The world is witnessing a huge explosion of religious conversion and growth, and Christianity is growing faster than any other religion. Nietzsche's proclamation "God is dead" is now proven false. Nietzsche is dead. The ranks of the unbelievers are shrinking as a proportion of the world's population. Secularism has lost its identification with progress and modernity, and consequently it has lost the main source of its appeal. God is very much alive, and His future prospects look to be excellent. This is the biggest comeback story of the twenty-first century.
If you've been reading one of the atheist bestsellers like The God Delusion or God Is Not Great, you may have missed this news. If God is back, you may wonder, why don't I see it? The reason is that many of us live in the wrong neighborhood. "Visit a church at random next Sunday," Brent Staples writes in the New York Times, "and you will probably encounter a few dozen people sprinkled thinly over a sanctuary that was built to accommodate hundreds or even thousands." Yes, I've seen the "empty pews and white-haired congregants" that Staples describes. But then, Staples lives in
Of course my neighbors do not think of themselves as atheist. Very few of them belong to atheist organizations or subscribe to atheist literature. Some of them who are highly educated like to think of themselves as agnostic: they haven't made up their minds because the evidence simply isn't in yet. Others even consider themselves Christian, either because they were born that way, or because they attend church occasionally. The distinguishing characteristic of these people is that they live as if God did not exist. God makes no difference in their lives. This is "practical atheism." We all know people like this. Some of us hardly know anyone not like this. And sometimes we live this way ourselves.
If we live in the wrong neighborhood, we risk missing the most important development of our time-the global revival of religion. It's happening on every continent. In my native country of , Hinduism is undergoing a resurgence. So is Islam. As I have written about Islamic radicalism and terrorism I am often asked,"When will the Muslims understand the importance of secularism? When will we see an Islamic Reformation?" My answer is that Muslims will never understand the importance of secularism. Nor do they need to, because as we shall see, secularism is increasingly unimportant as a global phenomenon.
Moreover, Islam is in the middle of a reformation. We see a resurgence of Muslim piety not just in the Middle East but also elsewhere. At one time Turkey provided a model of Islamic secularism, but not any longer. No Muslim country is going the way of Turkey, and in recent years even has stopped going the way of Turkey.
Some Western analysts describe the religious revivals around the world in terms of the growth of "fundamentalism." This is the fallacy of ethnocentrism, of seeing the world through the lens of our own homegrown prejudices. Remember that "fundamentalism" is a term drawn from Protestant Christianity. It is an American coinage that refers to a group of early twentieth century Protestant activists who organized against Darwinian evolution and who championed the literal reading of the Bible. Fundamentalism is a meaningless term outside this context.
There are, of course, Hindu militants and Islamic radicals, and they are indeed a menace to the world. But the growth of religious militancy and the growth of religion are very different. One may seek to benefit from the other, but the two should not be confused. The resurgence I am talking about is the global revitalization of traditional religion. This means traditional Hinduism, traditional Islam, and traditional Christianity. By "traditional" I mean religion as it has been understood and practiced over the centuries. This is the type of religion that is booming.
Traditional religion is the mainstream, but it is not the only form in which religion appears today. There is also liberal religion. Here in the West, especially among the intelligentsia, we meet liberal Christians. Some of them have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church's missionaries to the world, they have become the world's missionaries to the church. They devote their moral energies to trying to make the church more democratic, to assure equal rights for women, and so on. A small but influential segment of liberal Christianity rejects all the central doctrines of Christianity. H.Richard Niebuhr famously summed up their credo: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
I have met liberal Christians who are good and sincere people. But their version of Christianity is full intellectual withdrawal, and it is also becoming less relevant. The liberal churches are losing members in droves. Once these churches welcomed one in six Americans; now they see one in 30. In 1960 the Presbyterian church had 4.2 million members; now it has 2.4 million. The Episcopal church had 3.4 million; now it has 2.3 million. The United Church of Christ had 2.2 million; now it has 1.3 million. Traditional Christians who remain within liberal churches become increasingly alienated.
Unfortunately the central themes of some of the liberal churches have become indistinguishable from those of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, the gay rights cause, and the environmental conservation movement. The traditional churches, not the liberal churches, are growing in America. In 1960, for example, the churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention had 8.7 million members. Now they have 16.4 million.
The growth of traditional religion and the decline of liberal religion pose a serious problem for a conventional way of understanding religious trends. This is the way of secularization-the idea that as an inevitable result of science, reason, progress, and modernization, the West will continue to grow more secular, followed by the rest of the world. The more confident exponents of secularization believe, as Peter Berger puts it, that"eventually Iranian mullahs, Pentecostal preachers, and Tibetan lamas will all think and act like professors of literature at American universities."
