Updates

Xiongan, Chiang Rai, Wollongong, and Myrtle Beach are some of the 195 cities in 49 countries are included for the first time in the 2018 edition of the United Nations listing of cities with over 300,000 people.

They represent a combination of smaller cities growing to over 300,000 for the first time, or the boundaries of cities changing (some merging and some splitting).

Most of these cities have been given an initial estimate of the percentage Christian and the percentage of the largest religion, with the remainder to follow over time.

City definitions and population source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision.

(WCD has also made substantial improvements to the denominational data in many countries over this present quarter: this includes adding new denominations and the latest published affiliation data, and also in many countries a streamlining of smaller or more obscure denominations so the main listing includes only denominations for which recent data is reliable, while maintaining the presence of those smaller denomination names by grouping them under "other" denominations.)

A research focus on chuches in Iran and other Central Asia and South Asian countries has come together in the revisions published this quarter.

Visible denominations in Iran are mainly Orthodox seen in either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the smaller Assyrian Church of the East. However Muslim-background believers, who are far less visible, outnumber both with the result that the majority of Christians in Iran are not in any traditional denomination: they are independent of organized Christianity.

Without church membership records as such, estimates vary widely on the extent of people involved in such dynamic movements. Having reviewed all the published evidence and taking into account a range of opinion from informants, the number of Christians estimated for Iran in 2015 is now 547,000 across all denominations. This estimate thus effects estimates leading up to 2015 and also future projections.

New country code for renamed Eswatini
Swaziland's "Legal Notice No.80 of 2018" states "The name of the Kingdom of Swaziland is changed to Kingdom of Eswatini", and this spelling and capitalization has been adopted by the United Nations Terminology Database. WCD's country code changes from 'swaz' to 'eswa'.