By Editor Bob Terry
As Baptists prepare for the June 4 Day of Prayer and Fasting for World Evangelization, they do so with a sense of anticipation. In parts of the world, the growth of the gospel has been nothing short of phenomenal during the last century. Christian missiologists project continued growth in many of these places.
Baptists also bring a sense of uneasiness to this special observance because the Christian faith seems to be slipping in places where it has been strong historically. Indications of the future in these places appear confusing, at best.
When the 20th century dawned on the continent of Africa, less than 7 percent of the population claimed any kind of identification with the Christian faith. At the dawn of the 21st century, the percentage had climbed to almost 44 percent. Christian leaders point to such rapid growth as a modern-day miracle. Today about 390 million people on the African continent claim identity with the Christian faith. A hundred years ago, the number was less than 9 million. Growth at such an astounding rate is not anticipated for the future, but forecasts indicate the growth of Christianity will continue to outpace population growth in Africa for at least the next 20 years.
Asia has been another miracle of God. The extensive work of missionaries in China and other Asian countries during the last half of the 19th century resulted in slightly more than 2 percent of the population embracing the Christian faith when the 20th century dawned. When communist governments came to power in the mid-1900s, Christians around the world feared what would happen to the fledgling faith.
In 1979 when the Chinese government began reopening churches, the world was astonished to see the growth of the Christian church in China and across Asia. While exact figures are hard to come by, missiologists place the number of people in Asia with a Christian identity at more than 300 million in 2000.
Numerically, the growth moved to this amount from slightly less than 21 million Christians in 1900. Amazingly these same sources report almost 43 million new Christians in Asia in the last five years. That brings the number of individuals associated with Christian churches to almost 345 million.
As in Africa, the growth of Christianity has outstripped population growth. Today almost 10 percent of the population identifies with the Christian faith, and that percentage is expected to grow during the next 20 years.
South America is another place where identification with the Christian faith has outstripped population growth. About 80 percent of the population identified with the Christian faith in 1900. A century later, that percentage was up to almost 91 percent. These percentages are based on the broadest definitions of identity and are not the same as Baptist teachings of a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Still they show the impact of the Christian faith in these geographical areas.
Only in those places where the Christian faith has been the strongest from a historical standpoint has identity with the Christian faith weakened.
Europe was known as “Christian Europe” in 1900 with almost 90 percent of the population claiming identity with the Christian faith. That percentage has gone steadily downhill, researchers say. Today about 73 percent of Europeans acknowledge identity with Christianity. While the 531 million people in Europe claiming Christian identity give the continent the largest number of such people in the world, the number is actually shrinking. It is expected to decrease more than 3 percent — about 18 million people — in the next 20 years.
North America entered the 20th century at the zenith of Christian growth. During the 1800s, the percentage of people identified with the Christian faith had grown from less than 10 percent to more than 70 percent. So confident of the future were North American Christians that they labeled the 20th century the “Christian century.”
Their confidence was short-lived. It was not until after World War II that religious zeal carried the Christian identity statistics upward. Unfortunately the identity was not sustained. Recent losses caused Christianity to end the century with a slightly smaller percentage than at the beginning. One source places the percentage of North Americans claiming a Christian identity today at 68 percent. Another places it at 75 percent. Each has a beginning number that is about 5 percent higher than the ending number.
Oceana has been like other areas with a European heritage. The decline in the number of people with a Christian identity has been about 5 percent, from around 72 percent to about 67 percent.
In the United States, Christians cannot be happy with a drop in Christian identity of almost 10 percent since 1990. It is troubling that 14 percent of Americans report having no religion at all, according to the latest American Religious Identification Survey. Also, 23 percent of young adults ages 18–34 report they are secular or somewhat secular and only about one quarter — 27 percent — label themselves as religious.
By contrast, almost half of senior adults — 47 percent — call themselves religious and less than 10 percent label themselves as secular.
But God seems to be moving. According to a recent report by The Barna Group, a research organization focused on spiritual development, 45 percent of all adults in the United States answer faith questions in ways that place them in the “born again” category. That is the highest percentage of adults in the 25 years Barna has tracked this category. For example, the percentage was 31 percent in 1983. Barna credits the change to a 16-point jump in baby boomers who now fall into the “born again” category. More than half of baby boomers — 53 percent — now answer faith questions in ways that place them in this category.
Reflecting on the data, George Barna of The Barna Group said, “[A]t least more people are becoming attuned to the importance of the life, death, resurrection and message of Jesus Christ.”
That is the hope of the Day of Prayer and Fasting for World Evangelization — that God will move in such ways that more and more people will become attuned to the importance of the life, death, resurrection and message of Jesus Christ. It seems to be happening in some places in the world. May it happen everywhere so that people of “every tribe and language and people and nation” may come to faith in God through Jesus Christ.
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