Taiwan’s Buddhists

A Large Unreached People Group: Taiwan’s Buddhists (edit. A.Haudenschild)

1. Buddhism in Taiwan: One major Religion
Buddhism is with 7 to 15 percent one of Taiwan’s major religions. Statistics provided by the Interior Ministry show that Taiwan's Buddhist population grew from 800,000 in 1983 to 4.9 million in 1995. Additionally, in the same period the number of registered Buddhist temples increased from 1,157 to 4,020, and the number of monks and nuns was up 9,300 monks and nuns, up from 3,470 in 1983. This trend can be attributed to the activity of various charismatic teachers. – However, if the same strict rules for counting are applied as for evangelical Christians, from those numbers only clerical and Buddhist supporters / members would be numbered. In their bigest event ever, on the Taipeis Chiang Kai-shek Memorial place (Liberty Square), just 35,000 were gathering, while evangelical Christians had 56,000 attendees on one evening and nearly 200,000 over four days at the same place at their Taipei Franklin Graham Festival in Fall 2008. More