Why Is Christianity Booming Outside Europe and North America?

Christian Post ^ | 08/26/2018 | John Stonestreet And Stan Guthrie

[SeekAndFind]

Why is Christianity booming in the global South, but seemingly stagnant in the global North? A new fascinating book offers an answer.

Dr. Glenn Sunshine is a long-time Fellow at the Colson Center, and he's that rare sort of historian who sees the sweep of intellectual and cultural history, and then brings it all together in a way that not only explains the past, but advances our understanding of the here and now.

His new book, co-authored with Jerry Trousdale, is called "The Kingdom Unleashed: How Jesus' 1st-Century Values Are Transforming Thousands of Cultures and Awakening His Church."

In the book, by telling compelling stories of God at work through ordinary people—both today and throughout history—Sunshine and Trousdale counter the prevailing myth that Christianity is in decline around the globe.

Take, for example this story from Africa.

Hassan, president of a ministry to Muslims, "reached out to one particularly resistant Muslim community that had martyred six Christian evangelists a few years ago." Hassan saw the community needed a school, so he "approached the Muslim leaders and offered to send a qualified teacher (who was also a trained church planter) if the community provided the necessary resources."

This practical assistance opened the door to these closed communities. In two years, Sunshine and Trousdale describe, seven churches were planted.

But there's more to this story. Some of the local Muslim leaders, upset by the spread of Christianity, hauled Hassan before the Muslim governor of the state. He used the opportunity instead to speak about the grace of God, and how God had helped the ministry provide this community with mobile medical clinics, dentists, safe water programs, seed banks, and schools—all to serve Muslims.

As Sunshine and Trousdale conclude, "Many of the Muslim clerics who had entered that meeting burning to have Hassan deported walked away with his business card or plans for further conversation."

And that's just one story of what's happening in the global South. Here are some amazing statistics: In 1900, there were only nine million Christians in all of Africa; by 2000, there were 335 million. In Latin America, there were a mere 50,000 Protestants in 1900; today, there are more than 64 million, and most of them since the 1960s.

As Glenn told me on the BreakPoint podcast, "The fact is, the church is growing faster than it ever has in human history." We're seeing disciple-making movements boom across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The story is not the same, however, in the global North. One reason may be the bifurcated vision of the Kingdom and the Gospel that's so prevalent in Europe and North America. We tend to focus either on individual salvation or social justice.

But since the time of Jesus right up until today, wherever the Gospel has flourished and spread like wildfire, believers were steeped in prayer, and committed to a "full-orbed" vision of the Gospel. That vision includes preparing souls for heaven, but also includes advancing kingdom truth, values and restoration in social structures and institutions.

Throughout "The Kingdom Unleashed," Sunshine offers amazing historical examples of Christians who lived this way. For example, Baptist missionary William Carey sought to save souls in India, but he also introduced libraries, agricultural improvements, hospitals, and schools. Not unlike what we see today with Christians like Hassan in Africa.

Glenn writes frequently at our website BreakPoint.org, and his latest article addresses another malady afflicting the Church in the global North: Secularism. He's spot on. And while you're at BreakPoint.org, click on the BreakPoint podcast to hear Glenn describe his new book "The Kingdom Unleashed."

And for a full picture of what God is doing through His Church around the world, get a copy of this powerful book, "The Kingdom Unleashed."

[DIRTYSECRET]

Doesn’t matter. /they’re getting killed elsewhere.

[Persevero]

The Holy Spirit works where He works. He is a person, the third person of the trinity. It is not a matter of programs and plans per se. He often works through the faithful evangelism of His people but then again He is the one sanctifying us is He not.

[gaijin]

Because there is a small, wealthy, leftist, secular tribe of media-savvy people who form the beating heart of the extremely suicidal assault on Christianity.

And because they are smart people of good taste, they chose not to live in Those Other Places.

So in those other places, Christianity survives, even thrives.

These suicidal but strangely not insane people chose not to live in Iran, and Christianity there is expanding.

Mostly they do not live in China and Korea —Christianity there also is expanding.

They definately do not live in Africa, aside from some key capitol cities, and Christianity there also is expanding.

But their view is that the key element in thwarting their effort (and that of their lackeys) to create heaven on earth is Western Civ, with all the troublesome questions that they pose to Leftists:

“Hey, when is Communism going to work, show me somewhere that it has”

“Why can Lefties have a media voice, but we can’t..?”

Such questions energize elections, making them real instead of artifice strictly for show.

These questions are very difficult to win in a real dialogue with the questioner, so their solution is for the questioners to Simply Go Away —as in forever.

[Truthoverpower]

Christ will win
Have no
Doubt
So will the Buddha who taught Christ on his trip to Asia in his 20s

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"In Latin America, there were a mere 50,000 Protestants in 1900"

Interesting statistic.

Amway was booming in America about the same time as megachurches and televangelism, but not so much anymore. Now it's booming in the third world along with Mormonism, Scientology, megachurches, and televangelism.

Birds of a feather...

[Jumper]

Let the USA fall to European centric sicialism and it will trigger a global trafe collapse eith 7 years; then from the misery Christianity will again rise.

[Katya]

is this actually a serious question? Europe AND the US are first world nations, where even the poor live a standard of living that is enviable. The second and third world are still experiencing suffering and instability... so of course religion is a comfort and offers HOPE.

FYI, I’m not an atheist, dumping on religion, or judging and evaluating.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Do you have some sort of special permission to leave anti-Semitic posts on this forum or something?

