The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

Again a case where I wish I could give 4,75 stars, or assign stars to different aspects of a book.

Jenkins presents a convincing case that Christianity will dominate the future of humankind. Lots of data, and well-interpreted data too. I only wish he wasn’t so acritical towards neopentecostalism, Romanism and other heresies, because he ends up loosing the dimension of the quality, influence and endurance of faith.

Crucially, he states the future of Christendom stems from the so-called ‘Global South’, or more precisely Africa, Asia, Latin America and their diasporas and missions; also, that future Christendom will stem from currently charismatic, conservative Christians (whatever they become in the future), and he implies mostly from show more Evangelicals (more so than from charismatic Romanists). As David Paul ‘Spengler’ Goldman puts it, the next Christian army on Mecca may be African or Chinese, but not European.

All in all, a nice counterpoint to the catastrophism about Islam and secularism. show less

Jenkins discusses his topic, non sine causa, sed sine fine. This is a real Goodreads star rating: the book is great, but I didn't like it very much, because it's an exceptionally well-organized data dump. Did you know that Christianity will probably be a non-Western religion pretty soon? Here's your statistical proof. That's pretty much it, though it is entirely skimmable, so you can find the specific datum you're looking for. But if I never read the phrase "Demography shows..." again, it will be too soon.

An interesting thesis concerning a major global shift in the center of Christianity from the West to the areas of Asia, South America and Africa. The new members from these areas, coming in record numbers, are characterized as poor, conservative, Pentecostal and fervent in their beliefs. The author theorizes that this phenomena has been under-reported because the more liberal Western Church does not find this a satisfying situation. The book is carefully researched with charts and maps and covers the hot-button issue of where the rise of Islam fits into this developing scenario.

this book is a wake up call to those of us in the church of the western global north. charts out where the church is headed in the next 50 years and reminds the church in the global north, the church is exploding in all other parts of the world except here.

Great book. Lots of very good statistics and trends on global Christianity, other religions, and shifts.