The New Map of the Global Church

by Philip Jenkins

Overview

Offers an inviting way to understand the facts and implications of the major demographic shifts happening within Christianity
 
By 2025, 75 percent of Catholics in the world will be non-European; the new global church will have its center of gravity in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This fascinating brief explores the metamorphosis taking place in the global community of believers: the church's new life comes from what historically has been labeled the periphery. The book also looks into the radical ramifications for all churches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824550097
Publisher:	PublishDrive
Publication date:	09/15/2017
Series:	Church at the Crossroad
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	565 KB

About the Author

Philip Jenkins is the distinguished professor of history at Baylor University and codirector for Baylor's program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author of The Jesus Wars, The Lost History of Christianity, and The Next Christendom. He is a contributing editor for the American Conservative, writes a monthly column for the Christian Century, and has written articles for the Atlantic, Christianity Today, and First Things. He lives in Waco, Texas.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

RELIGION BY THE NUMBERS

Demography Drives Changes

Demography drives religious change. That bald comment is too obvious to be worth making, but it's surprising how little attention demographic factors receive in most histories of religion, particularly of Christianity. That neglect means we miss a very large part of the story.

Given a sufficiently high birth rate, a minority religious community can rapidly become a dominant majority, with all that implies for distributing social power and shaping conflict. Alternatively, migration can transform the religious economy of a hitherto static society.

Demographics also shape the prevailing forms of religion. A country with a marked youth bulge — with lots of adolescents and young adults — is far more open to explosive revivalism than a more sedate and middle-aged society. Changing demographics can also have a pastoral impact, revolutionizing perceptions of childhood and old age. Numbers may not be everything, but they certainly are something.

Also in the category of "what everyone knows" is the fact that Christian numbers are growing in Africa and elsewhere while they are stable or shrinking in Europe. What we miss in such a simple statement is the sheer scale of the demographic change, quite apart from any religious concerns. The global shift in populations represents one of the most significant facts of our time. And unlike religious changes, which are subject to so many qualifications about what we can and cannot know, the demographic story rests on quite solid quantitative foundations.

Take the continent of Africa. In 1900, Africa had around 100 million people, or 6 percent of the global population. In 2005, the number of Africans reached 1 billion, or 15 percent of humanity. By 2050, Africa's population will be between 2 billion and 2.25 billion, which will then be about a quarter of the world's people. Those numbers do not count African migrants in Europe and North America.

Population growth comes into even sharper focus when seen in a local context. By contemporary standards, just a century ago, human beings were sparsely distributed across large stretches of Africa. In 1900, the parts of East Africa that would become Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania were occupied by just 7 or 8 million people, in an area not much smaller than Western Europe. By 2000, the three countries had a combined population of 90 million. By 2050, they might have 260 million. Growth in West Africa was almost as staggering. In 1900, the lands that would become Nigeria had around 16 million people, rising to 160 million today and probably to around 300 million by 2050.

Now let's set those numbers alongside those for Europe. In 1900 there were 400 million Europeans, a number that rose to 730 million today. But in relative terms, as a share of global population, Europe was in steep decline. Europeans made up a quarter of humanity in 1900, as against 11 percent today; and it is projected to fall to 8 percent by 2050. In 1900, Europeans outnumbered Africans by four to one. By 2050, Africans should have a three to one advantage over Europeans.

That global revolution echoes through every aspect of life, through all social and economic structures. For one thing, all those new Africans have to find somewhere to live, so Africa in coming decades will be experiencing the greatest wave of urbanization in human history. This fact has incalculable consequences for political stability and quite possibly for international tensions. Moreover, different parts of the world are marked by radically different proportions of young and old. Of the ten nations with the highest population growth rates, all but one are in Africa. All the nations experiencing population decline are in Europe, with the exception of Japan.

These numbers have major religious consequences, and not just for Christianity. In coming decades, the non-Arab share of Islam will continue to grow, with a far larger proportion of Muslims coming from Africa and particularly from south of the Sahara. But the change will have a much greater impact on Christian populations. As recently as 1900, Europe accounted for over two-thirds of the "Christian world," with North America a distant second and Africa barely on the map. By 2050, by far the largest share of the world's Christians will be found in Africa, which should have a billion or more believers. By that time about a third of the world's Christians will be African, and those African Christians will outnumber Europe's by more than two to one. The Christian world will have turned upside down.

We can argue at length over what those figures mean and what future forms of faith might look like, but the raw numbers are not going away.

CHAPTER 2

WHO'S COUNTING CHINA?

Phenomenal Growth in the Number of Christians

I was perilously close to becoming an agnostic — at least about certain statistics. Specifically, I really didn't know the data on Christians in China, and for a while I was not sure if anyone did. Only now, perhaps, do we have the glimmerings of an answer to one of the most pressing questions in global religion: just how many Chinese Christians are there?

