How Christianity is Growing Around the World
By Charles Colson
Breakpoint Ministry

CBN.com -- In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington predicts that demographics will decide the clash between Christianity and Islam. And, as he puts it, "in the long run, Muhammad wins out."

In this instance, Huntington is wrong. For the foreseeable future there will be many more Christians than Muslims in the world.

As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.

For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.

According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.

But at that point, only one-fifth of the worlds Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown.

And these changes will be more than demographic. Jenkins points out that who he calls "Southern Christians" -- those living in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia -- are far more conservative, theologically and morally, than their counterparts in the West.

Thus, as Christianity becomes more Southern, it becomes more biblically orthodox. While people like Bishop John Shelby Spong and Templeton Prize winner Arthur Peacock insist that Christianity must abandon its historic beliefs to survive, it is precisely these historic beliefs that attract our Southern brethren.

And thats why in Spong and Peacocks own Anglican Communion African bishops are ordaining missionaries to re-convert the West.

This story of Christianitys explosive growth is one of the great untold stories of our time -- a story that North American Christians need to hear.

Its a story that repudiates those who say that Christians must compromise their beliefs to remain relevant. The opposite is the case. Biblical orthodoxy is winning converts while churches that have lost their biblical moorings languish.

This shift of Christianitys "center of gravity" is also a reminder to Western Christians that we are not the whole show, and we have to start thinking differently about ourselves. We are part of a much larger community: the worldwide Church.

Finally, its a sign that, no matter how bad things seem at home, God is at work throughout the world. Everywhere its proclaimed, the Gospel is changing lives and societies.

In this scary new world of globalization one thing remains true: Its Jesus who people of every realm and tongue bless.

The Anglican church in the US like the other churches in the US has rather disgraced itself - what is it - gay bishops?
Someone somewhere must believe in gay bishops and millionaire pastors.
S.

Christianity, the only truly international faith, will continue to grow world wide, regardless of the persecution and death

There may be homo Bishops but they sure ain't Christian! The African Anglican churches will not recognise them and in Canada whole churches have left the Canadian group and joined the African Diocease

Introduction:

The Islamic religion has a long history of myth making. The claim they are the fastest growing religion in the world is pure myth. We have collected the latest statistics from David A. Barrett’s huge two volume, "World Christian Encyclopedia", the 2001 AD edition. In case you haven’t heard of this work, it is the world standard for religious statistics.

Muslim's claim that their growth rate is 235 percent and 47 percent for Christianity. This statistic came from the Readers Digest Almanac and Yearbook 1983, and represents 235 percent increase over 50 years. Muslims always leave off the 50 year fact to make it appear they are going 235% every year. A simple review of the readers Digest study shows that the growth rate of Islam vs. Christianity is directly linked to the birth rate in Third World countries where Islam dominates and not actual conversions to each religion. Christianity has always been larger than Islam. These statistics from Readers Digest are over 20 years old. Further, we do not consider readers digest to be an authority on such matters. Why will Muslims not quote real authoritative statistics from certified research groups who show Islam is not the fastest growing religion in 3/4’s of the worlds countries.

1. There are over a billion Muslims in the world today, including 3 to 5 million in the U.S., making it the second most populous religion on earth after Christianity.
2. Islam is the religion which has developed from the preaching and life of Muhammad, a citizen of the city of Mecca in Arabia, who early in the seventh century of the Christian Era appeared as a preacher of monotheism to his own people and founded a religious movement which today counts perhaps as many as 300,000,000 followers, mostly in the heat belt from Indonesia to Morocco. (Islam: Muhammad and His Religion, Arthur Jeffery, 1958, p xi-xiv)

Before we examine the true facts from informed statisticians, we want to make it clear that we are not claiming Christianity is the fastest growing religion on earth. Such a claim is a needless as it is irresponsible. Having said this, in terms of sheer numbers, there are more Christians being added to planet earth, than any other religion on earth, including Islam. (see Table 1-2 for proof.)

Relative size and growth of Islam to Christianity:

1. From Table 1-1, there are 1.9 Billion Christians making up 31% of the world population, whereas there are only 1.2 Billion Muslims making up only 20% of the population. It seems that Allah's little trick by making Judas appear like Jesus, so Jesus could escape crucifixion and Judas was crucified in his place, kind of backfired, since 31% of the world's population never learned Allah played a trick and really believes that Jesus not only died, but was raised from the dead! This should be most troubling for Muslims to think that "Allah's deception" (Qur'an 4:156) actually became the world's largest religion!
2. From Table 1-1, the relative growth rates of Islam to Christianity are compiled from data that ended the very year before the great terrorist attacks of 911 against the world trade towers in 2001 and the train bomb in Spain in 2004. Statisticians are predicting that Islamic motivated terrorism will last the decade and bring Islam into great disrepute with the world population. This will have a very strong dampening effect on the long term predicted Islamic growth rates for the years 2025 and 2050.
3. From Table 1-1 you can see that the world growth rate of Muslims is 2.13, and for Christians it is 1.36. A closer look reveals, however that the birth rate of Muslims world wide, is literally double that of Christians. This is due to the fact that Muslims are largest in the developing world where dirt floors, thatched roofs and large families are common. When you the actual conversion rate, where men chose their religion, rather then are born into it, you can see that Christians are converting, on a percentage basis, almost twice as many as Muslims (1.7:1). This means that individual Christians are out converting Muslims almost two to one! What this means, is that as third world Muslim controlled countries gain the advantages of education and technology found in the Western world, their birth rate will drop off to match that of the West, but Christians will still continue to out convert them at a rate of 1.7:1.

What is The Fastest Growing Religion?

Short answer: Christianity

Slightly longer answer: Christianity is the fastest growing religion in absolute growth, meaning the fastest growing religion in the annual increase of new adherents. The absolute growth number is calculated as the annual number of new Christian converts subtracted the number of ex-Christians + number of births subtracted number of deaths (new converts - former Christians + births - deaths).

Christianity is the fastest growing religion at both parameters, both in absolute number of new converts and absolute number of new Christians due to population growth. In all, this sums up to an additional approximately 25.2 million new Christians annually(Table J). 22.7 million due to population growth and 2.5 million due to conversions(Table J).

Another slightly longer answer: Another way to calculate growth is in relative terms. How much does a particular religion grow (or shrink) compared to last year. Since relative growth favours smaller base numbers, in terms of relative growth, the fastest growing religion in the world will be some very small obscure sect few people outside the sect have ever heard of. The mathematics of relative growth dictates that it much easier to post impressive sounding relative growth rates, if your base numbers are small. A small sect growing from 5 to 10 adherents, sums up a relative growth of 100% - but with only 5 new adherents. A slightly larger sect of 100 adherents, adding 5 new adherents to this only results in a relative growth of 5%. Relative growth favours smaller religions.

homo?

How "christian" of you

Church attenders of the Zula nation can't be christian if they have multiple wives?
http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article264101.ece
S.

I'm not a big fan of any "religion" eventhough I come from a roman catholic family. But at the same time the last religion I would want to follow is Islam.