From what I've heard and seen, if any one group can claim explosive growth in Africa and other parts of the 3rd world, it would be the Pentecostals and like-minded non-denominational Charismatic groups. Baptists and like-minded baptistic groups are making huge inroads in Brazil, Guatemale, and other Latin American countries (there are some districts in Oaxaca and Guatemala where Baptists and Protestants now make up large minorities (say, above 30%), which is leading to quite a lot of persecution at the hands of the local Catholic establishments.
The Anglicans (who are jokingly referred to as "like Catholics, except without the congregation"), Lutherans, United Methodists, and other liberal-infested denominations are bleeding congregants like mad, mostly to more conservative bodies with lower standards of dress, music, etc., like the megachurches and the non-denominational churches. The Southern Baptists have picked up quite a number of disaffected mainliners, but have themselves lost quite a number to the Independent and Fundamental Baptists.
There's a lot of mixing and turning out there in the religious world of Christendom, but the general trends seem to be people moving from liberal to conservative bodies, and from formalistic, hierarchical bodies towards independent and "non-denominational" groups.
***Gallup polling seems to suggest that the percentage of religious adherents by major group in the USA, at least, has actually remained pretty stable - well within the margins of error - for a decade and a half now (granted, the data provided ends in 2001, but I can’t see as how the trends since then would suddenly have gone haywire).***
Agreed.
***From what I’ve heard and seen, if any one group can claim explosive growth in Africa and other parts of the 3rd world, it would be the Pentecostals and like-minded non-denominational Charismatic groups.***
Well, the fun is in the numbers, not the percentages. If you have a total of 1000 of a denomination this year and they recruit 1000 more, they’ve doubled. If you have 100 million and they recruit 10 million more, they’ve only gone up 10%.
***Baptists and like-minded baptistic groups are making huge inroads in Brazil, Guatemale, and other Latin American countries (there are some districts in Oaxaca and Guatemala where Baptists and Protestants now make up large minorities (say, above 30%), which is leading to quite a lot of persecution at the hands of the local Catholic establishments.***
Unlike, say, the fine treatment of Catholics in places like Northern Ireland :). It is true, though, that the Catholics did not make as great inroads to the natives, Indians and the most native-appearing mulattoes as many people had thought.
***There’s a lot of mixing and turning out there in the religious world of Christendom, but the general trends seem to be people moving from liberal to conservative bodies, and from formalistic, hierarchical bodies towards independent and “non-denominational” groups.***
I think that this needs to be looked at a little more closely. Rick Warren and Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen and the like have picked up large congregations, yet I would call none of them conservative. I think that a lot of people who call themselves Christian basically have left a church and moved to either semi-solitary practice or to a small fellowship group that calls itself Christian and, vaguely, they kind of are.