Religion in Ivory Coast is diverse, with no particular religion representing the majority of the population. According to the 2021 census, Islam (mainly Sunni) is the most widely professed religion at 42.5% of the total population, while adherents of Christianity (mainly Catholic and Evangelical) represented 39.8% of the population. In addition, 12.6% of Ivorians reported to be Irreligious and 2.2% claimed to follow Animism. According to the 2020 estimate by the Pew Research Center, Christians are the largest religious group at 44% of the total population, followed by Muslims at 37.2% of the population. It also projected 8.1% of Ivorians to be unaffiliated and 10.5% as adherents of Traditional African religions. Christianity is practised in a variety of forms throughout the country though mostly in the south. Islam has been practised in the far north for roughly seven centuries, shifting in influence over time due to contact with the Muslim areas to the north and immigration. Christian missionaries arrived at the coast in the 17th century but did not win converts in large numbers until the 19th century. Christianity's appeal was strongest among educated Africans and those who sought advancement through European contact. Local religions Indigenous African religions offer explanations for life's dilemmas in a local cultural context. Local religions reassure people that they are living in harmony with the universe and that this harmony can be preserved by maintaining proper relationships with all beings. For this reason, separating religion from other aspects of life serves to distort, rather than clarify, its meaning. Spiritual beings—a creator, ancestral spirits, and spirits associated with places and objects—can influence a person's life and luck. This is the major premise on which belief and practice are based. The distinction between the spiritual and physical "worlds," in Western secular terms, is unimportant in the face of what is interpreted as overwhelming evidence that physical events may have spiritual causes. Lineages are also important in understanding the organization of many Ivorian religions. The spiritual unity of the descent group transcends distinctions among the unborn, the living, and the deceased. In this context, religious differences are not based on disagreements over doctrine. Rather, groups living in different social and physical environments encounter different spiritual and physical dangers, and their religious needs differ accordingly. This diversity accounts, in part, for early missionaries in West Africa who often described the spiritual "chaos" they encountered, when they were actually observing