Africa Home to Greatest Growth of Christians, Says Prof.

Africa is home to the greatest growth of Christianity in the world right now, according to a provost and professor of history at Calvin College

By Kenneth Chan, Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Africa is home to the greatest growth of Christianity in the world right now, according to a provost and professor of history at one of the most comprehensive colleges in the Midwest United States. While there were about 9 million Christians in all of Africa in 1900, by the year 2000 that number had grown to 380 million.

"It is in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Oceania that Christianity is flourishing," says Joel Carpenter of Calvin College. "In the global north—North America and Europe especially—the religion is barely holding its own. In addition the shape that Christianity takes in the global south and east is markedly different from how it looks in the north."

Carpenter says that while Christianity in the north tends to be much more individualistic, Christianity outside the North Atlantic region is much more dynamic and is marked by communal relationships and mutual obligations. In addition, Carpenter asserts that Christianity in the global south and east may be closer to classic Christian doctrines and imperatives than in the north where it has assumed modern, post-Christian cultural norms.

Northern, liberal Christianity has become a "do-as-you-please" religion deeply accommodated to the post-Christian values of the secular northlands, says Lamin Sanneh, a West African Christian.

Carpenter and Sanneh, along with D. Willis James professor of missions & world Christianity at Yale Divinity School, are editors of a forthcoming book on the topic from Oxford University Press called "The Changing Face of Christianity."

Sanneh says in the book's conclusion that the new Christianity of the global south and east—which bears the scars of hardship and persecution—will clash increasingly with its urbane and worldly northern counterpart.

Carpenter added that the rise of Christianity in the global south would also impact the Roman Catholic Church, which he believes some day will see an African pope.