In the conversation with Justin and Mari following my message on Sunday, I mentioned the growth of the Christian Church in the global south. If you haven't heard of this growth, it's amazing information to understand. For instance, the average Christian today is poor, non-white, and pentecostal.
If you want to read more and understand more about these trends and changes in Global Christianity, the most popular book detailing some of these changes is by Philip Jenkins, called The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South published in 2002. He's recently published a follow up book that is updated and expanded called The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
Here's a quote from Philip Jenkins in the Atlantic Monthly in 2002 in an article entitled "The Next Christianity":
In the global South (the areas that we often think of primarily as the Third World) huge and growing Christian populations—currently 480 million in Latin America, 360 million in Africa, and 313 million in Asia, compared with 260 million in North America—now make up what the Catholic scholar Walbert Buhlmann has called the Third Church, a form of Christianity as distinct as Protestantism or Orthodoxy, and one that is likely to become dominant in the faith. The revolution taking place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is far more sweeping in its implications than any current shifts in North American religion, whether Catholic or Protestant...
...The growth in Africa has been relentless. In 1900 Africa had just 10 million Christians out of a continental population of 107 million—about nine percent. Today the Christian total stands at 360 million out of 784 million, or 46 percent. And that percentage is likely to continue rising, because Christian African countries have some of the world's most dramatic rates of population growth. Meanwhile, the advanced industrial countries are experiencing a dramatic birth dearth. Within the next twenty-five years the population of the world's Christians is expected to grow to 2.6 billion (making Christianity by far the world's largest faith). By 2025, 50 percent of the Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America, and another 17 percent will be in Asia. Those proportions will grow steadily. By about 2050 the United States will still have the largest single contingent of Christians, but all the other leading nations will be Southern: Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. By then the proportion of non-Latino whites among the world's Christians will have fallen to perhaps one in five.
The following are two graphs, one showing the amount of Christians by geographic area in 2005 and the projected amounts in 2025:
As you can easily see, North American and European Christianity are in decline while Latin American, Asian, and African Christianity are on the rise. Global Christianity tends to have a different focus than todays American and European church. They tend to have a higher view of the bible, a more conservative theology, a more passionate expression of worship, and often a more pentecostal leaning. These growing areas of Christianity in the global south are increasingly having a greater impact on Christian theology and mission. In fact, many of these other countries are now sending missionaries to North America and Northern Europe because of our secularization.
One of the great ways to connect with Global Christianity from an Evangelical standpoint is through what is called the Lausanne Movement. This movement began with the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin instigated by Billy Graham. This movement found its solidity in July 1974 when some 2,700 participants and guests from over 150 nations gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for ten days of discussion, fellowship, worship and prayer. Given the range of nationalities, ethnicities, ages, occupations and church affiliations,TIME Magazine described it as ‘a formidable forum, possibly the widestranging meeting of Christians ever held’. That movement has continued, and the world-wide voices that are now entering the conversation is amazing. If we are too focused on our own community and our own expression of Christianity, we are missing the larger movement of what God is doing around the world through people of every tribe (ummah) and people (goyim).
