Emerging World Christianity

From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2015 - view the full issue here

The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), which meets at Redemption Camp in Southern Nigeria, has outgrown its worship auditorium. So announced General Overseer Enoch Adeboye during the Holy Ghost Service in August 2013. This is hardly remarkable news—except for the fact that the auditorium already seats over half a million people.

The RCCG is one of the fastest growing churches in the world. Started in 1952, the church now has a global membership of about 5 million. It is Pentecostal in its theology, emphasizing obedience to the Bible, prayer, fasting, miraculous healing, and material prosperity. Furthermore, it has global aspirations: one of its stated goals is to have a member of RCCG in every family on earth.

The growth and theology of the RCCG give evidence of what church historians such as Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, and Philip Jenkins have been saying for decades: the numerical strength and evangelistic passion of Christianity is shifting to the south.

This article will sketch out some of the highlights of this shift and then briefly and very generally describe three features of this emerging world Christianity. The hope is to spark gratitude for the movement of God’s Spirit and initiate informed discussions and action in response.

What Growth, Exactly?

Sometimes rhetoric about the phenomenal growth of the church soars to great heights. To hear some reports, one may wonder why the final trumpet hasn’t already sounded.

The church is experiencing amazing growth, but so is the world. A century ago, world population was 1.8 billion, with Christians making up about one third of that.* Today, world population is 7.2 billion, with the 2.4 billion Christians making up about one third. The church is not growing any faster than the world.

In these calculations, a Christian is defined as anyone who self-identifies as such—a very broad definition. The rate of growth is different if one is talking about specific expressions of faith within Christianity. What is truly For example, evangelicals—those who profess a personal relationship with God, recognize the Bible as the Word of God, and believe they are to spread their faith—are growing about twice as fast as the population. As many as 20 percent of all Christians are evangelical.

Pentecostal Christianity is growing even faster than evangelical faith, at about four times the population growth rate. But even with the evangelical and Pentecostal growth, losses in other traditions keep the growth of Christianity on track with the world’s population.

What is truly remarkable is not that the church is growing so fast but that it is moving from north to south and from west to east. It is all about the shift.

Christianity Moving South...

The gravitational center of Christianity is moving from the global North—understood as Europe and North America—to the global South, or majority world—understood as Africa, Asia, and Latin America—and eastward. The “gravitational center of world Christianity” is that point on the globe with an equal number of Christians to the north, south, east and west.

Imagine a see-saw going from north to south. Now picture Christians getting on the south end and off of the north end. The fulcrum, or point on the globe, would need to shift south to keep gravitational balance. That shift is what has happened in the past century.

A hundred years ago, Christianity was centered in Europe and North America, with 4 out of 5 Christians worldwide living there; today, that number is 2 out of 5. A hundred years ago, African Christians numbered 9 million; today they are over 500 million. A hundred years ago, only 1 in 50 Christians worldwide was African; today that number is 1 in 4. The election in 2013 of the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis was also a significant marker of the southward shift. In addition to his other credentials, Pope Francis’s mother-tongue is Spanish—already by 1980 the leading language of church membership in the world.

The global South is called the majority world for a reason—over 80 percent of the world’s population lives there. So even though only 25 percent of the global South is Christian compared with 70 percent in the North, the numerical advantage clearly goes to the South. What will drive the trajectory south even faster is that Christianity as a percentage of the population in the global North is declining at a dramatic rate, while it is rising in the South.

The situation in China—home to 1.4 billion people—illustrates the weight of numbers. It is estimated that the Christian population is 7 percent of the total. But this still puts the number of Christians close to 100 million, landing China among the top five countries in the world for number of Christians (behind the United States, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico).

While the most remarkable story of church growth in the past century has belonged to Africa, that narrative may soon be ceded to China. African growth in previous years was predominantly in animist contexts; what largely remains now are Muslim populations among whom Christian converts have historically been meager.

But now consider the story developing in China. Thirty years ago it was unclear if Christianity had even survived the Cultural Revolution; today it is clear not only that it has, but that it is growing rapidly. The gravitational center of Christianity has not only moved south; it is also shifting east.

And the church in China has room to grow, with more than 1.2 billion Chinese who do not profess to be Christian. A Chinese scholar visiting Calvin Seminary recently noted that the time could be soon when China is the largest church and mission field.

A Conservative Faith

The Christian faith that is spreading rapidly and coming to characterize world Christianity is theologically conservative, biblically oriented—even fundamentalist—and marked by traditional social values and morals.

This conservative faith took prominence in the 1998 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion. While the Lambeth deliberations had traditionally been dominated by bishops from Europe and North America, their names on the 1998 participants list were in the minority. Almost one third of the clerics hailed from Africa—a visual reminder of shifting demographics.

Homosexuality was the hot-button issue of the conference. Some bishops— mostly from the global North—were advocating for greater biblical latitude toward and acceptance of homosexual practice, while their Southern equals passionately resisted. At the end of the day, the conference overwhelmingly voted to approve a statement that rejected homosexual practice as “incompatible with Scripture.” 

Lambeth 1998 was a critical marker of the numerical advantage now held by the Southern church and the conservatism that typifies world Christianity. Pope Francis’s election in 2013 continued this trajectory. Reporters who speculate that his conciliatory remarks on homosexuality mark a movement away from conservative theology neither understand the Roman Catholic Church nor where the pope comes from.

A Charismatic Faith

Charismatic or Pentecostal Christianity is the lively and highly personal faith of Christians who expect to see God’s miraculous power on earth as part of normal, everyday experience. It emphasizes such charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit as speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesying.

The language of Pentecostalism can be confusing. “Pentecostals” are Christians who belong to historic Pentecostal denominations. “Charismatics” are those who belong to other denominations and Christian traditions but who believe in and exhibit the charismatic gifts. “Renewalists” is an umbrella term used by some to jointly describe Pentecostals and Charismatics.

The growth of charismatic Christianity has been as remarkable as it has been astonishing. From its beginnings in the Los Angeles Azusa Street revival in 1906, it has grown to become the faith expression of a quarter of all Christians.

The most dramatic growth has taken place in the past 40 years; in 1970, only 5 percent of Christians had a Pentecostal testimony. The regions of the world that have seen the greatest growth are Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Charismatic faith has become such a part of the Latin American landscape that over 50 percent of Latino/a Catholics are estimated to be charismatic Christians.

A Costly Faith

As the research of Paul Marshall and others has reminded us, Christians are the single most widely persecuted religious group in the world today. In some parts of the world, despite oppression the church has grown. In other places, though, persecution has decimated the church. Iraq has seen its Christian numbers in the past hundred years dwindle from an estimated 35 percent of the population to its current less than 2 percent.

But even from places where oppression has diminished the presence of the church, remarkable testimonies continue to emerge. The recent slaughter of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians is only one of many acts of violence against Christians in Egypt. However, in the midst of all the violence and grieving—even because of it—there are testimonies of the nation being united. Furthermore, persecution is uniting the church in witness. Pope Francis spoke of the executed Egyptians as “martyrs who belong to all Christians. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, or Protestants. Their blood confesses Christ.”

...And Back Again

The gravitational weight of Christianity has shifted south—but it is venturing north again in remarkable ways. Over 40 million foreign-born residents now live in the United States. Of these, almost three quarters are Christian. They are bringing to America expressions of faith and life that have largely been forged in the global South.

One last observation. About 1 million international students—many from the global South—are currently studying in the United States. Estimates are that 250,000 of them are from China. Remember the 1.2 billion Chinese who are not disciples of Jesus? Might they still meet Him—in the global North?