Despite a century-long decline, religious affiliation has shown a
marked resurgence globally since 1970. Both Christianity and Islam make
up growing segments of the world’s population. Africa and China have
witnessed the most marked religious change.
These are among the findings discussed by religious demographer Dr
Todd M. Johnson in an overview of religious identity and trends in world
Christianity since 1910, presented at the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva, on
13 March.
Hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) program on Ecumenical
Theological Education, Johnson’s lecture preceded his participation in a
WCC sponsored conference about the pedagogical uses of work from
research centers on global Christianity.
Johnson is associate professor of Global Christianity and director of
the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at
Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Massachusetts. He is co-author of several
important resources in the emerging field of religious demography,
including “The World’s Religions in Figures” (2013) and “Atlas of Global
Christianity” (2009).
Resurgence of several religious traditions has caused “a new wave of
interest” among scholars in a variety of fields, Johnson noted, and the
CSGC work is being widely cited. The CSGC holds 1 million documents and
draws on censuses, polls, interviews, and religious organizations for
its data on religious affiliation and trends.
The CSGC’s data stretches from 1910 to 2010 and fully confirm the
large-scale southward shift in Christianity’s center of gravity. Yet the
global character of the data also yields some striking trends.
It shows that in global numbers, religious affiliation is growing,
with 12 percent claiming no affiliation in 2010, versus 20 percent in
1970. Presently Christians of all sorts comprise 33 percent of the
world’s population, while Muslims comprise 22 percent (up from 12.6 in
1910).
Christians in the Global North comprised 80 percent of all Christians
in 1910, but today make up less than 40 percent. The collapse of
Chinese folk religion during the post 1949 period (from 22 to 6 percent
of China’s population) has been matched by the recent resurgence of
religion there, significantly driving global statistics.
The data also illustrate that animist and indigenous religious
traditions remain vibrant but have dramatically declined among both
African and Asian populations. Africa has witnessed strong growth in
Christian affiliation during the last 100 years, from 9 to 47.9 percent
claiming Christian affiliation.
Migration has become a large factor in religious demographics,
dramatically altering the religious make-up of some nations. The CSGC’s
research shows that statistics on Evangelical and Pentecostal groups are
difficult to compile, since the charismatic trend goes beyond
denominational affiliations.
Fastest growth over the century was seen in the category of agnostics
and atheists, though both categories have been shrinking since 2000.
For the first time, the rise in Christian affiliation in the Global
South is outpacing its decline in the North, fueling net growth of
Christianity globally.
If present trends continued, by 2050, 36 percent of the world’s
population would identify themselves as Christian, and by 2100
two-thirds of the world’s population would be either Christian or
Muslim, stated Johnson in his presentation.
He argued that while the discipline of religious demography is
emergent, its initial findings about the changing landscape of global
religious life pose deep questions about enculturation, theological
formulation, and church organization.
-- This is taken from a World Council of Churches release. The
WCC promotes Christian unity in faith, witness, and service for a just
and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in
1948, today it brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and
other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The
Church of the Brethren is a member communion.
Source: 4/5/2013 Newsline
No comments:
Post a Comment