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Christianity Today, March, 2009 |

The Other Side of Church Growth

Philip Jenkins says we need a theology of church extinction.

Interview by Stan Guthrie | posted 3/18/2009 08:45AM

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How do you relate that need to the obvious spread of Christianity around the world?

I suppose coincidence is not a word that should be used by anyone who has any sense of Providence, but 1915 marks the beginning of the end of Christians in the Middle East, and the beginning of mass Christianity in Africa. It's almost as if one door closes and another one opens elsewhere. I would not say God closed one eye and opened another, but when Christianity is at its weakest in one area, amazing new opportunities open elsewhere. My concern is that when we write Christian history, so often it's a matter of, "Let's look at this expansion, and let's look at this growth and new opportunity." We're not really seeing the doors that are closing—which would have been a great title for the book.

Philip Jenkins is the author of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

Related Elsewhere:

Previous articles by and on Philip Jenkins include:

Recovering Church History: Exile from Babylon | The Iraqi Christian community, now nearly gone, was the church's center for a millennium. (December 31, 2008)

'Shall the Fundamentalists Win?' | An excerpt from Philip Jenkins' new book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. (December 5, 2006)

God's Word in an Old Light | Philip Jenkins on how global South Christians read the Bible. (December 5, 2006)

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March 2009, Vol. 53, No. 3

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Raymond Takashi Swenson

Posted: March 26, 2009 6:33 PM

I would be interested in Phillip Jenkin's comparison of the experience of persecuted Christians in the Near East and the persecution of the Mormons in America, which involved official government persecution by the State of Missouri, which drove the Mormons to Illinois, then of Illinois, which drove the Mormons to Utah Territory, and then thirty years of persecution by the Federal government. The Federal persecution included an Army campaign in 1857-58, the last major military action of the Army before the Civil War, and culminated in laws that disincorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, confiscated its church buildings, and took away the civil rights of Mormons. Mind you, all of the people who attacked the Mormons thought they were being good Christians while doing it, as is still the case today. Intolerant Christians are not in a good position to complain about intolerant Muslims.

Johann

Posted: March 26, 2009 10:33 AM

Interesting article. However, one solution is to have lots of babies and bring them up with a solid faith formation, which is something I don't see in superficial American evangelicalism. Look at Ireland: you Proddies tried to literally exterminate the Irish Catholics for hundreds of years yet the Faith emerged stronger than ever because the Catholics had a spiritual perspective, not a materialist one. In Northern Ireland, Catholics will soon outnumber their Protestant oppressors because the Prods worship birth control while the Catholics have bigger families.

Tesfatadelle

Posted: March 24, 2009 10:45 AM


Thank you, Pete Benson for declaring the Truth. We do not need man's explanations (Robert in Amman) when we have the guidance from the Holy Scriptures. Yes, Revelation 2 and 3 stand forever more. We can find blames everywhere if we look for them and not look at His word.

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