In his award winning book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Philip Jenkins argues that “far from being an export of the capitalist West, a vestige of Euro-American imperialism, Christianity is now rooted in the Third World, and the religion’s future lies in the global South.” (xi) Jenkins thesis which has been generally accepted has far reaching implications for theology and religious practice. Jenkins argues that the different cultural context in which Christianity is embedded shapes theology and religious practices. For example Jenkins argues that “Christianity changed thoroughly when a movement founded in a Jewish and Hellenistic context moved into the Germanic lands of Western Europe during the early Middle Ages.” (6) For example the atonement was understood through “Western European notions of legality and feudalism.” (7) Thus, the demographic shift in which the Southern Hemisphere becomes the new center of Christianity has far reaching implications for Christian theology and practice.
One of my favorite aspects of the book is that Jenkins takes common myths that are floating around in popular literature and debunks them with statistical data and historical research. I would like to highlight three myths that Jenkins debunks.
The First myth is that Christianity is in the decline and on the verge of being extinct. Jenkins describes this common myth when he writes, “For more than a century, the coming decline or disappearance of religion has been a commonplace assumption of Western thought, and church leaders have sometimes shared this pessimistic view.” (10) The root of this myth lies probably in the fact that most church growth is not found in the US or Europe. Jenkins notes, “Christianity should enjoy a worldwide boom in the new century, but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European, nor Euro-American.” (2) Jenkins provides statistical evidence of Christianity’s growth. For example Africa had in 2005 389 million Christians and is expected to grow to 595 million in 2025. (2-3).
The second myth is that Christianity is “a white or Western ideology that was foisted on the rest of an unwilling globe” through colonialism. Jenkins notes, “Founded in the Near East, Christianity for its first thousand years was stronger in Asia and North Africa than in Europe, and only after about 1400 did Europe (and Europeanized North America) decisively become the Christian heartland.” (19) In the second chapter of his book Jenkins debunks this myth through appealing to historical sources that are easily available. For example, he points to the fact that besides the Roman Empire which established Christianity as its official religion in 313 Ethiopia and Armenia “established Christianity as their own official religion in the fourth century. Almost certainly, Armenia was the first state anywhere to establish Christianity as an official faith, which it did around the year 300.” (23) Furthermore he points out that “Nestorian missionaries penetrated deeply into Central Asia and China by the seventh century, following the Silk Route. The Nestorians and their ‘luminous doctrine’ were welcomed at the imperial court, and in 638, a church was erected in the capital of Ch’ang-an, then perhaps the largest city in the world.” (26) Jenkins also points to the St. Thomas (Mar Thoma) Church in India which might have been established in the first century. Thus far from being merely “Western” Christianity has always been rooted in non-western cultures.
A third myth is that wherever missionary efforts brought Christianity it remained something foreign and was only available in foreign cultural form. Of course in early missionary efforts there is some truth to this critique. However, one important point that mostly gets neglected in this critique is that Christianity within a short period of time of arriving in a new host culture it “acquired local roots.” (34) The truth of this assertion can be seen when one poses the following question: “missions were an arm of colonialism, and once the colonial governments were withdrawn, so also should their religious manifestations.” (50) However Christianity did not withdraw once colonies gained independence. Jenkins concludes: “If the modern missionary stereotype had any force, we can scarcely understand why the Christian expansion proceeded as fast as it did, or how it could have survived the end of European political power. There must have been a great deal more to Southern Christianity than the European-driven mission movement.” (51) He then moves on and states: “We can suggest all sorts of reason why Africans and Asians adopted Christianity, whether political, social, or cultural; but one all-too-obvious explanation is that individuals came to believe the message offered, and found this the best means of explaining the world around them.” (52) It should be clear now that Christianity did not remain foreign where it was newly introduced but quickly acquired local roots.
A lot more could be said about Jenkins book. But for now I will leave it at this. I would like to hear whether or not you find Jenkins debunking of the three myth’s mentioned above accurate?
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