But I thought that Christians in the rest of the world out number the West by quite a bit now? And that’s a good thing 
Where though? In the middle east they are already close to “extinsion”. In China they cant even worship. Japan and Korea has a small number if you compare it to its population. India as well. Sri lanka ,indonesia etc etc do not favor us at all
Traditional Christianity as we have seen it in mainstream culture as “closed-mined” “bigoted” and “not concerned with real world issues in the 21st century” is in my opinion and a new “revival” of a new Christianity will spring up that is in touch with the world and the 21st century issues we deal with today. Conservative Evangelical Christianity is still stuck in the 20th century in terms of the 80s cold war-culture war and Progressive Christianity is fumbling around trying to figure out what to do, and that final part is coming from a Progressive Christian himself. It will take some time but I feel in the near future the Christian Church will get back up on its feet and make some impact in the world again.
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Have you seen one of these progressive churches? For me these are the churches that lead people astray.
When you have these churches preaching acceptance by promoting every sin that exists its kinda problematic. Or you know taking parts out of the bible because they are “outdated”. So in my opinion if the progressive church is like those churches i have seen ,it will lead people at a false gospel
“Operation World” has some great maps about growth of Christianity, but Wikipedia summarizes some of it
Africa[edit]
Further information: Christianity in Africa
- Christianity has been estimated[1] to be growing rapidly in South America, Africa, and Asia.[79] In Africa, for instance, in 1900, there were only 8.7 million[1] adherents of Christianity; now there are 390 million,[1] and it is expected that by 2025 there will be 600 million Christians in Africa.[1] The number of Catholics in Africa has increased from one million in 1902 to 329,882,000.[1] From 2015 to 2016 alone, Africa saw an increase of 49,767,000 Catholics, a larger increase than any other continent.[97] There are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people.[ citation needed ]
- A 2015 study estimates 2,161,000 Muslim Africans that convert to Christianity.[84]
Also, as @mitchellmckain said, in some cases, persecution increased growth–China is a huge example. I read it’s growing faster there than it did in the Roman Empire.
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At 2018 there were more than 44 millions. Its 2020. I still think there are millions. Compared to 1 bilion of them though its still small
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Intriguing. Anyone I’d know? Rouser maybe?
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Yes…and Pete Enns, Rachel Held Evans, Brian McLaren, Brad Jersak, Brian Zahnd, I think.
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Christianity became identified with Europe after the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. But we must remind people to not conflate Christendom with the West. Res publica Christiana must remain universal.
The geographic center of Christendom has shifted before and will probably shift again. Christians outside of the West do not ultimately need the support of Western churches to survive. They need God. That does not mean we should not help them, but they have been able to persevere and in some cases thrive.
Nationalism is an issue because the nationalists in those countries see Christianity as a foreign threat to their national identity and culture. Militant Hindu nationalism in India, for example, is very unfriendly to Christians and Muslims.
South Korea is an outlier because Shinto Japan rather than the Christian West was the main imperialist threat to Korea. South Koreans historically perceived Christians as allies rather than enemies in their national liberation struggle. Many South Korean Christians have been involved in feminist and non-Communist labor movements which help their image as well.
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Good resources! Interestingly, the mission agency that my parents went to Africa with is now led by a Nigerian. Many of the missionaries are no longer from the West, but focus on unreached parts of the world
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Christianity was not originally from Europe. Missionaries (apostles) brought the message of Jesus to Europe, where it started to spread (with some twists added from European cultures). Now we are moving towards a multicultural society that somehow resembles the situation in the history. Europe is again a ‘mission field’ with a growing proportion of people who do not know much about Jesus and do not belong to any church. No need to travel to other continents to spread the word about Jesus. In fact, nowadays missionaries are coming from Africa and elsewhere to Europe to spread the good news about Jesus.
