Abrahamic South

David Goldman (It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You) claims that the Global South is marked by two trends: “the fastest rate of cultural extinction in history as well as the fastest rate of Christian evangelization in history.” The two, he argues, are related: “It is only because of the terrible depth of [the tragedy of cultural extinction] that hundreds of millions of souls turn in fear and trembling to a religion that represents itself as standing above all cultures: the ekklesia of individuals called out from among the nations to the Kingdom of God” (60).

This movement quite literally repeats the exodus of Abraham “who, at divine command, left behind clan and kindred in the world of four thousand years ago, when clan and kindred were everything. Given a son in old age, Abraham was told to sacrifice that son, thereby destroying his links to the future.”

Goldman elaborates: “Among peoples facing the erasure of their links to the past and uncertainty about their future, Abraham’s frame of mind on Mount Moriah must seem much less remote than it does to the comfortable Christians of the North. The Hebrew Bible has a personal meaning for the new Christians of the South because in a sense they relive the experience of the patriarch. Like the myriad tribes of the Roman Empire and the invading barbarians of the Middle Ages, hundreds of people will give up their tribal identity and in compensation receive Christianity” (61).

Goldman admits that “opinions will remain divided as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing,” but he suggests that “it very well may be the main thing occurring in our present century” (61).