Surveying the Topographies and Trails of the Church's Global Landscape
Sometimes life gives moments of wide vantage points. Moments that allow one to see a wide breadth of land covered, at least from a certain perspective. These times, like the moment of cresting a hill or reaching the mountain top on a long hike, can reveal interesting reflections on the trails and travails covered.
In the introductory “Global Overview” section of the newly revised World Christian Encyclopedia a simple bar chart gives an opportunity to look at church history from unique angles. Splitting the total population in generalities of the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America) and the Global North (Europe and North America) between 33 CE - 2050 CE we can see some noticeable twists and turns in the story of the church’s global landscape.
Almost immediately, there is a drastic change between the people who originally encompassed the population of followers of Christ. The primarily Jewish, Galileans at that, Christians Changed by nearly 40 percent from 30 CE to 100 CE. What happened here? As Andrew Walls and multitudinous others point out, the gospel was transmitted to the Greek-influenced Roman citizens. This great change is represented well in that simple bar. This turn to include non-Asians is very interesting. The topography of this twist is not from the followers of Christ taking their religious beliefs, tying them to Jewish nationalism, and somehow going forth invading other peoples. This change was from was brought about by individual and community action and effort, aided by many cultural and historical factors.
The next twist is how the bars ebb and flow relatively flat for the next six hundred years. Did Christianity not transmit to other peoples during this time? Did the world somehow remain relatively stable and without incident? By no means! These centuries were filled with traumatic empire crushing, kingdom establishing, army invading, upheavals. The Western Roman empire fully dissolved, not to recover, in the fifth century. The barbarians conquered and converted. As the number of Christians grew among the European tribes, so did the reach of the East Syriac churches throughout Central Asia. The growth of the church spread in both Gaul and in Samarkand, in the Global North and the Global South.
Then there is a dip between the 8th and 9th centuries, which does not look like much of a drop-off from what came before but reveals its significance in what comes after. The dip of Asian and African believers continues on seven centuries. The percent of total Christians in the world from Europe maintained, and Islam spread throughout Asia and North Africa.
Then at the lowest percentage of African and Asian Christians that the Globe had ever seen, in the 1500s, something changed. The discovery of the New World by Europeans might have something to do with it. The Protestant Reformation might also (though, most likely, at first only a little). The Catholic “Counter”-Reformation, with the expansion of its teachings through the great “company”, the Jesuits, would certainly be a large aid. Engaging the New World and other places in Asia most likely tics up the Global South’s portion of total Christians in the world. Not by much, but enough to make the gradient noticeably heading up.
At this point in hiking along the bar graph, we might see a drastic change up ahead, blurry and far, but momentous as a mountain range looks from some hundreds of miles away. While Catholic Jesuits went out into the world, the Protestants begin to do so as well. The church firmly stays in the Global North, but something is going on in the “woods” and lands of the Global South. Then, suddenly, there is a cliff face jutting up between the 20th and 21st centuries. All of a sudden the church’s percentages are back to what they were in the first century (40/60). More surprisingly, the percentage of that change from the South to the North in the first century, about 40%, matches the elevation change in the 20th from North to South (about 40%). Weird. And now, as mentioned above, the Global North is 40% to the Global South’s 60%. Again, just strange.
100 CE
2000 CE
Ahead, it seems the unexpected twists and topographical coincidences will continue. In projecting to 2050, based on current trends and contexts, the Global North will only comprise the same percentage of the World Christian population as the Global South did at the height of Islams’ march across Africa and Asia (~25% respectively, between the 13th and 15th centuries). Fortunes reverse– the terrain is similar but by different causes.
1200, 1300, 1400
2050
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