I've been lazy about writing, so I once again post something written by another.
An interesting article about the changing face of Christianity throughout the world, basically putting forth a notion of a coming "Southern" (as opposed to Eastern or Western) Christianity, rooted in Africa and Latin America, possibly ending the global ignoring of the Southern hemisphere.
The author notes that there are currently more Christians in Africa than there are people in the United States, and the same will be true of Latin/South America in the coming years, while the numbers in Europe and the rest of the western world decline, and that this new church mostly resembles the early church.
Excerpted:
This “global Christianity” threatens to shatter the illusions of the post-Enlightenment intelligentsia, which has assumed for generations that Christianity will either disappear entirely or gradually accommodate its teachings to the spirit of the modern age. The Lambeth Conference is just one example of how this theory has foundered on global Christianity’s moral and theological traditionalism. The church in the Third World has thrived demographically despite brooking no compromise on issues like homosexuality, the ordination of women, the acceptance of divorce, and the tolerance of abortion — practices that many in the West have either advocated or tacitly accepted.
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This revival of the early church’s spirit is remarkable, but more remarkable still is the extent to which it has been ignored in the West. Many do not even know that these Christians exist, at least in such numbers — and why should they, when the media’s vision casts Islam as the defining religion of the developing world? Many more, like Bishop Spong, are somehow embarrassed by the fervor and traditionalism of Third World Christians; or worse, they are embarrassed by their very existence, which is after all the fruit of Western colonialism, missionary zeal, and other assorted evils of our less enlightened past.
Read on....
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