*The following book review was written sometime around 2003, in Long Beach, CA.*
In his The Next Christendom, Peter Jenkins offers a fascinating look at the rapid expansion of contemporary Christianity. In describing what he calls, Southern Christianity, Jenkins dispels stereotypes about the make-up of Christians and methodically details Christianity’s growth in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A common misunderstanding among Northern Americans and Western Europeans is that Christianity belongs solely to middle-class whites. Christianity, explains, is anything but; it is increasingly the religion of the poor and non-white, a fact made poignant by the inroads the faith has made among India’s class of Untouchables. Jenkins also rejects the idea that Christianity among the poor is the ideological sibling of liberation theology, whose focus on God’s preference for the poor and oppressed and his siding with them in class struggle makes liberation theology both its most winsome and most repellent feature. While Christianity claims the allegiance of countless poor Latin-Americans and Africans, these people are less likely to see Christianity as an ideology to support social revolution than as a religion addressing spiritual needs and offering hope for the future. And, although strands of liberation theology exist, particularly that found in Latin American, southern Christianity is strikingly more conservative than its northern counterpart, a fact most apparent at the intersection of social issues and conservative values. For instance, homosexuality is openly disdained; and, the emphasis on gender equality in the U.S. and Europe is viewed with slight unease as a northern export. In spite of the Surprisingly to some may be that , the conservative leanings of southern Christians do not exclude women from leadership roles, since many females in Africa and Latin America remain at the center of several successful Christian movements.
Midway through the book, Jenkins has revealed that Christianity is a global movement - both in the color of its membership, and in their vastness. Thus, the new Christianity has moved south of the equator and exploded, as if the soil of the northern hemisphere proved too stubborn and unresponsive; in its new, more fertile environment, the once-beleaguered faith has taken root in China, India, and Nigeria, each doing its part to increase the number of Christian adherents with every newborn. The result of today’s growth, Jenkins drily informs us, is that by 2050, only one Christian out of five will be non-Latino and white.
It should be noted that Jenkins employs the loosest definition of ‘Christian’, one which encompasses Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and what some would consider fringe groups such as Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, and Christian groups with more than a little sprinkling of indigenous influence. Nevertheless, the number of even a subgroup of Jenkins ‘Christians’ is considerable; besides, Evangelicals may be the only group that sees Jenkins’ use of Christianity as a set back.
Jenkins does more in his book than reveal Christianity’s growth; he predicts that its rise in the southern hemisphere is likely to provoke religious wars, similar in intensity to those of medieval Europe. As Christianity and Islam expand, often side by side and, as they compete for converts, confrontation appears inevitable. Several countries in Africa and Asia - Sudan and Indonesia, to name a few - have already blurred the boundaries separating politics and religion, and imposed specifically Christian or Muslim laws.
Frequent role reversals in who evangelizes whom is only one of the ironies generated by the ascendancy of southern Christianity. Southern Christians have and will continue to make significant missionary inroads into the increasingly secular United States and already secular Western Europe. The Brazilian based Igreja Universal do Reino (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, or, IURD) and the Nigerian-based Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) are part of a growing trend on part of the churches in the south to establish mission enterprises in U.S. and European cities.
Another irony - “white soldiers following Black and Brown generals” - highlights the movement of clergy, particularly those in Anglican and Episcopalian Churches, to receive ordination from southern Christians. By now, several U.S. bishops have been granted ordination from African and Southeast Asian archbishops. Since an archbishop in either denomination is free to ordain whomever he pleases in his province, newly minted U.S. bishops are bishops of provinces outside the U.S., which makes these clergy expatriate American missionaries to America. Jenkins says this trend stems from the mounting sense of isolation felt by conservatives within American and European denominations - felt most intensely in new gender roles and changing mores on homosexuality - and that this isolation is assuaged by powerful overseas friends. Thus, the allure of southern Christianity to “White soldiers” lies not only in its rapid growth but in its theological conservatism.
All in all, Jenkin’s work is part statistical research, part vision of things to come. One finds objectively derived numbers and the solid methodology expected of a religious studies professional; one also encounters an interesting projection of what all that data means for the future of Christianity. This book is a must-read for missionaries and students of religion seeking to better understand the complexity and the ever-increasing diversity of Christianity.