For a good part of the last century, this secularization narrative seemed plausible. Secular people believed it and reveled in it, while religious people believed it and bemoaned it. But now we see a problem with the thesis. If secularization were proceeding inexorably, then religious people should be getting less religious, and so conservative churches should be shrinking and liberal churches growing. In fact, the opposite is the case.
Some scholars put this down to "backlash" against secularization, but this only begs the question: what is causing this backlash? The secularization thesis was based on the presumption that science and modernity would satisfy the impulses and needs once met by religion. But a rebellion against secularization suggests that perhaps important needs are still unmet, and so people are seeking a revival of religion-perhaps in a new form-to address their specific concerns within a secular society.
Of course the secularization thesis is not entirely invalid. In Europe, Australia, and Canada, religion has been expunged from the cultural mainstream. It has been largely relegated to a tourist phenomenon; when you go to Chartes and Canterbury , the guides tell you about architecture and art history and little about what the people who created those masterpieces actually believed. According to the European Values Survey, regular churchgoers number, depending on the country, between 10 and 25 percent of the population. Only one in five Europeans says that religion is important in life. Czech president Vaclav Havel has rightly described Europe as "the first atheistic civilization in the history of mankind."
But if Europe generally supports the secularization thesis, the United States presents a much more problematic case. America has not gone the way of Europe. True, church attendance in the United States has declined in the past three decades. Still, some 40 percent of Americans say they attend church on Sundays. More than 90 percent of Americans believe in God, and 60 percent say their faith is important to them. All of this is a serious difficulty for the secularization thesis, because America is at the forefront of modernity. The thesis would predict that America would be the most secular society in the world. In fact, America is the most religious country in the Western world.
Perhaps the greatest problem for the secularization theory is that in an era of increasing globalization and modernization, the world as a whole is becoming more religious, not less. In a recent survey, sociologists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart sum up the evidence. Despite the advance of secularization in the West, they write, "The world now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before, and they constitute a growing proportion of the world's population." Consequently, the West is more secular but "the world as a whole is becoming more religious."
Even more remarkable is that the religious revival is occurring in places that are rapidly modernizing. China and India today have the fastest growth rates in the world, and religion is thriving in both places. Turkey is the one of the most modern of the Muslim countries, and Islam has steadily gained strength there. In Central and South America , the upwardly-mobile classes are embracing Pentecostal Christianity.
The global spread of American culture, with the secular values it carries,seems not to have arrested or even slowed the religious upsurge. The reason is that many non-Western cultures are actively resisting secularism. A common slogan in Asia today is "modernization without Westernization." Many people want American prosperity and American technology but they want to use these to preserve and strengthen their traditional way of life. They want to live in a world of multiple modernities.
We often read that Islam is the fastest-growing religion. Not true. Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world today. Islam is second. While Islam grows mainly through reproduction-which is to say by Muslim shaving large families-Christianity spreads through rapid conversion as well as natural increase. Islam has become the fastest-growing religion in Europe, which for more than a thousand years has been the home of Christianity. The Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc wrote in 1920 that "the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith." Belloc was convinced that the future of Christianity lay in Europe.
Ironically while Europe has moved away from Christianity, the Christian religion has been expanding its influence in Central and South America, in Africa, and in Asia . The new face of Christianity is no longer white and blond but yellow, black and brown. "If we want to visualize a typical contemporary Christian," Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom, "we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela." The vital centers of Christianity today are no longer Geneva, Rome, Paris, or London. They are Buenos Aires, Manila, Kinshasa, and Addis Ababa . "The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes," Jenkins observes, "and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning."
In 1900, more than 80 percent of Christians lived in Europe and America. Today 60 percent live in the developing world. More than two out of three evangelical Christians now live in Asia,Africa, and South America . Here are some numbers Jenkins provides. Europe today has 560 million Christians and America has 260 million, yet many of those are Christians in name only. In comparison, there are 480 million Christians in South America, 313 million in Asia, and 360 million in Africa. The vast majority of these are practicing Christians. There are more churchgoing Presbyterians in than in Scotland.
Oddly enough, this Christian growth occurred after the period of European conquest and colonialism has come to an end. The old boys in pith helmets are long gone, but the faith that first came with them has endured, and now thrives without them. It's just like the early times of Christianity. After Constantine converted and Theodosius proclaimed Christianity the state religion toward the end of the fourth century, Christianity was carried by the Roman empire. Yet the faith spread fastest after the collapse of that empire, and soon all of Europe was Christian. We're witnessing a comparable pace of growth for Christianity in the rest of the world.
