.png)
Learn About
Catholic Christianity
Are Catholics Christian, and how many Catholics are there?
Yes, Catholics are Christian, but we are not the only type of Christians. Christianity is a worldwide religion that can be divided into different groups, and each has its own origin and religious history. Catholic Christianity is the oldest, reaching back to the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Many new Christian churches were formed in later centuries. All of them branched off the Catholic Church at some point. If we divide Christianity into three main groups, they would be: (1) Catholic at 1.329 billion, (2) Orthodox at just under 300 million and (3) Protestant at about 900 million.
Baptist, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, Evangelical, Nondenominational, and most of the types of Christian communities we see here in the Ozarks, would fall under the Protestant heading...
As you can see, Catholics make up over half of all Christians worldwide. However, you would never know that living here in the Ozarks. That’s because most Christians here in the Ozarks are Baptist, Pentecostal and Nondenominational. These fall under the Protestant heading and while they make up less than 36% of all Christians worldwide, they constitute more than 80% of Christians here in the Ozarks. In contrast, Catholics make up over half of all Christians worldwide. Yet, we only constitute 5% of Christians here in the Ozarks. So, the Ozarks, like most of the southern regions in America’s Bible Belt, is a unique area of the world, where Baptists and Pentecostals vastly outnumber Catholics. Throughout most of the world, and even in most of the United States, the opposite is true, where Catholics outnumber all other Christians.
There are over 2 billion Christians in the world. Just over half of them are Catholic. Here in Missouri, however, the number of Catholics is small, at just over 10%. That’s why we Catholics seem so small here in this area. It’s because we are. We’re part of a much bigger worldwide Church, that constitutes more than half of all Christians, but here in the Ozarks, we’re just a tiny minority.
In this image of the United States, you can see how that works. The dark green states show where most Christians are Catholic. The light green states show where most Christians are non-Catholic...
