Posted on 11/26/2002 7:24:21 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
Which of the world's largest faiths, Christianity or Islam, is experiencing the greater ideological reassertion and demographic surge?
Surely "Islam" is nearly everyone's answer. As American Christians experiment with ever-milder versions of their faith, Muslims display a fervor for extreme interpretations of Islam. As Europe suffers the lowest population growth rates ever recorded, Muslim countries have some of the highest.
But Islam is the wrong answer, argues Philip Jenkins in a recent "Atlantic Monthly." He shows how Christianity is the religion currently undergoing the most basic rethinking and the largest increase in adherents. He makes a good case for its militancy most affecting the next century.
"For obvious reasons," notes this professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, "news reports today are filled with material about the influence of a resurgent and sometimes angry Islam. But in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world's fastest-growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place - in these and other ways it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the twenty-first century."
What Jenkins dubs the "Christian revolution" is so little noted because Christians divide into two very different regions -- North (Europe, North America, Australia) and South (South America, Africa, Asia) -- and we who live in the North only dimly perceive the momentous developments underway in the South. Fortunately, Jenkins is there to guide us.
Faith: The changes in the South "run utterly contrary" to those in the liberalizing North, where religious beliefs and practices are ever more removed from traditional Christianity. In the South, Protestant movements are mainly Evangelical or Pentecostal, while Roman Catholicism takes an orthodox cast. By Northern lights, the South's theology and moral teaching are "stalwartly traditional or even reactionary," what with their respect for the power of priests, their notions of spiritual charisma, their aspiration to direct spiritual revelation, their efforts to exorcise demonic forces, and their goal of re-creating a version of early Christianity. As "Southern Christians are reading the New Testament and taking it very seriously," increasing tensions then develop with the liberal Northerners.
Demographics: "Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest. During the past half century the critical centers of the Christian world have moved decisively to Africa, to Latin America, and to Asia. The balance will never shift back." The numbers are jaw-dropping: Nigeria already has more practicing Anglicans than any other country, with Uganda not far behind. The Philippines has more baptisms per year than France, Spain, Italy, and Poland together. By 2025, two thirds of all Christians (and three quarters of all Catholics) are expected to live in the South. (These numbers actually underestimate the contrast in growth rates, for many Southern Christians are relocating to the North. In London today, for example, half of all churchgoers are blacks.) If present trends continue, by 2050 the proportion of non-Latino whites among the world's Christians will fall to about one in five.
Of course, the chasm between North and South is not complete (a fact that Jenkins hardly touches on); the United States, for example, contains substantial numbers of Christians with a 'Southern" outlook. This said, the trends are clear:
* Although Islam may appear to be the faith of choice for the world's poor, Christianity is faring at least as well among them.
* Christianity is no longer predominantly a European and North American faith.
* The experimentation and decline that pervades Northern Christianity is less important than it appears.
* The concept of Christendom may re-emerge in the South, where political, social, and personal identities are being primarily defined by religious loyalties.
* "An enormous rift seems inevitable" between North and South, possibly leading to a split in the Christian church, similar to what happened centuries ago between the Catholic Church and the Protestant movements.
* Christianity and Islam are on a collision course, competing for converts and influence. Some countries "might be brought to ruin by the clash of jihad and crusade."
To understand the future of Christianity, then, keep your eye on those Southern believers who reject the North's liberal outlook and who increasingly dominate the faith.
(Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America.)
Daniel Pipes
This could very easily apply to the Southeastern part of the USA, also.
I like Pipes' approach. Thing is, what the Islamists don't understand is that the Christian faith animated those cultures most affected by the Greco-Roman military tradition. The Faith will go forward and crush the Jihad, but only after it has been provoked by unbelievable Islamic violence.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
I like Daniel Pipes, basiclly. If that's his view on Christian expansion, it doesn't explain the very rapid growth of Christianity in the first century, before Islam was invented.
Excellent questions. Allow me to offer an explanation.
Consider it this way: God gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, to the world. Christ came down from Heaven where he lived in glory, and was born on earth in a stable, raised by middle-class parents, and then began his earthly ministry where he was constantly insulted, belittled, and scoffed at by the "religious leaders" of the day. Many utterly rejected the exhalted Son of God. Finally, the perfect, beautiful Son of God was tortured, beaten like an animal, betrayed by His own people, and murdered by a pagan Roman government that existed only because God allowed it to exist. Jesus was the Passover Lamb, slain for the sins of all of us. Then He was resurrected to prove that He is God, and to show that he can overcome death. Because He was risen, we too can be risen in our spirit, and one day in our bodies. So consider, after subjecting His Son to all of those terrible things, after allowing God Almighty to be executed like a common criminal, would it make sense for God to casually say, "Oh well, follow Jesus if you want. Follow Buddha if you want. Whatever - makes no difference to me."
No, such a thing would spit in the face of the holy sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God would not subject Himself to such indignity, go to the maximum effort in love to save a sinful humanity, just to offer an "option."
Besides, Jesus Himself makes claims of exclusivity. He demanded that all who follow Him follow Him only. Consider the Gospel of St. John 14:6 - "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."
Or again, consider the words of St. Peter in Acts 4:12 -"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by hwich we must be saved."
Hope that helps. These things are very much worth careful consideration.
The only way to actively seek salvation is to seek Jesus. All other ways are deceptions that have no inherent value.
We do not know what the ultimate fate of those who do not believe in Jesus will be. But we do know the ultimate fate of those who do believe in Jesus and who are faithful to Him. And we also know that the best way to help our fellow man is to share the knowledge of Christ with him.
Why did Jesus just visit a bunch of Jews in Palestine 2000 years ago.
Jesus came not just to pay a visit, but to die. Because He became man, he had to become a specific man. And all men live and die in specific places and specific times. One specific time and place had to be chosen.
Does a Buddhist go to heaven?
Since, we aren't God, we don't know. But since Buddhism teaches its followers to avoid heaven at all costs - if any Buddhist gets into heaven it isn't because of Buddhism but in spite of it.
why would Jesus be the only path to God?
Short answer is because that's the way God choose to do it.
Does a Buddhist go to heaven?
This my friend is a question that can only be answered at a higher paygrade than those here(I'm assumeing you are talking about someone who has never heard the gospel).
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