THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM
By Philip Jenkins
Oxford University Press. 270 pages. £20.00
ISBN 0 19 514616 6
This book will give you a new take on the world and its future. It comes from a US academic and begins with the startling encouragement that the movement of the last century that has had the most impact on the world was not Marxism or Feminism or Environmentalism, but Christianity.
Though the Faith may be under severe pressure in Europe, elsewhere in the world, especially in the Southern hemisphere, growth of immense proportions has been going on. By the year 2050 six nations could have over 100 million Christians, and only one of those, USA, is from the Western world. I ought to temper this by saying, that things are not quite as rosy as Professor Jenkins claims. This is because he uses a definition of Christianity which is too loose to be taken too seriously (see page 88). But he says that 'none of the reasons the churches have been growing so astonishingly is likely to change in the near future'.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …