Christianity's Newest Converts

▪ 2002

by Kenneth L. Woodward

      Though 2001 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year that the terrorist attacks in the U.S. were attributed to Islamic radicals, that action reminded Christians in the U.S. and other Western countries that Islam claims the allegiance of 1.2 billion people worldwide, second only to Christianity itself, which claims some 2 billion devotees. During the year there was another significant revelation—that Christianity itself is now an essentially non-Western religion. In 1900, at the dawn of what American Protestants imagined would be “the Christian century,” 80% of Christians were either European or North American. In 2000 statistics showed that 60% of Christians were citizens of the “two-thirds world”—Africa, Asia, and Latin America

      Specific comparisons demonstrate some of the dimensions of this demographic shift. In Nigeria alone, for example, there are seven times as many Anglicans as there are Episcopalians in the U.S. South Korea boasts a population of Presbyterians four times that of the U.S., and as of 2001 it was the first Asian country since the Philippines to have become majority Christian. In the past 10 years, the Assemblies of God have gained 438,000 new American members, but in Africa alone this Pentecostal denomination quadrupled its size, adding nearly 7,000,000 converts. More than 90% of Seventh-day Adventists, a 150-year-old millenarian movement that began in New York, now live outside North America, most of them in Brazil and sub-Saharan Africa.

      As Christianity prospers in the less-developed world, it is shrinking in the West. Northern Europe is essentially post-Christian, a society in which religious affiliation functions essentially as an identity tag, and church attendance is declining in once staunchly Catholic Spain. In Scotland fewer than 10% of Christians attend church regularly, but in the Philippines the figure is nearly 70%. Even in the U.S., still the most religious of the world's advanced industrial societies, most of the growth in Christianity is attributed to immigration from Latin America and various non-Western countries. Within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for instance, the only growth has come through immigrants from South Korea. The effects on American Catholicism are especially pronounced. One in six priests serving in U.S. Catholic parishes in 2000 was imported from abroad, and among native-born Catholic seminarians, a disproportionate number were Asian Americans. Though the U.S. was once the primary source of new recruits for the Jesuits, India now reigns as the largest supplier of Jesuit seminarians.

      In short, the map of world Christianity has been redrawn. For the first time in history, the majority of Christians can be found mainly among the poor, the marginalized, the powerless, and—in parts of Asia and the Middle East, the oppressed. The face of Christianity has also changed—it is no longer the white man's religion. As a result of this massive demographic shift, areas that were once considered Christian homelands have become the mission territories of the new millennium. Evangelists from Latin America, Asia, and Africa now hold crusades in cities such as London and Berlin. Aware that the future of the church lies in part in Africa, Pope John Paul II has made 10 pastoral visits to various countries there, more than to any other continent outside Europe. On February 21 the pope expanded the Sacred College of Cardinals to a record 184 members. Of the 135 cardinals eligible to elect the next pope, 41% hail from non-Western nations.

      The changing face of the church was also manifest in shifting spheres of influence within mainline American Protestant denominations. In early 2001 the presiding bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion met in North Carolina amid a rift between the liberal Anglican churches of the West, notably the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., and the more conservative Anglican churches of Asia and Africa, over issues that included the ordination of women and homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex marriages. Unless a resolution is reached, there could be a major split within the Communion. The liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was also feeling a rightward pull from its Korean American faithful, who also opposed the ordination of homosexuals.

      The emergence of Christianity as a predominantly non-Western religion had many causes. In Latin America, Christianity arrived with the conquistadors in the 16th century and has continued to expand in part because of population explosion. Though South America is the largest Catholic continent in the world, in recent decades evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism have made impressive inroads there. In India the spread of Christianity is mainly among the outcasts, who find in Christianity hope and dignity denied them by the caste system. In China, Christianity answers problems of meaning that Marxism fails to address. In Africa, where Christianity is growing faster than at any time or place in history, the faith originally introduced by missionaries has boomed following the collapse of European colonialism. Since then, sub-Saharan Africa has seen a wild proliferation of indigenous Christian churches and cults, many of them inspired by personal visions and prophesies. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, there are now 33,800 different Christian denominations, the fastest growing of which are independent churches that have no ties to the historic Catholic and Protestant churches. Wherever it spreads, Christianity is also seen as the religion of the successful West—a spiritual way of life that is compatible with higher education, technology, and globalization.

      From its very beginning, Christianity has always been a migratory religion, seeking to plant the gospel at the centre of whatever alien culture its missionaries could penetrate. In the process the gospel has been not only transplanted but also repeatedly reinterpreted according to the previously existing religious understandings. The same process exists today. In officially Roman Catholic Brazil, for instance, many church members still appease the old tribal deities brought over from Africa by slaves. In other parts of Latin America, Christians practice a hybrid form of piety that includes elements of native religions the Spaniards never really extinguished. Many Christians in China include veneration of their deceased but “living” ancestors as part of the worship services at certain times of the year. In India, where sin is traditionally identified with bad karma in this and previous lives, many converts interpret the cross to mean that Jesus's self-sacrifice removes their own karmic deficiencies and thus liberates their souls from future rebirths. Millions of Christians in Africa still turn to rituals of their tribal religions in time of crisis, especially toward warding off evil spirits. There, as in many other parts of the “two-thirds world,” the fastest-growing form of Christianity is Pentecostalism, which offers exorcisms and other forms of healing, though in this case they are done in the name of Jesus Christ and against the native religions themselves. Conversely, many Christians who migrate from Asian countries where they were persecuted find American Christianity too secular, individualistic, and accepting of secular mores—especially the sexual variety—for their taste. In sum, Christianity for the first time in its history is truly a global religion—but it is also becoming increasingly diverse. The problem for the pope and other church leaders in the West is how to decide which elements of Western thought and culture are essential to the faith. Put differently, the question remains how far Christianity can bend toward accepting non-Western world views without compromising its own traditional doctrines about the nature of God and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Savior.

Kenneth L. Woodward, the religion editor of Newsweek magazine is also the author of The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (2000). This report is adapted from his article “The Changing Face of the Church,” which first appeared in Newsweek.

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