The church's future is in Africa: 12-28-15
December 28, 2015
Over the weekend here on the blog, I told you about a book that gives some ideas about how Christianity might renew itself. It was written by a native of Canada who now is a pastor in the Church of Scotland. So it had both a North American and European perspective.
Today I want to shift focus and share this piece from The Economist, which describes how the future of Christianity will be decidedly African, given the ways in which Christianity has been sweeping across that continent over the last 100 years. Those of us who follow trends in religion have been well aware of Africa's growing importance in the Christian world, but for those of us who don't live there or visit there frequently, it's easy not to think about this trend.
As the article reports, ". . .sub-Saharan Africans are embracing the gospel with the literal zeal of the converted. According to the Centre for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, in 1910 just 9% of the 100m people on the African continent were Christian; today the share is 55% of a population of a billion. Moreover, figures from the World Values Survey (WVS), which covers 86,000 people in 60 countries, indicate they are remarkably devout. . ."
When I speak to groups about faith matters, I frequently ask audience members to name the world religion with the most followers. Almost inevitably someone will say Islam. No, it's Christianity, with well over 2 billion adherents. Islam comes in second with something like 1.6 billion.
Increasingly, Christianity's numbers are found in Africa. In fact, the last two times the Catholic Church elected a pope there was speculation that he could come from Africa.
As a rule, African Christianity tends to be more theologically and socially conservative. That's to be expected on a continent where poverty and strife are common. It means people are much less interested in exotic theories of soteriology or eschatology and much more interested in a God who might protect them, feed them, meet their basic needs and perform miracles.
(The graphic here today accompanied the article to which I linked you above.)
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RELIGION AIN'T DEAD YET
Yes, the religiously unaffiliated are increasing in number in the U.S., but some experts think the religiously affiliated around the world will grow more quickly -- in large part because of birth rates, this story reports. The long-term question, of course, is whether those children born into religiously affiliated families will stay with the faith or drift away. Drifting seems considerably easier in Western countries than in some others.
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