Updates

A research focus on chuches in Iran and other Central Asia and South Asian countries has come together in the revisions published this quarter.

Visible denominations in Iran are mainly Orthodox seen in either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the smaller Assyrian Church of the East. However Muslim-background believers, who are far less visible, outnumber both with the result that the majority of Christians in Iran are not in any traditional denomination: they are independent of organized Christianity.

Without church membership records as such, estimates vary widely on the extent of people involved in such dynamic movements. Having reviewed all the published evidence and taking into account a range of opinion from informants, the number of Christians estimated for Iran in 2015 is now 547,000 across all denominations. This estimate thus effects estimates leading up to 2015 and also future projections.

New country code for renamed Eswatini
Swaziland's "Legal Notice No.80 of 2018" states "The name of the Kingdom of Swaziland is changed to Kingdom of Eswatini", and this spelling and capitalization has been adopted by the United Nations Terminology Database. WCD's country code changes from 'swaz' to 'eswa'.

The World Christian Database is content-rich and while this quarter has also seen significant improvements to the data, it is the website redesign that will be most striking to returning users.

Technically the data still reside in SQL Server tables, but the software getting the data from the database to the user has been completely rewritten over these past several years by Breuer & Co. and its implementation now enables a host of new user features.

Adding or removing fields, and changing criteria to get the specific data required is easier with enhancements to the query-design feature, and user changes can now be saved to a common organizational workspace.

So start with example queries and the country index on the main page, or click the rocket icon Launchpad to see all the main topics at a glance, or enter a search term and go from there.

As always, help is available from researchers at info@globalchristianity.org (or call +1 978-468-2750) and your feedback is most welcome.