- Jan 25, 2009
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Loved this quote from the book that Jenkins said in the first chapter of The New Christendom:
“We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide. Over the past five centuries or so, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe and European-derived civilizations overseas, above all in North America. Until recently, the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived in White nations, allowing theorists to speak smugly, arrogantly, of ‘European Christian’ civilization. Conversely, radical writers have seen Christianity as an ideological arm of Western imperialism…”
“Over the past century, however, the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America….“Some 2 billion Christians are alive today, about one-third of the planetary total. The largest single bloc, some 560 million people, is still to be found in Europe. Latin America, though, is already close behind with 480 million. Africa has 360 million, and 313 million Asians profess Christianity….By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites..””
What Jenkins notes is so spot on, IMHO - as it seems that Eurocentric thought has dominated much of the world of Christendom for a long time...even as it concerns the images you see on Biblical portrayals. But the election of the new Pope has helped others see the current global trends in religion and realize that it is wrong to equate Christianity with White Eurocentrism. Much of the focus of North American studies in church history centers around Western Europe, but a proper snapshot of the average Christian during the first few centuries of this religion was one of African and Middle Eastern descent, from places such as Egypt, Syria, and much of North Africa. It's amazing that at one time we had to go to many of the third world nations to minister..but now, countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa are sending their missionaries to North America and Western Europe to evangelize.“Over the past century, however, the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America….“Some 2 billion Christians are alive today, about one-third of the planetary total. The largest single bloc, some 560 million people, is still to be found in Europe. Latin America, though, is already close behind with 480 million. Africa has 360 million, and 313 million Asians profess Christianity….By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites..””
While only 12% of non-Hispanic U.S. Catholics identify as charismatic, charismatic Christianity is "mainstream" in the Global South. And that's a hard thing to wrestle with for many in the Global North who think they are the standard. While many Catholic "liberals" seek a Catholicism indistinguishable from the beliefs of liberal mainline Protestants and while some Catholic "conservatives" seek to recreate the 1950s (many times a 1950s that never really existed), worldwide Catholicism has moved on, as Jenkins points out: to a much more charismatic form where healings and visions and spiritual warfare are normal, where moral and doctrinal teaching is conservative, and where progressive political views especially favor the poor. And, as Jenkins said in another talk, that same Global South has come to us and is now here in the United States.
You'd probably enjoy one of the talks from Philip Jenkins on the ways that the Church in Europe still has a lot to look forward to and hope in.
His podcast are pretty good stuff in regards to discussing Global Christianity. Have you heard of the how Philip Jenkins had a new book come out entitled The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. The book is a follow-up to his 2002 title, The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity and is a really excellent read on the issue 
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