Free Republic

We all know where priceless ancient manuscripts should be found: somewhere remote, preferably a desert, and we need a good hiding place; caves are perfect. In terms of creating a stereotype, the Dead Sea Scrolls are the model case, followed by the ancient Christian and Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, around the same time. Yet one of the greatest such discoveries in modern times broke all those rules, which might explain why it remains so thoroughly unknown outside quite a narrow specialist world. And we still are only beginning to come to terms with the implications.The...

The Next Christendom The Coming of Global Christianity By Philip Jenkins Oxford Univ. Press. 270p $28 A few years ago, the Episcopal bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, penned a book entitled Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong argued that Christianity would inevitably decline unless it abandoned much of its traditional belief system. A few decades hence we may regard Spong’s prediction with the same bemusement with which we regard the predictions of those who believed that the United States was fated to be eclipsed by Japan as the world’s reigning economic superpower. This is the contention of Philip...

The Next Christianity   PHILIP JENKINS In looking back over the enormous changes wrought by the twentieth century, Western observers may have missed the most dramatic revolution of all. While secular movements like communism, feminism, and environmentalism have gotten the lion's share of our attention, the explosive southward expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has barely registered on Western consciousness. Nor has the globalization of Christianity — and the enormous religious, political, and social consequences it portends — been properly understood. Ever since the sexual-abuse crisis erupted in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church in the mid-1980s, with...

People sometimes have vague fears about the Catholic Church, that we have a sinister plan to restrict their freedom. Since this is Fourth of July weekend (and it fits with our Scripture readings) I would like to address those fears. Once I had a conversation with a young woman concerned that the Catholic Church was trying to take away her “right to choose.” She described herself as “very pro-choice.” Fair enough, I told her, but I was curious how far she would take it. “Suppose,” I asked, “someone were mistreating their pet (not feeding it properly, allowing it to live...