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As in history, a large proportion of people in Europe are still interested about spiritual things and supreme beings or God. They just say that they do not believe as churches teach. Surveys show this. I fear that one reason for the declining numbers of members in European churches is the blurred message. Many churches are increasingly liberal and have to re-interpret the scriptures or deny their validity today to modify the teaching to the values of the surrounding society. At the personal level, people who say that they believe in God do not show it in their life, or the behavior of believers is simply off-putting. If people do not see the power of God or loving christians in their life, they get the impression that there is nothing special in this religion. Maybe I’m partially wrong but this is my impression.
The good side is that there is still a possibility to reverse the trend. Especially if people will see the work of God in the lives of believers. This is a challenge for us believers, in Europe and elsewhere.
Maybe christians of the old world need to learn something from christians in the regions with growing churches.
Can you post the statistics? Mine says that the number of non affiliated with any religion or spirituality has increased a lot
I’m not well aware of surveys done in central or southern Europe but I just read parts of one recent survey done in the northern Europe (Gallup Ecclesiastica 2019). I guess it was part of wider ‘European Values Studies’.
According to the survey, especially the younger generations (age categories 15-29 and 30-39 years) show a wider range of religiousness or spirituality than the older generations. Less than 20% of young adults agreed with the claim ‘religion is important in my life’. Yet, a larger group called themselves ‘religious’. The proportion of atheists among young adults was about 20%. More than half did not identify themselves as religious persons but identified themselves as ‘spiritual persons’, ‘religiously liberal’ or ‘seekers’. That was true even among persons who identified themselves as unreligious.
The writers of the report concluded that being ‘spiritual seeker’ is part of cultural mainstream rather than a counterculture.
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According to Chapter 5 of “Being Christian in Western Europe” in Pew Research (2018), a very slight majority of respondents “describe themselves as neither religious nor spiritual.” The respondents who say that they are either religious but not spiritual, spiritual but not religious, or both religious and spiritual are a slight minority. The Western European median is 53% for the former and 50% for the latter. [1]
(This is not meant to rebut @knor’s comment, but I would like to look at your source if you have the link.)
I believe that minorities in Western European countries may be more likely to be religious and/or spiritual. Of all Americans, black people are most likely to be Christian, and I would not be surprised if it is the same case with black people in Western Europe. Many Christian churches in Western Europe also have reported numerous conversions of Muslims to Christianity. However, I cannot find any statistics so far, so take this information with a grain of salt.
(The French Republic still forbids collecting statistics on ethnicity, race, and religion, so I do not think we will find much data about immigrants, minorities, and religion in France.)
[1]
Results of questionaries depend much on how the questions have been formulated. I tried to compare the Pew report with a Finnish report that was based on a combination of data sources (the data used by Pew was one of them) and a larger sample. Unfortunately the report is in Finnish and the data of the latest questionary is not yet publicly available - the original data will become available with a delay.
The main differences appear to be in the questions asked (the larger data includes questions that were not asked in the European Values Studies) and in the detail of the analyses - larger data makes it
possible to analyse the results separately for age classes, genders, etc.
One interesting result based on the Finnish data was the rapid change that has happened in the attitudes of women. Young females seemed to be opposed to patriarchal thinking and values. They seemed to associate churches with patriarchal values, which may explain negative attitudes towards churches. If mothers are against churches, the transfer of Christian teaching and traditions to future generations stops. Finns are predominantly lutheran and >90% of population have been baptized as children. In the largest cities, the proportion of children that are baptized has dropped very rapidly to less than half of children. That is one sign of the rapid change happening in the age group <40 years.
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I think it is in decline in one way, and about to change and flourish in another. You might want to check out these emerging leaders of future Christianity:
- Francis Collins In Praise of Harmony: Francis Collins' 2020 Templeton Prize Address - YouTube
- Jordan Peterson - YouTube
Did petersom ever said he supported christianity?
I believe he does, though not in a direct declarative sort of way. His answers are complicated:
But I believe he draws people to Christ.