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Demographics

Further information: Baháʼí Faith by country

The Lotus Temple, the first Baháʼí House of Worship of India, built in 1986. It attracts an average of 4 million visitors a year.

Since dating to the 19th century, a main demographic result is it's long scale growth, such as according to World Christian Encyclopedia(WCE) scholars Johnson & Grim in 2013: "The Baha'i Faith is the only religion to have grown faster in every United Nations region over the past 100 years than the general population; Bahaʼi(sic) was thus the fastest-growing religion between 1910 and 2010, growing at least twice as fast as the population of almost every UN region." They count avowed adherents and those may personally identify as Bahá'ís because they regularly attend Bahá'í community events, thus representing higher estimates than other local sources internal or external, though in broader terms it also tends to overestimate the population of Christians. Nevertheless, the WCE estimated the world population of Bahá'is at 7.1 million in 2000, 7.3 million in 2010, (also used by Britanica that year,) and 8.5 million in 2020.

This century of growth is despite the fact that for extended periods and regions the religion was banned or actively persecuted. Some of the major instances are:

• From the late 1930s to the late 1980s the religion was banned in the Eastern Block of the Soviets, (see Soviet policy of oppression of religion and Bahá'í Faith in Russia.)
• The religion was banned from the 1970s into the 1990s across countries in sub-Sahara, Africa, (see Bahá'í Faith in Africa.)
• Since the 19th Century, there has been opposition Iran, neighboring Shia Islam majority countries, and others, (see Persecution of Bahá'ís.)

Meanwhile in other times or places the religion has experienced surges in growth:

• Before it was banned the religion "hugely increased" in Africa south of the Sahara.
• In 1989 the Universal House of Justice named Bolivia, Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Liberia, Peru, the Philippines, and Taiwan as countries where growth in the religion had been notable in the previous decades.

Focusing on the geographical spread of the religion, before the 2013 WCE review, in 1992, The Britannica Book of the Year had characterized the religion as the second most geographically widespread of the world's independent religions. The Association of Religion Data Archives has released 2015 statistics that notes the internationally recognized religion as the largest numerical religious minority relative to its national population in Iran, Panama, Belize, Bolivia, Zambia, and Papua New Guinea; and the third largest religion in Chad, and Kenya.

As of 2020 the WCE describes the following pattern of distribution of the percentages of the Bahá'í population itself(out of all the Baha'is, what regions have what percentage of the Bahá'ís):

• The largest numerical groups of Bahá'ís are in sub-Saharan Africa (29.9%) and South Asia (26.8%).
• The next tier of presence is in Southeast Asia (12.7%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (12.2%).
• Relatively small populations are in North America (7.6%), the Middle East and North Africa (6.2%).
• The smallest presence of the Bahá'ís out of the total is in Europe (2.0%), Australasia (1.6%), and Northeast Asia (0.9%).

This percentage growth stands high amidst other religions. This long average growth also implies specific estimates at specific times will be affected by the overall trend. Though an attempt at a survey of the religion was done internally of avowed adherents in 1920, and a rough retrospective estimate for the 1950s counted around 200,000, it wasn't until a detailed 1986 survey was accomplished noting 4.74 million formal Baháʼís in the world. Baháʼí institutional sources since 1991 usually estimated the worldwide formal population to be above 5 million and only in 2022 raised the estimate to "about eight million". A study of the growth and spread of the religion up to around 1980 as a PhD in Geography observed "...a strong tendency for the number of Baha'is per million to vary inversely with the absolute total population size of a country. ... A map which simply records the number of Baha'is per million population will, therefore, do little more than reveal which countries are large and which ones are small—something which adds nothing to an understanding of the spatial characteristics of the Baha'i ecumene." as well as "... most growth during the twentieth century has been initiated from North America,... The global distribution of Baha'is appears not to have resulted from saturation of target populations but rather from conscious migration and mobility of change agents." Since around 2001 the Universal House of Justice has prioritized statistics of the community by their levels of activity rather than simply their population of avowed adherents or numbers of local assemblies.

In addition to specifics in precision and accuracy, definitions and methodologies, of surveys of the religion across sources, there have been other affects of measuring populations. Being the majority population of no country, where it has relatively high populations is usually a distant second to the main religion of a country, and most often is only a tiny fraction of the country's population, resulting in problems of under-reporting. In addition there are examples where the adherents have their highest density relative to the local population among minorities who face their own challenges in a society.

References

• Rabbani, Ahang; Department of Statistics at the Baháʼí World Centre (July 1987). "Achievements of the Seven Year Plan". Baháʼí News. Baháʼí World Center, Haifa: Baháʼí International Community. pp. 2–7. Retrieved Jul 21, 2022.
• Baháʼí World News Service (2010). "Statistics". Baháʼí International Community. Retrieved Jul 21, 2022.
• Baháʼí World News Service (1992). "How many Baháʼís are there?". The Baháʼís. Baháʼí International Community. p. 14. Archived from the original on 17 July 2015.
• Barrett, David B.; Kurian, George T.; Johnson, Todd M. (2001). "World Summary". World Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions in the modern world (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Association of Religion Data Archives (2010). "Most Baha'i Nations (2010)". Retrieved Jul 21, 2022.
• Smith, Peter (2016). "Babi–Baha'i Expansion and "Geo-Cultural Breakthroughs"". Journal of Religious History. 40 (2): 225–236. doi:10.1111/1467-9809.12280.
• Smith, Peter (2022). "Ch. 41: The History of the Bábí and Bahá'í Faiths". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 501–512. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.
• Fazel, Seena (2022). "Ch. 43: Europe". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 532–545. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.
• Stockman, Robert (2022). "Ch. 45: Latin America and the Caribbean". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 557–568. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.
• Stockman, Robert (2022). "Ch. 46: North America". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 569–580. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.
• Hassal, Graham (2022). "Ch. 47: North East Asia". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 581–590. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Smith, Peter (2022). "Ch. 50: Southeast Asia". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 614–621. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.
• Johnson, Todd M.; Grim, Brian J. (26 March 2013). "Global Religious Populations, 1910–2010". The World's Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 59–62. doi:10.1002/9781118555767.ch1. ISBN 9781118555767.
• "Worldwide Adherents of All Religions by Six Continental Areas, Mid-2010". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Archived from the original on 20 November 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
• Park, Ken, ed. (2004). World Almanac and Book of Facts. New York: World Almanac Books. pp. 609–612. ISBN 0-88687-910-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)