This question matters enormously because of China's vast population — now over 1.3 billion — and its emerging role as a global superpower. If Christians make up even a sizable minority within that country, that could be a political fact of huge significance.

Some years ago, veteran journalist David Aikman suggested that China's Christian population was reaching critical mass and that Christianity would achieve cultural and political hegemony by 2030 or so. Writing in First Things last year, Catholic China-watcher Francesco Sisci agreed that "we are near a Constantinian moment for the Chinese Empire." If we could say confidently that China today had, say, 100 or 150 million Christian believers, that would also make the country one of the largest centers of the faith worldwide, with the potential of a still greater role in years to come.

But what can we actually say with confidence when honest and reliable authorities differ so widely on the basic numbers? Estimates of Christian numbers vary enormously, from 25 million or so to an incredible 200 million. If current estimates are so contested, then so are growth projections.

One of the most authoritative sources on religious statistics is the World Christian Database, which offers invaluable reference materials on all parts of the world. On China, though, WCD figures are startlingly high (which does not necessarily make them wrong). According to this source, the country's Christians exploded from under a million in 1970 to around 120 million today (over 9 percent of the whole country), and that number will grow to 220 million by 2050. If correct, that would make the story of Chinese Christianity probably the most dramatic success story in modern religious history.

Other sources, however, place the Christian share of the population significantly lower. The minimum realistic figure is that of the Chinese government itself, which to say the least has no vested interest in exaggerating the tally of religious believers. The government publicly admits to the figure of 20 million for Catholics and Protestants combined — 1.5 percent of all Chinese. Beyond those, of course, there are the unregistered Christian communities, the famous house churches, and their numbers are a total mystery. The WCD suggests that there are 70 million house-church believers, others say 50 million, still others far less. Putting the various estimates together, the Pew Forum gives a Christian population of 4 or 5 percent; the CIA's World Factbook puts it at 3 or 4 percent. The differences may sound tiny, but we are dealing with a colossus — in China, just 1 percent of the population means an impressive 13 million souls.

The best evidence we now have comes from extensive opinion surveys undertaken over the past decade, material that is now being made available through a Templeton Foundation–supported project at Baylor University, led by Rodney Stark, Carson Mencken, and other scholars. At first sight, this evidence portrays Chinese Christianity as much more modest than in some recent accounts, with a mere 35 or 40 million adherents. However, the researchers stress that these numbers identify only those who are prepared to admit openly to Christian faith. Depending on the attitudes of zealous local officials, such an overt admission might be suicidally rash. Pew survey evidence also finds many additional Chinese who might not describe themselves overtly as Christian, but who are prepared to consider the existence of "God/Jesus"; perhaps these are converts en route to full belief.

Putting the Templeton and Pew materials together, we can reasonably place the number of Chinese Christians at around 65 to 70 million, or a little less than 5 percent of the population. That falls a good deal short of any vision of "converting China." Christians constitute just a small minority within that country, roughly comparable to the percentage of Muslims in Western European nations.

Even viewed in these somewhat reduced terms, though, the Chinese number still inspires awe. Those 65 or 70 million Christians outnumber the total population of major nations like France, Britain, or Italy. Put another way, China has almost as many Christians as it does members of the Communist Party. Moreover, the Christian figure represents a phenomenal growth from the five or so million who witnessed the communist takeover in 1949 and from the subsequent decades of massacre and persecution. If not quite a miracle, this is a profoundly impressive story.

CHAPTER 3

THE THREE FACES OF GUANYIN

Any tour of the modern world's Seven Religious Wonders would include a stop on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. Here since 2005 has stood a colossal statue of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. The figure astounds not just by its sheer size — it is 354 feet high — but by the mere fact of its creation: it was commissioned and funded by a Chinese communist government long bitterly opposed to religion of every stripe. The statue of Guanyin is an object lesson in the new China's radically changed attitude to faith — but also a warning to Christians who place their hopes in any future mass conversions in that vast country.

When Westerners study Chinese religion, inevitably they focus on the Christian story. They know about the horrible sufferings of Christians during the Cultural Revolution of the post-1966 decade and the surging national revival that began in the 1980s. Some estimates suggest that China today has over 100 million Christians, with projections of 150 or 200 million by 2050. Even if those figures are too high — and I believe they are — we are still dealing with an astonishing success story. Visions of national conversion don't seem farfetched.

Missing in such accounts, though, are China's other historic religions, which have also benefited from the milder official approach. Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism were equally suppressed during the horrific Mao Zedong years, when literally a million temples and shrines were smashed and vandalized. Since 1982, these religious systems have revived and even received official support. Many temples have been rebuilt, and new generations of devotees have become priests and monks. China is now officially the world's largest Buddhist nation.

Viewing the different faiths together helps us to make sense of the government's otherwise puzzling religious policies. After all, the country is still ruled by communists for whom power is the absolute imperative. It seems odd that the regime would tolerate the phenomenal growth of Christian churches if they posed the slightest threat of creating institutions and structures that might undermine the authority of the Communist Party. When Chinese leaders lifted the persecution of the churches, what was in it for them?

