The Evangelicals

Catherwood unleashes a swath of research to demonstrate how rapidly Christianity is expanding outside the Western world. In fact, it’s now clear that “the overwhelming majority of evangelical Christians today do not live in the West at all but in what most commentators refer to as the Global South, or the Two-thirds World, since most of the world live there” (72).

It warmed my heart to read that the brand of Christianity that’s exploding worldwide is the kind that actually believes stuff. Robustly biblical orthodoxy is being embraced while cotton-candy counterfeits are being exposed for the fluff that they are. Catherwood notes the irony that “modern people” around the world are eschewing the very de-supernaturalized drivel they were supposed to find appealing. “What sounds fine in Harvard or Cambridge is rejected as totally unrealistic and white in the parts of the world where the vast bulk of twenty-first century people now live” (80).

Evangelicalism’s international explosion is as exciting as the stats are staggering. Here’s just a sampling: Uganda sees roughly 13,000 converts per year, and more than 40 percent of their people will soon be professing evangelicals. In Africa as a whole there’s been an 800 percent increase in evangelical Anglicanism over the past four decades. Both Guatemala and Chile are 40 percent evangelical. Korea, though never under European rule, may become a majority Christian country. In China there are more evangelicals than Communist Party members. The country’s Christian population “probably exceeds the total population of even the biggest countries of Western Europe, such as Germany, France, or Britain” (89). In fact, China may soon boast the world’s greatest number of evangelicals. Read it all HERE