Monday, November 03, 2003
Is it about time we gave the church a decent burial?
The church is dying – at least the Christian church is – if we are to believe the news items. For instance, Statistics New Zealand reported that in the last Census the number of people stating they had no religion grew by 18%.
The almost constant barrage of church sex scandals makes very sorry reading, and any day you can drive past former churches now converted to community centres, private homes, or just boarded up.
However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumours of the church’s death may be greatly exaggerated, largely because we are looking only at what is happening in the dying civilisation of the West.
According to Patrick Johnstone, director of research at WEC International, in the past 25 years, the total number of Christians worldwide has grown by 60% from 1.25 billion to 1.95 billion and is by far the world's largest religion. The reason we have not noticed is because 58% of Protestants now live in Africa and Asia. As an example of what’s going on developing countries, Johnstone says in 1960 there were only 25 baptized Christians in the Hindu Kingdom of Nepal. Today there are 200,000 Christians out of a population of 20 million that is 89% Hindu, 7% Buddhist, and 3.5% Muslim. The Nepalese Christians are striving to reach the goal of one million Christians by the turn of the century.
One of the often-heard comments since Sept. 11 is that Islam is growing so rapidly it soon will become the world's largest religion, overtaking Christianity in just a couple of decades. Many of these projections are traceable to the work of Harvard University scholar Samuel Huntington, who has put forward the idea of a "clash of civilizations." But a new book about Christianity in the Third World says Huntington and others are missing the global demographic picture.
Islam is indeed expanding as Christianity loses its force in the Western world, particularly Europe, says historian and religious studies scholar Philip Jenkins, author of "The Next Christendom." But the numbers of Christians are exploding in the southern hemisphere, he reports. In his book, published by Oxford University Press, Jenkins argues that the post-Sept. 11 commentaries have overlooked the dramatic upsurge of Christianity in places like Africa.
"Basically, you're talking about Africa being 9 percent Christian back in 1900 and close on 50 percent today. That's a huge change," said Jenkins, who teaches at Penn State University. "Somewhere in the 1960s, the number of Christians in Africa outpaced the number of Muslims in Africa. A great, historic change--and nobody paid attention to it."
The church is dying – at least the Christian church is – if we are to believe the news items. For instance, Statistics New Zealand reported that in the last Census the number of people stating they had no religion grew by 18%.
The almost constant barrage of church sex scandals makes very sorry reading, and any day you can drive past former churches now converted to community centres, private homes, or just boarded up.
However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumours of the church’s death may be greatly exaggerated, largely because we are looking only at what is happening in the dying civilisation of the West.
According to Patrick Johnstone, director of research at WEC International, in the past 25 years, the total number of Christians worldwide has grown by 60% from 1.25 billion to 1.95 billion and is by far the world's largest religion. The reason we have not noticed is because 58% of Protestants now live in Africa and Asia. As an example of what’s going on developing countries, Johnstone says in 1960 there were only 25 baptized Christians in the Hindu Kingdom of Nepal. Today there are 200,000 Christians out of a population of 20 million that is 89% Hindu, 7% Buddhist, and 3.5% Muslim. The Nepalese Christians are striving to reach the goal of one million Christians by the turn of the century.
One of the often-heard comments since Sept. 11 is that Islam is growing so rapidly it soon will become the world's largest religion, overtaking Christianity in just a couple of decades. Many of these projections are traceable to the work of Harvard University scholar Samuel Huntington, who has put forward the idea of a "clash of civilizations." But a new book about Christianity in the Third World says Huntington and others are missing the global demographic picture.
Islam is indeed expanding as Christianity loses its force in the Western world, particularly Europe, says historian and religious studies scholar Philip Jenkins, author of "The Next Christendom." But the numbers of Christians are exploding in the southern hemisphere, he reports. In his book, published by Oxford University Press, Jenkins argues that the post-Sept. 11 commentaries have overlooked the dramatic upsurge of Christianity in places like Africa.
"Basically, you're talking about Africa being 9 percent Christian back in 1900 and close on 50 percent today. That's a huge change," said Jenkins, who teaches at Penn State University. "Somewhere in the 1960s, the number of Christians in Africa outpaced the number of Muslims in Africa. A great, historic change--and nobody paid attention to it."
