Frequently Asked Questions

On this page you will find answers to frequently asked questions and more indepth information about the World Christian Database.

Materials

Status of Global Christianity 2025

An annual snapshot of global Christianity from the International Bulletin of Mission Research.

Methodology

Detailed explanation of WCD sources and methodology.

Field definitions

Definitions for data fields in the database.

Glossary

Standard and unusual terms related to the WCD.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations related to the WCD.

Religions

Religions related to the WCD.

Search examples

Watch videos explaining how to use the World Christian Database.

Brief introduction to WLC

Quick start to using the World Language Classification.

Search examples

1. Introduction to the new World Christian Database

Check out the new PowerBI platform for the World Christian Database, including how to download data and view data in maps and charts.

2. Religions

Explore data on 18 categories of religion and non-religion in the past, present, and future.

3. Denominations

Explore Christian denominations by continent, region, or country, or by church tradition.

4. Cities

Explore Christianity and other religions in the world’s largest cities.

5. Provinces

View data on any province in the world, including its population size and largest religion.

6. Indicators

Put religion data in global context by exploring socio-economic, health, gender, and other data. Create scatterplot graphs to compare variables.

7. Evangelicals

How many Evangelicals are in the world? Explore World Christianity by its two major movements, Evangelicals and Pentecostal/Charismatics.

8. Churches in Latin America

Find out how many churches are in Latin America in the past and present, and learn how to filter by Christian tradition.

Brief introduction to WLC

1. Introduction

The World Language Classification, an integral component of the World Christian Database, is based on the schema worked out over 25 years by linguist David Dalby in his 2000 publication The Linguasphere: register of the world’s languages and speech communities (Linguasphere Press, Wales: Contributing Editors David B. Barrett, Michael Mann).

The classification indicates the proximity between any two languages by means of its coding system.

Each of the world’s people groups have been allocated a language code indicating their primary mother-tongue. Particular people groups may be identified as speaking a language (which has a 7-character code) or a dialect (which has an 8-character code).

2. Use of the classification

A. People group focus

To explore the language of a particular people group, the best place to start is to find the people in question and click on their language code. This will take you to a screen describing that single language in detail and giving options to look at the language in the context of its immediate cluster of languages and dialects.

B. 'Language' or 'cluster of languages' focus

The languages home page shows example queries for looking at lists of languages. The lists may be related by inter-intelligibility (as in lists of language clusters, languages and dialects), or may be a numeric listing (as in the world's top 20 languages).

Detailed explanation of WLC

The complete rationale and methodology of the classification is contained in the two volume work The Linguasphere: register of the world’s languages and speech communities (Linguasphere Press, Wales, 2000: Contributing Editors David B. Barrett, Michael Mann). A summary of the schema is given in the World Christian Encyclopedia (David B.Barrett, George T.Kurian and Todd M.Johnson, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001). An extract from the World Christian Encyclopedia is available here.