A century ago, less than 10 percent of Africa was Christian. Today it's nearly 50 percent. That's an increase from 10 million people in 1900 to more than 350 million today. Uganda alone has nearly 20 million Christians and is projected to have 50 million by the middle of the century. Some African churches have grown so big that their churches are running out of space. While Western preachers routinely implore people to come every Sunday to fill the pews, some African preachers ask their members to limit their attendance to every second or third Sunday to give others a chance to hear the message.
Central and South America are witnessing the explosive growth of Pentecostalism. As David Martin shows in his study Tongues of Fire,partly this is a shift within Christianity: millions of South American Catholics have become evangelical Protestants. In Brazil, for example,there are now 50 million evangelical Protestants whereas a few decade sago there weren't enough to count. The movement of Catholics into Protestant evangelicalism should not be considered purely lateral, however, as the conversion of lackadaisical, nominal Catholics to an active, energized evangelicalism can perhaps be considered a net gain for Christianity.
Even within Catholicism there is an expanding charismatic movement that has grown in response to the success of the Protestant evangelicals. This charismatic Catholicism emphasizes many of the same themes as "born again" Christianity including a personal relationship with Christ. And the Catholic numbers remain huge: Brazil had 50 million Catholics in 1950, but now it has 120 million.
Despite the limitations imposed by the Chinese government, there are now tens of millions of Christians in who worship in underground evangelical and Catholic churches. At current growth rates, David Aikman observes in his book Jesus in Beijing,China will in a few decades become the largest Christian country in the world. In South Korea, where Christians already outnumber Buddhists,there are numerous megachurches with more than 10,000 members each. The Yoido Full Gospel Church reports 750,000 members. The Catholic Church in the Philippines reports 60 million members, and is projected to have 120 million by mid-century.
What distinguishes these Christians, Jenkins writes, is that they immerse themselves in the world of the Bible to a degree that even devout Western Christians do not. For poor people around the world, the social landscape of in the Bible is quite familiar. They, too, live in a world of hardship, poverty, money-lenders and lepers. The themes of exile and persecution resonate with them. Supernatural evil seems quite real to them, and they have little problem in understanding the concept of hell.
This "original" Christianity is coming our way. South Korea has become the world's second-largest source of Christian missionaries, with 12,000 preaching the faith abroad. Only the United States sends more missionaries to other countries. We may be seeing the beginning of a startling reversal. At one time Christian missionaries went to the far continents of Africa and Asia, where white priests in robes proclaimed the Bible to wide-eyed and uncomprehending brown and black people. In the future, we may well see black and brown missionaries proclaim the Bible to wide-eyed and uncomprehending white people in the West.
We might think that this preaching will fall on unreceptive ears. But I'm not so sure. The Washington Post reports that there are 150 churches in Denmark and more than 250 in Britain run by foreigners as "part of a growing trend of preachers from developing nations coming to Western Europe ." Stendor Johansen, a Danish sea captain, seems to reflect the sentiments of many Europeans who are joining the new congregations. "The Danish church is boring," he says. "I feel energized when I leave one of these services." If more people come to share these sentiments then secularization may ultimately be reversed even in Europe.
Peter Berger writes about what he calls "the myth of secularization." He means that the thesis of inevitable secularization has now lost its credibility. In fact, it is going the way of Zeus and Baal. Berger's work points to the reason for this. Berger argues that modernization helps people triumph over necessity but it also produces a profound crisis of purpose in modern life. The greater the effects of modernization, the stronger the social anxiety and the striving for "something more." As Wolfhart Pannenberg puts it, "Secular culture itself produces a deep need for meaning in life and therefore also for religion."
This may not be religion in the same form in which it is imbibed in Nigeria or Korea, but it is traditional religion all the same, no less vital for having adapted to new circumstances. It is quite possible that a renewed Christianity can improve modern life by correcting some of the deficiencies and curbing some of the excesses of modernity.
I have found this to be true in my own life. I am a native of , and my ancestors were converted to Christianity by Portuguese missionaries. As this was the era of the Portuguese Inquisition, some force and bludgeoning may also have been involved. When I came to as a student in 1978, my Christianity was largely a matter of birth and habit. But even as I plunged myself into modern life in the , my faith slowly deepened. G.K. Chesterton calls this the "revolt into orthodoxy."
Like Chesterton, I find myself rebelling against extreme secularism and finding in Christianity some remarkable answers to both intellectual and practical concerns. So I am grateful to those stern inquisitors for bringing me into the orbit of Christianity, even though I am sure my ancestors would not have shared my enthusiasm. Mine is a Christianity that is counter cultural in the sense that it opposes powerful trends in modern Western culture. Yet it is thoroughly modern in that it addresses questions and needs raised by life in that culture. I don't know how I could live well without it.
