Out of all religious groups, Christians are migrating the most. As millions of migrants pour into America, how will this affect our nation?

From MinistryWatch. The world’s 280 million immigrants have greater shares of Christians, Muslims and Jews than the general population, according to a new Pew Research Center study released Monday (Aug. 19).

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“You see migrants coming to places like the U.S., Canada, different places through Western Europe, and being more religious — and sometimes more Christian in particular — than the native-born people in those countries,” said Stephanie Kramer, the study’s lead researcher.

While Christians make up about 30% of the world’s population, the world’s migrants are 47% Christian, according to the latest data collected in 2020. The study found that Muslims make up 29% of the migrant population but 25% of the world’s population. Jews, only 0.2% of the world’s population but 1% of migrants, are by far the most likely religious group to have migrated, with 20% of Jews worldwide living outside their country of birth compared to just 6% of Christians and 4% of Muslims. …

Over the past 30 years, migration has outpaced global population growth by 83%, according to Pew. …

The influx of religious migrants can have a significant impact on the religious composition of their destination countries. In the case of the U.S., “immigrants are kind of putting the brakes on secularization,” Kramer said.

While about 30% of individuals in the U.S. overall identify as atheist, agnostic or religiously unaffiliated, only 13% of migrants to the U.S. identify with those categories.

Pew studied data from 270 censuses and surveys, estimating the religious composition of migrants from 95,696 combinations of 232 origin and destination countries and territories. Their analysis focused on the “stock,” the total number of people residing as international migrants, rather than “flows,” numbers measured over a specific time. This methodology allowed them to study all adults and children who live outside their countries of birth, regardless of when they immigrated. …

The study found that migrants frequently move to countries where their religious identity is already represented and prevalent. For example, Israel is the top destination for Jews, with 51% of Jewish migrants (1.5 million) residing there, while Saudi Arabia is the top destination for Muslims, with 13% (10.8 million) residing in the area. Christians and religiously unaffiliated migrants share the U.S., Germany and Russia as their top three destinations. …

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(Excerpt from MinistryWatch. Photo Credit: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3163496)