Your posts are disgusting. Chrstianity creates its own enemy by its doctrine of an "evil gxd" at war with the Good G-d. Anywhere such a belief exists, both will have their worshipers.

Chrstianity's problems don't come from Jews. They come from old line chrstians who have "flipped" to the alleged "angel of light" who is trying to free us from the "demiurge." That's why the most radical sectors of society are the very oldest and most established.

But just go ahead and keep blaming the Jews. You're just mad because G-d didn't choose you, and your "nationalism" is a pale imitation of the Real Thing.

[jjotto]

“Halacha Hee: Esav Sonei L’Yaakov”

“It’s a law: Esau hates Jacob”

[Biggirl]

It is because of God first calling Abraham that the idea of one God began.

[Arlis]

The answer: James 2:5

“the poor are rich in faith....”

The rest of us have so much, our faith is too much in our comfort of having all we need.

I have worked with the real poor of Nicaragua where the stark poverty everywhere knocks the breath out of you. Having nothing, they easily believe........

[Phinneous]

Maybe he means the WASP elite media tribe?

[Buckeye McFrog]

Because life is still hard in those places and people have not forgotten gratitude.

[Eleutheria5]

Christianity is booming where people are threatened by either Islam or communism. They need a rallying point, and Christianity is it.

But in North America and Europe, Christian churches pointedly refuse to be a rallying point. They are either infested with liberal inclusiveness, and keep assuring their putative congregants that they are not threatened, merely xenophobic and bigoted. Or they are co-opted by some form of left wing ideology that is a threat in and of itself.

But they are threatened in the Northern hemisphere, and let down by their Church. So either they will form a new, more militant and more orthodox church, or they will espouse some possibly hate-filled secular ideology that the Churches will loudly deplore and condemn, but nobody will be listening, because they have made themselves irrelevant and have no mission that answers their flocks’ real needs.

[gaijin]

God chose YOU..?

By your own admission years ago, you are a Southern Redneck who goes around mascarading as a Jew.

I don't mean you fail to keep kosher, that you don't go to temple --there's noting unusual in that:

I mean you are a freaking GOY, 100%. You pretend. It's a little like when I was 7 years old and wanted to grow up to be an INDIAN and my younger sister wanted to grow up to be a HORSE.

But, uh...you're not 4 years old so it's not the same thing.

Are you sure Jewish people want you going about this charade..? It must be awkward and embarrassing to encounter. Or do you hoodwink them, too, not just the good people, here..?

Your act is so over the top, such an in-your-face characature, it's like one of those fat, fake Navy SEALS who gets gussied up in a fake uniform and muscles in on photos at the last second.

It's a form of SICKNESS.

Years ago, I caught you doing this, and you know what..?

On a different thread you started kissing MUZZIE a$s, deriding Christian people (again, much earlier you admitted you were one) as *POLYTHEISTS* (this had something to do with the Trinity, as I vaguely recall).

Maybe you sometimes also fancy yourself as a Muslim..?

You have lost track of what you ARE, you have been doing this for so long.

[onedoug]

God chooses us all by our being born.

Stolen Valor is not the appropriate context here.

[Phinneous]

Gaigin (”foreigner” if I recall my Japanese coach’s teachings....to this yudaiagin)

ZC accurately represents the orthodox Jewish views of the trinity and clearly represents the Torah’s requirement of the non-Jew, the Noahide Laws.

Do Orthodox Jews get upset if your Christian opinion damns a Holocaust victim to eternal hell? (Answer—no. Maybe not-yet-observant Jews, but not the observant.) So why get bent out of shape if we disagree with you parsing the Almighty into three?

[gaijin]

Ya know what..?

I think it’s great you’re a yudaiajin. And I think people whose faith is Noachide are fine.

And I find questions and differences genuinely interesting.

I welcome sober debate, and I learn a lot from it.

What I didn’t like about the vignette that I cited was the, “Thank G-d we are in league in our shared, strong committment to monotheism against those disgusting CHRISTIANS..!” element there was to it, at the time.

I didn’t give excruciating detail because simply to recall it was uncomfortable and embarrassing.

Besides a strong Israel, one of the best defenses for Jews everywhere is a warm and relationship with their best allies, Christians, particularly Evangelicals (full disclosure, I am not an Evangelical, though I think they’re fine).

It constantly amazes me, though, the way that Sarah Palin —a YUGE, outspoken ally of Israel— is constantly and wantonly ridiculed for....well, I don’t know what, really, only that the most teeth-gnashing come from a wealthy, cerebral, leftist and very secular group who seem to take a weird pride in not going to temple, etc.

Indeed, that antipathy and activism (and committment to various forms of collectivism) seems to somehow SUBSTITUE for genuine religiosity, which I think would go much better.

I think a great many of his posts, when I have noticed them, are constructive but on this question of putting Jews and Christians more closely together...?

Nah, he drives us apart, almost every time. And typically there is much screaming and a frequent interjection of his involves the admonishment that he has been chosen by G-d, as I think you would write.

It’s aggressive and creepy and has been going on for well over 15 years.

[familyop]

"Because there is a small, wealthy, leftist, secular tribe of media-savvy people who form the beating heart of the extremely suicidal assault on Christianity."

There's nothing small about the horde of abominable, assorted freak Democrats who assault the religion of their own foremothers. They are about half of the U.S. population. And the poor ones are as much to blame as the rich ones.