Actually, they stood to benefit in many ways. In the 1980s and 1990s, senior leaders came to believe that the faith could serve official ends. The churches encouraged values of thrift, hard work, enterprise, and mutual support, so Christians could be valuable allies in the process of rapid modernization. And it was far safer for Chinese people to express their spirituality in the churches than in eccentric fringe movements like Falun Gong.

When Christian numbers ran out of control — and more seriously, when Christianity made deep inroads into educated elites and even into the party itself — then it was time to apply the brakes. In earlier eras, such a reaction might have meant a flat-out declaration of renewed war against all religion. But naked repression fitted poorly with the country's new image. Instead, the leaders made determined efforts to support other faiths, partly to counterbalance Christianity, but also to exploit what those religions could offer to the causes of modernization and national security. If Christianity implies good work habits, then an alliance with the older faiths legitimizes the Chinese regime by rooting it in the country's ancient history and traditions.

Such a realignment appeals to traditional-minded Chinese who still retain old loyalties, however much they had pretended to forget them through the darkest years. If a religion is seen as subversive, though, as is the case with Buddhism in Tibet or Islam in Turkestan, then official attitudes remain harsh. All such decisions remain firmly political.

This brings us back to the statue of Guanyin, whose location constitutes a powerful political statement. Guanyin has three faces — one face is turned inland to China, the other two gaze out over the South China Sea. According to official statements, she thus extends blessing and compassion not just over the Chinese motherland, but also over the wider world and the Chinese diaspora.

Viewed more cynically, Guanyin proclaims the strength and glory of Chinese culture over a maritime region that threatens to become one of the most desperately contested on the planet. Chinese demands for sovereignty over the South China Sea conflict with the claims of half a dozen other nations and directly challenge U.S. naval power. As so often in history, religion provides a symbolic assertion of national strategy.

Religion in China is tolerated as far as the state and party believe it to be useful — and no further. Any hopes for further Christian expansion have to take into account this political context.

CHAPTER 4

THE CRYPTO-CHRISTIANS

One of the World's Largest Religious Groups

For most American Christians, restraints on the open expression of religious loyalties normally involve situations in which believers might be seen as imposing their views on others — through evangelism in the workplace or school, perhaps. But in many parts of Africa and Asia, in societies dominated by other religions or by militant atheist regimes, Christians experience such negative pressure that they refrain from even admitting they are Christians. Millions survive as crypto-Christians.

Just how common these covert believers are is a mystery. In theory, hidden believers should be immune to study, as they would never break cover; the people who can be studied are only the less discreet. But we often do hear of crypto-Christians, and the stories are startling. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, as of 2000 Syria's Christian population was fewer than 5 percent, but most observers think that number is far too low. And the true number has surely risen with the influx of Christian Iraqi refugees. A million semiclandestine Iraqi believers would raise the size of the Christian minority to at least 10 or 12 percent.

In India, some guess the number of crypto-Christians is 20 million. Worldwide, the crypto-Christian population runs well into the tens of millions. For what it's worth, the World Christian Encyclopedia speaks of 120 million hidden believers. If that figure is right, crypto-Christians would by themselves constitute one of the world's largest religious groups.

Although many of these believers are isolated individuals and families, some sizable communities have demonstrated astonishing powers of survival. In the seventeenth century, the Buddhist/Shinto nation of Japan annihilated a Catholic missionary presence that seemed to be on the verge of converting the nation. After persecutions that killed tens of thousands — even a suspicion of Christian loyalty could lead to execution — the organized church presence was destroyed by 1680. Yet many thousands of "hidden Christians," Kakure Kirishitan, somehow maintained their secret traditions in remote fishing villages and island communities, and they continue to this day.

This catacomb church strayed from mainstream Catholicism, and many of its practices make it look like a Shinto sect: its eucharistic elements are rice, fish, and sake. Its followers once knew nothing of the wider church, believing themselves to be the world's only true Christians. The stunning 1997 documentary Otaiya allows us to hear very old believers reciting Catholic prayers that first came to the region over 400 years ago — some recalled in church Latin and sixteenth-century Portuguese.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The New Map of the Global Church"
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Copyright © 2017 Philip Jenkins.
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Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1 Religion by the Numbers: Demography Drives Changes 13

2 Who's Counting China? Phenomenal Growth in the Number of Christians 18

3 The Three Faces of Guanyin 24

4 The Crypto-Christians: One of the World's Largest Religious Groups 29

5 Church-State Disconnect: Official Secularism 34

6 Mideast Christian Fear 40

7 BRICs of Faith: Religion and the Four Emerging Powers 46

8 Nations at Risk: Fertile Ground for Persecution 51

9 Martyrs in the Family: What Seoul and Kampala Have in Common 56

10 A Secular Latin America? 62

11 The Case for Prosperity 68

Reading Guide 73