Church of the Nazarene churches in Columbus Mississippi, United States

The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged from the 19th-century Holiness movement in North America. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination in the world.[1][2] At the end of September 2016 the Church of the Nazarene had 2,471,553 members in 30,574 churches in 162 different "world areas".[3] The Church of the Nazarene uses "world area" to describe countries and areas that are a part of a country, but may be known by a different name. More than 20 of the denomination's 162 world areas fall into this category, such as Guam, a U.S. territory on the Asia-Pacific Region.[4][5][6][7] With 626,811 members at the end of 2016, the United States was the nation with the greatest number of Nazarenes.[8] Other nations with large Nazarene populations include Mozambique (202,118), Brazil (153,002), India (136,079), Haiti (134,236), Bangladesh (123,192), Guatemala (90,101), Mexico (70,700), Peru (67,394), Benin (56,036), and Ethiopia (50,361).[8] In 2016, the Church of the Nazarene had the highest percentage presence in the nations of Barbados (where its members constitute 2.84% of the population), Cape Verde (1.54% of the population), Swaziland (1.42% of the population), Haiti (1.34% of the population) Mozambique (0.82% of the population), and Samoa (0.66% of the population).