Posted on 06/20/2011 11:16:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In the past 10 days, Christian churches have been attacked in Egypt and Nigeria and improvised explosive devices have been placed on the doorsteps of Christian families in Iraq – which events, taken together, could mean a co-ordinated assault on Christians by Muslim holy warriors.
…. [However] As U.S. political scientist Walter Russell Mead observed in a celebrated essay last year, Christianity is now “on its biggest roll” in its 2,000-year history. Many Christians, though, are only dimly aware of the faith’s phenomenal advance. You could call it the greatest story never told: the epilogue.
“In absolute numbers of adherents and in global market-share, Christianity is at an all-time high,” he says. “In the last 50 years, Christianity has surpassed Islam both as the most popular religion in sub-Saharan Africa and as the leading Abrahamic religion in China. The Roman Catholic Church alone claims as many adherents as the number of Sunni Muslims in the world.” Further, the global rise of Pentecostalism produced the fastest growth of any religious movement in history: This single church increased its membership “from zero to 500,000 million in 100 years.” All together, Christians now outnumber Muslims two to one.
Writing in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, British foreign-relations scholar Scott M. Thomas (author of The Global Resurgence of Religion: The Struggle for the Soul of the 21st Century) concurs. Prof. Thomas says that the most dynamic religious explosion in the world is not an Islamic phenomenon. It is an evangelical Protestant phenomenon.
In his own essay (A Globalized God), Prof. Thomas says that evangelical Christians now number as many as 688 million people – reaching strategic mass in such countries as China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria. Evangelical Christians, he says, will be a major religious, social and political force in the world for the next 100 years.
All praise to God!
Thank you for an encouraging post. To God be the glory, great things He has done.
Prayers to Christians worldwide. Stay strong in the Lord brothers and sisters. All glory to you Lord.
500,000 million = 500,000 X 1,000,000 = 500,000,000,000 = 500 billion.
The Earth's population alone is about 6 billion.
A very careless typo, for sure.
Wikipedia’s article on Pentecostalism shows a more modest, though still impressive figure of “over 250 million worldwide.” Added to that of course are the Pentecostal souls that have now gone to heaven, but it wouldn’t bump the overall number up by three orders of magnitude. Unless there is a Pentecostal-Mormon merger that I’m unaware of, and they’re counting the populations of other planets (just kidding, just kidding).
Fujian Province in China is approaching 25% Christian. My great-great-grandfather was a missionary there and would be well pleased to see the fruits of his efforts.
Islam is one problem, but one that is a physical one. Secularism is more a mental issue that comes as life becomes "too easy".
I'm quite familiar with Indonesia. Since its beginning, Christians already comprised of about 10% of its population. Like in many other places, many people who 'converted' to evangelical churches actually were from 'traditional' denominations. I don't recall any data about mass conversion from Islam (or Buddhism/ Hinduism) to Christianity in that country. If anything, I see many stories about Christian public figures who converted to Islam. (Including a publisher of a Catholic 'newspaper', a former minister, and a handful of artists).
Take confort, though, there is major growth of the Christian faith in global south nations. So it is on a roll, God be praised.
http://www.amazon.com/Next-Christendom-Coming-Global-Christianity/dp/0195146166
Cool
so the one billion catholics and half billion Orthodox don’t count?
They do.
They said Christian not Catholic
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