Updates and Corrections

Removed a promise to reply within 48 hours from the sourcing, editorial policy and about pages and the contact form, and noted that some older religion profile sections still cite general reference works until they are revised.

Removed the "Belief Comparison" radar chart from comparison pages. Its 0 to 10 scores were not taken from any source.

Rewrote the sourcing and editorial policy pages to describe how the site actually works, including its use of AI drafting tools, and removed descriptions of review steps that are not in place.

Replaced the population figures with Pew Research Center’s June 2025 estimates for 2010 and 2020, removed a separate folk religions figure Pew no longer reports, and added what changed and why estimates differ.

Updated the number of Buddhists from about 500 million to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 324 million, and noted the decline since 2010.

Updated the Pew figure for Buddhists to its 2020 estimate (about 324 million) and replaced the 2012 source with the 2025 study.

Updated the number of Buddhists to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate and replaced the 2012 source with the 2025 study.

Updated two answers to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimates: Christians about 2.3 billion (28.8%) and Buddhists about 324 million (4.1%).

The population figures for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews on the religions page, the homepage and comparison charts now use Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimates, with the year shown. Comparison charts no longer show figures for traditions Pew does not count separately.

The profile described the Seven Principles and Six Sources as current. It now explains the six shared values centered on love that replaced them in 2024 (adopted 2,025 to 499), keeps the earlier wording for history, and cites the Unitarian Universalist Association and UU World.

Updated the membership figure to the organization’s 2025 service year report (a peak of 9,205,326 publishers in 241 lands), replaced a mischaracterization of why Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays with the four reasons jw.org gives, dated the Memorial by the Bible’s lunar calendar (Nisan 14) instead of calling it the Passover date, and removed an unrelated comparison link.

Rechecked every 2026 date against a named calendar authority and corrected 24 of the 52, including Diwali (November 8), Vesak (May 31 in Singapore and Thailand), Guru Nanak Gurpurab (November 24) and the Birth of the Báb (November 10). Each entry now links its date source and notes where churches, countries or communities keep a different date.

Added 2027 dates for every holiday, three new entries for both years (Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Easter and the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh), a section on why dates move each year, and calendar feeds you can subscribe to in Google, Apple or Outlook.

New article: what Jehovah’s Witnesses do and do not celebrate, the reasons jw.org gives in its own words, the yearly Memorial, and school and workplace situations.

Results used to show the top match at 100% every time. Each score is now shown against the most points that tradition could receive, with the answers that counted most. Twenty-two answer weights were adjusted to match the religion profiles. All 10 traditions are now listed with their scores (the list used to stop at 8), and Secular Humanism results now link to its profile.

Comparisons can now be edited in place (swap, add or remove a tradition), focused on one topic, printed, and reopened from a list of recent comparisons.

Updated membership figures to the organization’s 2025 service year report: a peak of 9,205,326 publishers and 20,635,015 people at the Memorial. The religions page now shows about 9.2 million, with the report as its source.

The 2020 population figure now cites Pew Research Center’s chapter on Buddhist population change directly.

Replaced “roughly 2.4 billion followers, approximately 31 percent of the global population” with Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 2.3 billion Christians, roughly 29 percent of the world’s population, and cited the 2025 study.

Updated “1.9 billion” Muslims to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 2 billion, with the 2025 study as the source.

Updated “1.9 billion” Muslims to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 2 billion, with the 2025 study as the source.

Updated “1.9 billion” Muslims to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 2 billion, with the 2025 study as the source.

The Unitarian Universalism question now cites the Unitarian Universalist Association’s statement of shared values, which replaced the Principles and Sources in 2024.

Updated “1.9 billion” Muslims to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 2 billion, with the 2025 study as the source.

Replaced “roughly 31%” with Pew Research Center’s 2020 figures: about 2.3 billion Christians, 28.8% of the world’s population, citing the 2025 study.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses question now gives the 2025 service year peak of about 9.2 million publishers, citing the organization’s report, instead of 8.7 million.

The Unitarian Universalist poster entry now mentions the shared values that replaced the principles in 2024.

The country figures added up to more than the world total. They now follow Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimates: Thailand has the most Buddhists, about 68 million.

Updated the religiously unaffiliated from about 1.2 billion to Pew Research Center’s 2020 estimate of about 1.9 billion, 24.2% of the world’s population, here and on the religions page.

Country figures now come from the organization’s 2025 Country and Territory Reports, with the report cited.

Corrected the account of the Conservative movement’s kosher ethics standard (Magen Tzedek) after the Agriprocessors case, to match the dates reported by The Forward (2013), and replaced the citation.

Removed a sentence naming specific samadhi burials that the cited study does not support, and replaced two citations with sources that exist: Knipe on Hindu ancestor rites and McLaughlin (2021) on samadhi burial.

Replaced a citation to an encyclopedia entry that does not exist with Duderija (ed.), Maqasid al-Shari’a and Contemporary Reformist Muslim Thought (Palgrave, 2014).

Replaced a citation on lectio divina to an encyclopedia entry that does not exist with Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (2010).

Linked the Britannica entries on the Constitution of Medina and on pre-Islamic Arabian religion, and corrected the label of the second.

Linked the Khalsa Aid pages that the article cites.

Linked the Britannica entry on symphonia that the article cites.

Articles are now credited to the ReligionCompare Editorial Team. The earlier individual bylines did not name real people and were removed, and an About page was added.

Every Amazon link is now marked as a paid link, and every page with Amazon links states that the site earns from qualifying purchases.

Merged the 24 beginner guides and 24 reading lists into the religion profiles, where the same material already lived. The old addresses now redirect to the profiles.

Removed repeated template paragraphs from the glossary, FAQ, visitor guide and sacred text pages. Each page now keeps only the text written for it.

Every infographic now also shows its figures as a readable table with its source.

Renamed the page Religion in Public Life and removed dates on its items that were not taken from any source.

Merged the 10 separate educator resource pages into one page with a section for each. The old addresses now lead to their sections.