Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

MARK TOOLEY - "CULTURE WAR AND THE GLOBAL CHURCH"

Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), offers many insightful statistics and observations in the following article. As most readers probably know, Christianity is growing rapidly around the world, excepting America and Europe.

Culture War and the Global Church

Liberal Protestant denominations are increasingly no match for their conservative brethren worldwide.

Global Christianity is thriving, with one out of every 3 people on earth professing Christian faith, according to a Pew study released last month. But Christianity is shifting south. Two percent of global Christians 100 years ago lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, nearly a quarter do, equal to Europe's percentage, and soon surely to surpass it.

Insulated secular elites in the U.S. remain largely clueless about thriving religion even in America, much less globally. To the extent they notice domestic religion, it is often the echoing voices of liberal Protestant elites who preside over increasingly empty churches.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church, both of which are now likely below 2 million members, will have their governing conventions this summer. They will probably solidify their liberal trends, especially in deconstructing traditional marriage. United Methodism, unique among the major liberal Mainline denominations for having not compromised its sexual teaching, will convene its General Conference in late April in Tampa. Its U.S. membership of 7.6 million is shrinking, while is overseas membership of 4.5 million, mostly in Africa, is surging.

"GLOBAL THEOLOGY IN EVANGELICAL PESPECTIVE" - AUDIO & VIDEO FROM WHEATON CONFERENCE

The 20th annual Wheaton Theology Conference concluded April 9, 2011.  The college has now posted video and audio of each lecture and Q&A as well.  I was privileged to attend this conference and came away with a broadened and deepened perspective on worldwide Christian faith.  I may well put up some additional posts related to the conference as I have occasion to re- listen to the lectures.

Why All Anglican Eyes in London are Nervously Fixed on a Powerful African Archbishop

Philip Jenkins writes about Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.  Jenkins says:

The most important figure today in the Anglican Communion, a worldwide federation of churches with some 75 million adherents, is probably a man few people in the West know anything about : Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola, of Nigeria. An uncompromising traditionalist, Akinola presides over the most vibrant and almost certainly the largest Anglican community in the world-at a time when the Anglican world's true center of gravity has shifted to Africa.

It was no small matter, then, when Akinola went public this past summer with blistering denunciations of proposals to consecrate openly gay bishops and to sanctify gay marriage . . .  (more)

10,000 Chinese Each Day are Becoming Christians

 Update 8/27/07:  Chuck Colson's adds his thoughts with additional links. 

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Michelle Malkin offers a really thrilling post (at least to some of us) about the growth of Christianity in China.  She headlines her  post "10,000 Christians a day" and writes:

Via Weasel Zippers, here’s an interesting piece of the rapid pace of conversions to Christianity in China and here’s commentary at Asia Times:

Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter’s veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world’s largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and

Philip Jenkins Interviewed on Global Christianity and Other Subjects

Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University and a prolific author, was recently interviewed by Jeremy Lott, the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of In Defense of Hypocrisy: Picking Sides in the War on Virtue.   Jenkins may be best known for his ground-breaking book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.  He has now written over 20 books, including The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice.  I have on my shelf his book Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way, a useful corrective to a lot of wild stuff currently being written about Jesus.

Jenkins' latest book, God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis, will be coming out  in May.  Click here  for the wide-ranging interview.   The points highlighted below represent only some of the many subjects discussed. 

You note that birthrates have leveled off in some countries that most readers wouldn't expect. Between 1986 and 2000, average births per woman in Iran have fallen from 6 to 2, which is slightly lower than the replacement rate of 2.1. Indeed, birthrates almost everywhere are plummeting. Why is that?

Jenkins: That's right, across the Middle East. The Middle East in the last 15 years is going through the great demographic transition and that is one of the great facts in world politics. What it should mean is that in about 15 years these countries should be vastly more stable. The next 15 years could be a very rocky ride, but the long-term trend is to underpopulation. These countries will have to figure out how do deal with all those old people. Sometimes-and I'm not speaking about Steyn particularly here-when people talk about these astronomical birthrates, they're using pretty dated figures.

Jenkins: . . .  Increasingly, the U.S. looks like a very weird society on the global stage. On religious affiliation, it's half way between Europe and Africa and in some ways it looks like that in demography too. It's not a European society, it's not a Third World society, it's something very distinctive. So there I am back to American exceptionalism.

A substantial subset of recent immigrants to Europe is not Muslim but Christian. What effects are these immigrants having on religious life in Europe?

Jenkins: There is a huge network of immigrant churches, in Britain certainly, but also in basically every country there are some very large congregations. When people look at immigrant areas in France, they tend just to see Muslims, but a lot of the folks are actually black Christians-there are networks of Congolese churches-and they

GLOBAL SHIFT IN CHRISTIANITY TAKING PLACE

Associated Press writer Richard N. Ostling wrote an article this week on Christianity's enormous growth in what is often called the "Two-Thirds World" or "Global South," in contrast to the secular West.

Gordon-Conwell seminary's Center for the Study of Global Christianity says 62 percent of the world's 2 billion Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, a percentage that's destined to rise.

Africa's Christian boom since 1900 "may well be the largest shift in religious affiliation that has ever occurred, anywhere," said Penn State historian Philip Jenkins.

Christianity's extraordinary rise in the Global South is chronicled extensively in Philip Jenkins' widely regarded The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (2002 - and now in process of being updated).  Jenkins has most recently published The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, which focuses primarily on Africa and Asia.  Late 2007 will see the publication of yet another Jenkins' book, this one on Christianity in Europe.  Columnist Ostling writes:

Compared with Westerners, Jenkins observes, younger churches demonstrate "much greater respect for the authority of Scripture, especially in matters of morality; ... a special interest in supernatural elements of Scripture, such as miracles, visions and healings; a belief in the continuing power of prophecy; and a veneration of the Old Testament."

