Latin American countries. The most culturally Protestant part of the world is probably Scandinavia and the most religiously Protestant might very well indeed be somewhere in the American heartland. Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy I'm less sure about; parts of Ethiopia for the latter, maybe?

I think this is an important component.  If people are intent on treating members of the Church of Sweden who self-identify as Lutheran but score extremely low on "religiosity" measures as religious Nones, then my answer to the Protestant question changes a lot.  Then again, I think the United States is equally "culturally Protestant" in many ways, just in a more vague way.  I feel like the quintessential/timeless "fibers" of our culture are some mixture of Episcopalian, Congregationalist and Methodist influences, lol.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I think some recent surveys have indicated that either Guatemala or Honduras is now the most evangelical country in the world (plurality or perhaps even majority evangelical at this point).  Brazil is also rapidly getting there.

Really, while still majority Catholic at the moment, Latin America is rapidly becoming the evangelical heartland.  When I was in Costa Rica (only around a quarter Protestant) earlier this year, I drove past countless evangelical churches.

Now, there are a lot of prosperity gospel and/or hyper-charismatic* churches in Latin America, which is a problem, but I'm still encouraged by the growth of evangelical Christianity in that part of the world.

*I'm not a cessationist or anything, but I think there are a lot of excesses and Biblical error in hyper-charismatic theology.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

In absolute radicality

Protestantism: USA now, northern Germany/Scandinavia/Netherlands in the past.
Catholicism: Likely somewhere in Africa. (I suppose one of the former Belgian colonies such as D.R. Congo, Rwanda or Burundi?) For Asia it's the Phillipines, for the Americas Mexico, maybe Brazil and for Europe Poland. Historically Belgium, Italy and Spain were quite catholic too, and so was Ireland.
Orthodox: Not really sure, Bulgaria?

In absolute terms of size and power projection of nation

Protestantism: USA
Catholicism: Brazil
Orthodox: Russia

For shia it would be Iran and for sunni, if we ignore that a large swath of India is muslim, probably Indonesia, but in terms of radicalness the Saudis probably.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I don't have much to say about this except that I've been to both Serbia and Russia and Orthodoxy easily seemed like a bigger deal in the former (also in North Macedonia). But I agree that the overall answer for Eastern Orthodoxy is probably the country which adopted a national anthem that starts with "my icon is my motherland and the whole world is its icon-stand" as recently as 2004.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

In absolute terms of size and power projection of nation

Protestantism: USA
Catholicism: Brazil
Orthodox: Russia

I'm not sure what you mean by "power projection" exactly but I think any sensible definition would put Italy (where the Holy See functionally is even though it's been granted its own separate microstate - that nonetheless is still disproportionately run by Italians) as the answer for Catholicism.

[Del Tachi]

Yeah, Italy is definitely the answer for Catholics.  Don't they have way more bishops than any other country, like 700?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Yeah, Italy is definitely the answer for Catholics.  Don't they have way more bishops than any other country, like 700?

I don't know about that (from a quick search it appears that there are 226 dioceses in Italy, which is not much more than Brazil or even the United States) but definitely there are way more Italian cardinals than there are from any other country.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

For shia it would be Iran and for sunni, if we ignore that a large swath of India is muslim, probably Indonesia, but in terms of radicalness the Saudis probably.

I appreciate the nod to the medieval European perception of Islam as a heretical offshoot of Christianity, but I'm surprised there was no mention of Pakistan. Indonesia seems to have a stronger pre-Islamic cultural identity than any other large majority-Muslim country, which isn't surprising given how remote it is from the Hejazi heartland.

[Blue3]

Yeah, Italy is definitely the answer for Catholics.  Don't they have way more bishops than any other country, like 700?

Italy includes the former Papal States. While more Catholic than most of the rest of Europe besides maybe Poland or Ireland, I think it’s still behind the Philippines, and it sounds like Mexico too.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I discovered the Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map yesterday, which I think might effectively answer the topic question:



     A society that is a religious monoculture and leans more heavily towards traditional vs. secular values should roughly speaking be stronger for its religion. With that in mind, the answers seem to be:

• Orthodox: Georgia/Ethiopia (I wouldn't count Ethiopia as doing so undermines Orthodoxy as a coherent concept, but I know many others would)
• Catholic: Ecuador (Nicaragua does not qualify as a monoculture as it is only plurality Catholic now)
  
• Protestant: Ghana (though the link of traditional values to strength of faith is harder to make the case for with Protestantism since continuity of belief is not a core value of Protestantism like it is for Catholicism and Orthodoxy).

[RINO Tom]

I think this question should be answered like that thread a while back about which state is the "heart and soul" of the Democratic and Republican Parties.  In other words, even though Vermont gave Biden the highest percentage of the vote in 2020 out of any state, very few (possibly zero) posters named it since it had such a long history with the GOP before that.

So, I think my answer for each would be restricted to a country that had a state church for many years under one of these categories.  That adds such a cultural imprint on the society.  Then, you can try to sort those nations by which populations still adhere the most to the religion.  But I think these answers for places in like Latin America or Africa for Protestantism are just regurgitating statistics (unless that is what the OP wanted).

P.S.  I do still think this allows the US as an answer for Protestantism.  Many New England colonies had Congregationalist state churches, and many of the Southern ones had Anglican state churches, IIRC.

[TDAS04]

Protestantism: USA and large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa seem to be the bulk of the Protestant world today, while the English-speaking Caribbean appears to be quite devout as well.

Catholicism: Mexico/Philippines probably a good answer. The second and third most populous Catholic countries, and they’re probably more devout than the most populous, Brazil. As for which country has highest percentage of staunchly religious Catholics, maybe somewhere like Peru or Paraguay?

Eastern Orthodoxy: Russia if the question is “what is the center of the Orthodox world” because of sheer numbers, even if such places as Georgia and Romania are more religious.

Oriental Orthodoxy: Armenia and Ethiopia

As for some other religions:

Sunni Islam: Saudi Arabia
Shia Islam: Iran
Islam in general: Saudi Arabia/Pakistan
Buddhism: Burma/Thailand

[TheFonz]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say The Vatican for Catholicism.

[RINO Tom]

Protestant: Upper Midwest, USA … too many Evangelicals have shed way too much of the legacy of intellectual, cultural, traditional and theological elements of historic Protestantism in this race toward low church Non-Denominationalism, IMO.  Even Baptist churches from 60 years ago are unrecognizable compared to the modern Jesus-themed Ted Talks the SBC has.  On the other hand, so much of Protestant Europe has just become so secularized.

Catholic: As previously stated, obviously the Vatican.

Orthodox: Tougher, but I’ll go with Greece.