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Historians of the recent past quite naturally feature the European War of 1914 to 1918 as the first defining event of the twentieth century. It precipitated a series of interconnected and immeasurably destructive European conflicts stretching from Belgium in 1914 to Kosovo in 1998. It drew many non-European nations closer to the West, triggered a profound spiritual crisis in Europe, and began a process that moved the United States into global preeminence.
Yet decisive as World War I certainly was, it is possible to imagine that historians of Christianity may one day consider the years surrounding 1915 as supremely significant for strikingly different reasons. This alternative perspective on the past opens up from the angle of contemporary world Christianity. Violence still looms large—but not the warfare of northwestern Europe. Rather, the events of greatest significance are the genocide committed against Christian Armenians by Turkish Muslims, culminating in 1915, and the nearly simultaneous Islamic attacks throughout the Middle East on other groups of Greek, Maronite, Jacobite, Nestorian, and Chaldaean Christians. The emergence of larger-than-life historical actors is still important—but not political leaders like Woodrow Wilson or Adolf Hitler. Rather, the key personalities are prophets like William WadÉ Harris, who in 1910 was visited by the angel Gabriel in a Liberian prison cell and then went forth to evangelize with astonishing effect throughout West Africa, or Simon Kimbangu, who underwent similar experiences with similar results only a few years later in the Belgian Congo. Again, in this alternative Christian History, the speeding up of global interchange is still critical, as also the role of the United States—but not for relationships in the West. Rather, the key exchanges come from the labors of Pentecostal missionaries, who in the early years of the century carried the message of baptism in the Holy Spirit from Azusa Street in Los Angeles to Brazil, Chile, Central America, Nigeria, the southern cone of Africa, the Philippines, and India.
Such an alternative world history will strike many readers as perverse. Yet those who give Philip Jenkins half a chance with the arguments presented in The Next Christendom may not be so sure. With this book, Jenkins, who teaches in the history and religion departments at Penn State, adds to his growing list of provocative titles that ask readers to rethink what they thought they knew for sure.1
The great merit of Jenkins's short study is to synthesize the burgeoning literature on non-Western Christianity and to make bold projections for the twenty-first century. His burden is to ask how the future must be regarded if contemporary realities like the following are kept firmly in view:
- In 1999, there were 18 million Roman Catholic baptisms—of those, 8 million took place in Central and South America, 3 million in Africa (and 37% of the African baptisms were of adults).
- As of the same year, the largest chapter of the Jesuits was in India, and not in the United States as had been the case for many decades before.
- Today there are more Roman Catholics in the Philippines than in any single country of Europe, including Italy, Spain, or Poland.
- For most major Protestant traditions, the largest individual denominations today are located outside of the United States or Europe—for example, many more Presbyterians in South Korea than in either Scotland or the United States; many more Assemblies of God in Brazil than in the United States.
- Today there are at least 1,500 Christian foreign missionaries (mostly from Africa and Asia) at work in Great Britain.
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