In the end, though, my story doesn't matter very much and neither does it matter whether the West returns to Christianity. Perhaps the non-Western Christians will convert the Western unbelievers, and perhaps they won't. Either way, they are the future, they know it, and now we know it too. Christianity may come in a different garb than it has for the past several centuries, but Christianity is winning, and secularism is losing. The atheists may continue their fulminations, but they represent not the cry of victory but the cry of desperation. Deep down, the atheists realize that God is winning and atheism has no future.
Excerpted from What's So Great About Christianity, Regnery Publishing, October 2007.
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 7)
31. 20. AFTER READING THESE POSTS, I HAVE TO SAY I AM SO GLAD I AM NOT AN ATHIEST. WHAT A BUNCH OF FOUL, DISGUSTING PEOPLE.
AMEN.
This is "moral superiority?" This just illustrates the hypocrisy of contemporary "Chrisianity" -
The only true Christians are the Amish - They follow the word of Christ without question, without "abstract interpretation", and would rather die than fight back. It's pretty amazing that our "Christian" nation's vision of a "real man" is exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught....
Ken at 3:26PM on Oct 22nd 2007
32. Ray, allow me to give you an appropriate answer to why I come to post here at all...
Imagine that there is a person out there who portrays themselves as rational, intelligent, and influential. This person then goes on to insult you. He insults your morals. He insults your intelligence. He tells others that you are bad. That you are wrong. That you are stupid. And now, imagine no one disagreeing with this person. No one saying that his words are at best misled and at worst pernicious and calculated. Seeing no one dissenting, his audience would have little argument against the correctness of his words. Thus do I come here to be a voice of opposition. I try to be intelligent. I try to be logical. But I am being insulted and I am being threatened by a person's rhetoric. And perhaps nothing will come of it. In fact it's likely that Dinesh in ten years will be an uncomfortable blip in America's history. But there's always the possibility that some one in power is a reader of Dinesh. A reader who would see no one disagreeing and thus concludes that Dinesh is correct, and that person could go on to do deeds or pass laws that can harm me in a very real way.
But, especially of late with his book to hawk, Dinesh is repetative and annoying in the extreme. I make the same argument over and over. I hear the same arguments over and over. I want him to either be silent so that I can devote my attention to more worthwhile subjects, or to at least move to some new insult. Because as is its terrible boring.
Somber at 3:32PM on Oct 22nd 2007
33. God is definitely alive. Look at the wildfires in Southern California: If Governor Schwarzennegger wants to sign into law the teaching of homosexuality(which is a sin)in pubic schools, then the whole state of California may burn to the ground. Psalm 97: 3-6: "A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about. His lightenings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory."
On 17 December 2006, I had a very vivid dream about the future destruction of Las Vegas by an earthquake. If you want to read the dream, go to my website: wallsofjericho.50megs.com.
Tim Shey at 3:36PM on Oct 22nd 2007
34. Somber:
You said:
"This man is not worth any more of my attention. Why is he worth yours?"
He's not. I come here for the interesting comments in response to his articles (including your posts). I usually just skim what he writes.
Tem at 3:55PM on Oct 22nd 2007
35. Bridget:
"There are two kinds of christians...a sincere believer and a carnal believer...the sincere believer takes his walk with God very seriously, and trys to live his life free of hypocrisy, and trys to overcome everyday in his walk with God, and there is the carnal "christian," who thinks he can believe in God, and live his life like the devil would have him live it...that is the difference...one is sincere and one is not...the atheist KNOWS the difference! Hypocrisy is what makes atheists in the first place!"
You're right! If atheists were also Christians (or vice versa), then they'd be hypocrites. Thankfully, the two labels are mutually exclusive.
"Christians need to reevaluate their walk with God, and take it very seriously if they ever want to bring someone into the realm of Christ...and WE as christians are going to be held responsible for our actions as a christian, we will stand before God at the Bema Seat Judgement(the judgement where christians stand before God and receive rewards for deeds done in the body for Christ Romans ) "
You take it seriously, right? So you've learned to read and write the language in which your Bible was written?
Tem at 3:58PM on Oct 22nd 2007
36. Dot:
"AFTER READING THESE POSTS, I HAVE TO SAY I AM SO GLAD I AM NOT AN ATHIEST. WHAT A BUNCH OF FOUL, DISGUSTING PEOPLE.
AMEN."
As opposed to a bigoted and unable to locate the caps lock key type of person? I'm kind of glad I'm not one of those.
Tem at 4:08PM on Oct 22nd 2007
37. Christianity is a religion for women, while both Judaism and Islam are religions for men. Perhaps the growth of Christianity is tied to the success of Liberal Feminism.
Jimmy at 4:18PM on Oct 22nd 2007
38. Why do religious people feel so threatened by people without religious beliefs? D.S. is sure tying himself in knots to try and justify his faith.
cdnbirch at 4:20PM on Oct 22nd 2007
39. "Why do religious people feel so threatened by people without religious beliefs? D.S. is sure tying himself in knots to try and justify his faith."
I've noticed this too. Maybe it's because it's easier to convince someone of your beliefs when they already accept the idea of a deity? A pastor once told me that it was much easier to convince someone to agree with you if they felt strongly (in either direction) about the subject. If the person was neutral, or unemotional about it, then it was much more difficult.
Tem at 4:31PM on Oct 22nd 2007
40. Actually, religion is like a big ballon; it will get really, really big just before it pops, then what remains will resemble a used and brightly colored condom. What Dinesh fails to mention is that "religion" is more like a cultural badge that people wear to create a group identity, just like foxes or cats marking their terrority and so religion as a whole has become much less of a spiritual thing.
Robb at 4:49PM on Oct 22nd 2007
41. Wow...I've never seen so many people come back to the same blog week after week to express disdain or outright hatred for one individual. Mr. D'Souza must be doing something right because, good or bad, he's certainly getting attention!
B at 4:57PM on Oct 22nd 2007
42. I really don't know or even care where some of you people get your ideas from. The simple truth is you can write about religion all day long and discuss it or refuse it or even make fun of it. Just a thought, instead of giving your own personal thoughts about the subject, go to the Bible and prove us wrong. I mean really get into the Bible and prove that there is no God, there is no meaning to life and we are all just a crazy bunch of people(over how many millions) who happen to believe that GOD came down to this earth that he had created and walked among us as a mortal man.
That he was indeed put to death on a cross and sometime in the near future will return. Just, for a moment try and imagine what will you say then, or more importantly not say, when millions of people some of who you love just vanish? What will be your answer then? Prove me wrong,get into the Bible and find out the answers for yourself. If there is no GOD then what would be the harm. After all you are an intelligent thinking human being, regardless of your thoughts on who is right and who is wrong. Go straight to the source and see my friend, cause I promise you one thing you will be just like all by brothers and sister in Christ regardless if they are black, Yellow, African, Chinese or Indian once you really know the truth you will be finally free and living in the knowledge that one day very soon you will be joining us not in some massive spaceship but, that our heavenly father came back and gathered his children. Think on that one for a while. God Bless,
Rita
rita at 5:13PM on Oct 22nd 2007
43. WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE ASTRONOMICAL NUMBER OF THINGS THAT HAD TO HAPPEN IN THE ORDER THAT THEY DID FOR LIFE TO EXIST ON EARTH, IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IT JUST HAPPENED. wHEN YOU CONSIDER THE EVEN VASTERT NUMBER OF THINGS FOR MAN TO EXIST AS WE ARE, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN CONSIDER THAT IT JUST HAPPENED. SCIENCE HAS PROVED THAT WE HAVE A CREATOR.
Charles Carter at 6:09PM on Oct 22nd 2007
44. Charles Carter:
"WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE ASTRONOMICAL NUMBER OF THINGS THAT HAD TO HAPPEN IN THE ORDER THAT THEY DID FOR LIFE TO EXIST ON EARTH, IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IT JUST HAPPENED. wHEN YOU CONSIDER THE EVEN VASTERT NUMBER OF THINGS FOR MAN TO EXIST AS WE ARE, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN CONSIDER THAT IT JUST HAPPENED. SCIENCE HAS PROVED THAT WE HAVE A CREATOR."
Is that so? What are the chances, say, in percentage form?
Tem at 6:06PM on Oct 22nd 2007
45. B:
Mr. D’Souza is doing something right. He is proving to all of us that religion is based lies, half truths and the wishful fantasies of people who can’t face life for what it is. Many atheists and agnostics believe that religious people achieve their conclusions through faulty reasoning, have to demonize and belittle opposing views, and achieve their successes through bullying and demagoguery. Mr D’Souza’s gift to humanity is that he and his supporters are living proof that these assumptions are true. It makes my day to read his blog, check on his faulty statistics and identify all of the absurd assumptions. It gives me great faith in the future of humanity that there are others who also happily post their findings and that they identify the same silliness that I do. None of this fun would be possible without Mr. D’Souza so I thank him and his supporters for the good times.
Daniel H at 6:15PM on Oct 22nd 2007