This article was first
published in The Times of London
The New Christendom
By
Dwight Longenecker
In the face of militant Islam it is
easy for Western Christians to quake
with fear. It is not only the murderous
element of Muslim extremism that makes
Christians worry. The good, devout and
sincere lives of ordinary, decent Muslims
make most Western Christians seem lukewarm,
cynical and half-hearted in their faith.
As yourself how many Christians are observing
Lent as seriously as most Muslims keep
Ramadan?
Furthermore,
with the declining birthrate in Europe
and with established Christianity
in seeming meltdown it is easy to believe
that Islam will conquer Europe in the
end. When faced with the Islamic ‘threat’ concerned
Christians may find themselves on the
side of the murdered Dutch politician
Pim Fortuyn. They may not favour Fortuyn’s
permissive agenda, and will therefore
not be anti-Islamic for the same reasons,
but like Fortuyn Western Christians may
well fear the rise of Islam and worry
about the future of their own culture.
If current trends continue, it is easy
to think that Christian culture in Western
Europe is doomed, and that our culture
will die quietly as Eastern Europeans,
Africans and Islamic peoples immigrate.
Even if Europe is over-run by Muslims,
does that mean Christianity itself is
doomed? Is Islam poised for world domination?
Will worldwide Christianity inevitably
fall to the Muslim threat? In his book The
Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington
predicts that population forces will
decide the question and he says, "in
the long run . . . Muhammad wins out."
But Huntington is wrong. Christianity
might fade in Europe, but in global terms,
for a long time yet, there will be many
more Christians than Muslims in the world.
American professor Philip Jenkins has
studied the situation. In his book, The
Next Christendom:The Coming of Global
Christianity, he says the Christian
prophets of doom are ignorant of the
explosive growth of Christianity outside
Western Europe. In 1900, for instance,
there were approximately 10 million Christians
in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million.
By 2025, conservative estimates see that
number rising to 633 million. Those same
estimates put the number of Christians
in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million
and in Asia at 460 million.
According to Jenkins,
the percentage of the world's population
that is, at least by name, Christian
will be roughly the same in 2050 as it
was in 1900. By the middle of this
century, there will be 3 billion Christians
in the world. This is one and a half
times the number of Muslims. In
fact, if growth rates continue, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal
Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
What we
in Western Europe don’t like
to open our eyes to is the fact that
the power centre of Christianity is shifting.
We are used to being in charge. But within
fifty years only one-fifth of the world's
Christians will be non-Hispanic whites.
The typical Christian will be a woman
living in a Nigerian village or in a
Brazilian shantytown. If the Christian
population shifts South and East then
the power shifts South and East as well.
This is
where things really get interesting
because the shift in Christian power
base is not simply geographical or racial.
The Christians in Latin America and Africa
are far more conservative theologically
and morally than the Christians in Western
Europe and America. They have a very
different agenda than we do. Thus, as
Christianity becomes more Southern, it
becomes more ‘old fashioned’ while being
radically up to date at the same time.
All those who say we must abandon traditional
beliefs and adapt the Christian faith
to modern Western culture are therefore
singing to a cemetery. They’re calling
for change when the change has already
happened in a way they never expected.
Those who keep on harping about how the
church must adapt to the modern world
are like actors who are playing to an
empty theatre.
This conflict
became apparent four years ago when
the world’s Anglican bishops
gathered at Lambeth. Many of the bishops
from America and Britain wanted to push
through a more permissive stance on homosexuality,
but the Asian and African bishops were
having none of it. They pointed out that
there are more Anglicans in Nigeria alone
than in Britain and the USA combined.
They insisted on a conservative stance
and infuriated the British and American
bishops who were used to being in charge.
When an American bishop accused the Africans
of being ignorant fundamentalists, the
African bishop replied that he too had
a degree from Oxford and accused the
American bishop of being patronising
and racist.
This revolution
in world Christendom touches all the
Christian groupings,
and Catholicism is no exception. Twenty
five years ago the world was surprised
and delighted by the election of an Slavic
pope. Will the upcoming power shift affect
the selection of the next pope? Will
someone like Cardinal Francis Arinze—a
Nigerian who is charismatic, forward
looking and yet morally and theologically
conservative ascend to the throne of
Peter?
This shift
of Christianity's "center
of gravity" is also a to Western
Christians that we are not the whole
show. We have to start
thinking differently about ourselves. We are part of a much larger
community: the worldwide Church. Furthermore, the explosive growth in Third
World Christendom may well reverberate in the West in unexpected ways. Already
the churches in Africa and South America are training and sending missionaries
to Europe. The growth of the Third World Church may therefore be the answer
to a dying European Christendom. Those we first evangelised may now return
the favour and help European Christianity experience a fresh and unexpected
renaissance.
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