Islam, Denominations, and Global Christianity

Islam, Denominations, and Global Christianity March 26, 2015

Philip Jenkins’s contribution to The Globalization of Christianity (edited by Gordon Heath and Steven Studebaker) offers sobering and exciting news by turns.

On the sobering side, he describes the statistical stagnation of Christianity, and compares it to the spread of Islam. For the past century, Christianity has held steady at 1/3 of the human population. It’s grown, of course, but it has not grown as a proportion of the world’s population. 

Islam has. “In 1900, the 200 to 220 million Muslims then living comprised some 12 or 13 percent of humanity, compared to 22.5 percent today, and a projected figure of 27.3 percent by 2050. Put another way, Christians in 1900 outnumbered Muslims by 2.8 to 1. Today that figure is 1.3 to 1, and by 2050 it should be 1.3 to 1. Put another way, there are four times as many Christians alive as there were in 1900; but over the same period, Muslims have grown at least seven-fold” (21).

Christianity has grown explosively in Africa and Asia, and yet has lost ground to Islam. The reason is largely demographic: “European numbers have been growing very slowly indeed in comparison with those of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and that is very good news indeed for a faith based chiefly in Asia and Africa, as Islam was historically” (21).

Two of Jenkins’s comments open dramatic possibilities in “global South Christianity.” First, attempts to impose Western denominational and ideological categories are misguided. “Familiar divisions between left and right, between conservative and liberal, between other-worldly charismatics and this-worldly social activities” don’t apply. “Christianity only makes sense as a faith that heals. . . . Deliverance and liberation are one.” At the same time, “forms of behavior and practice span denominations in ways that seem strange in a Western context, so that concepts like ‘evangelical,’ ‘liturgical,’ ‘catholic,’ and ‘charismatic’ can be combined in ways that seem utterly bizarre to mainline Westerners” (25). Disorienting perhaps to Western Christians, but this is excellent news for the church and its mission.

Another unusual feature of “global South Christianity” is its attachment to the Old Testament, which seems quite familiar in much of the southern hemisphere: “In Africa particularly, Christians have long been excited by the obvious cultural parallels that exist between their own societies and those of the Hebrew Old Testament, especially the world of the patriarchs. While the majority of modern Africans have no direct experience of nomadism or polygamy, at least they can relate to the kind of society in which such practices were commonplace. Many are also thoroughly familiar with notions of blood sacrifice, of atonement through blood” (29).


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