He calls their strict adherence to biblical teachings traditionalism, not fundamentalism, and says it underlies both spiritual deliverance and political liberation, which in the Global South are fused.

Exorcisms, belief in the devil and "spiritual warfare" against demonic powers thrive in situations where paganism, witchcraft, omens and even allegations of human sacrifice persist. And Christian alternatives help overcome people's fearfulness.

. . . While Westerners face pressure to interpret the Bible in terms of secular trends, in the Global South secular ideologies "appear false and destructive," representing corruption, sin and death. Churches' moral conservatism is also influenced by Islam and other non-Christian faiths.

Read the whole article.

Turkey's Repression of Christianity

Richard John Neuhaus writes  about the Pope's recent visit to Turkey and his conversations with the Orthodox Church's Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I. 

Since Bartholomew actually lives in Turkey, one might think that he would be a logical interlocutor with Islam. But his position is severely constricted. Again and again during

The Nature of Authentic Dialog with Muslims

What constitutes authentic dialog with Muslims?  A Roman Catholic explains, and his explanation applies to Protestant - Muslim dialog as well.

THE PLIGHT OF CHRISTIANS IN IRAQ

Ben Witherington reports on the situation within Iraq for Christians.  I will highlight only one paragraph of a much longer and more comprehensive report. 

A little history is in order. Two of the oldest forms of Christianity still exist today in Iraq-- Chaldean Catholics and Assyrian Christians. They are still the largest Christian groups in the country, which at one time during the reign of Saddam Hussein were well over 1.5 million in number, but today the total number of Christians in Iraq is likely less than 600 thousand. One of the remarkable signs of the antiquity and continuous heritage of both the Chaldeans and the Assyrians is that they still pray in Aramaic-- the spoken language of Jesus.

TIME MAGAZINE ON THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

After four failed attempts over a millennium and a half by foreign missionaries to gain a foothold in China, Christianity is finally taking root and evolving into a truly Chinese religion. . . .     Across the country, Christians are worshipping with a fervor once unimaginable in a communist society.

See here for more.

A LEADERSHIP COURSE I WISH HAD EXISTED YEARS AGO

A publication came my way recently that mentioned  The Leadership Matters Course.   This course for Christian mission leaders looks absolutely wonderful.  I wish such a course had been available to me years ago.   The two week course is given in various locations around the world.

The Leadership Matters Course is structured to be presented in a training mode rather than a lecture mode. ‘Training’ in the ITA context is focused on developing skills, and doing it in such a practiced way that the trainees will remember the principles taught. They will remember far more because they have had opportunity to actually practice the new skill, or apply the new insight, rather than only having a record of it in a handbook.

CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA - A NEW FACE FOR THE CHURCH

Here's a New York Times article on the fast-growing (to put it mildly) African (Nigerian) Redeemed Christian Church of God.    (HT: Smart Christian)    As the article rightly points out, the heart and center of Christianity is no longer Europe.   

This is the face of 21st century Christianity: colossal, restless -- and African.   There is no better symbol of it than the Redeemed Church, and the insatiable ambitions of its guiding hand, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye.   The savvy former mathematician leads the fastest-growing Christian movement from a continent that's rapidly putting its stamp on the faith around the world.

The Redeemed Church is a prime lesson in the shifting currents of Christianity.   Centuries after the Gospel was brought to sub-Saharan Africa by colonizers and missionaries, the faith is coming back to the West.   The forms are passionate and powerful.  . .

You want to see where Christianity is heading?'' said Campbell Shittu Momoh, an author on Nigerian religious affairs. ' 'Come look at Nigeria. It's already here.''

No one is clear how deeply the Pentecostal-inspired churches will change the faith. They only are sure that it's happening and Africa is the engine.  . . .

The demographic center of Christianity is now located near Timbuktu in northwest Africa and is drifting south each year.

The "prosperity gospel" this church preaches makes me uncomfortable, but I like the idea of a fresh fervency moving through the Church worldwide.   

CHRISTIANITY ON UPSWING IN JAPAN

The most recent Gallup poll of Japanese youth and adults produced fascinating results, not the least of which is that 7% of Japanese youth consider themselves Christians.   Few would have predicted that high a figure.  Sadly, Japanese teens in general seem far more nihilistic than American youth.

While 22 percent of U.S. teens in previous Gallup surveys often wondered why they existed, the number for Japanese teens was 85 percent.   Similarly, while 76 percent of U.S. teens always see a reason for their being on Earth, only 13 percent of Japanese teens agreed with the statement.   A surprisingly high 11 percent of Japanese teens wished they had never been born, a figure that comes in at 3 percent for U.S. teens.

CHRISTIAN ARTISTS & GLOBAL OUTREACH

As I looked today at the British publication Global put out by "Operation Mobilisation,"  I learned that fourteen artists traveled last summer to Bosnia-Herzegovina for three weeks in July to share the love of God through various forms of creative arts.  Among many other projects, they designed and painted Disney characters in a room on the children's ward of a local hospital.   The report of the trip is here.  It turns out that most artists were from the USA .  More trips are scheduled this spring and summer to Albania April 11-23, Bosnia July 1-22, and Nepal August 2-22.  I suspect there are many artists who have no idea they can use their talents in such creative and specialized ways internationally!

OM’s Artslink definitely needs to become better known. Their website provides a link to helpful books on faith and art.    Information on contacting the OM USA office can be found here. 

Oh, and by the way, for any beagle-eyed Americans eager to find misspellings, be it known that the Brits spell "mobilization" with an ‘s’ instead of the American ‘z.’