Where Faith Thrives
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
DETE CROSSING, Zimbabwe — So with Easter approaching, here I am in the heart of Christendom.
That's right - Africa. One of the most important trends reshaping the world is the decline of Christianity in Europe and its rise in Africa and other parts of the developing world, including Asia and Latin America.
I stopped at a village last Sunday morning here in Zimbabwe - and found not a single person to interview, for everyone had hiked off to church a dozen miles away. And then I dropped by a grocery store with a grim selection of the cheapest daily necessities - and huge multicolored chocolate Easter eggs.
On Easter, more Anglicans will attend church in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda - each - than Anglicans and Episcopalians together will attend services in Britain, Canada and the U.S. combined.
More Roman Catholics will celebrate Easter Mass in the Philippines than in any European country. The largest church in the world is in South Korea. And more Christians will probably attend Easter services in China than in all of Europe together.
In short, for the first time since it began two millenniums ago, Christianity is no longer "Western" in any very meaningful sense.
"If on a Sunday you want to attend a lively, jammed full, fervent and life-changing service of Christian worship, you want to be in Nairobi, not in Stockholm," notes Mark Noll, a professor at Wheaton College. He adds, "But if you want to walk home safely late at night, you want to be in Stockholm, not Nairobi."
This shift could be just beginning. David Lyle Jeffrey of Baylor University sees some parallels between China today and the early Roman empire. He wonders aloud whether a Chinese Constantine will come along and convert to Christianity.
Chairman Mao largely destroyed traditional Chinese religions, yet Communism has died as a replacement faith and left a vacuum. "Among those disappointed true-believer Marxists, it may well be that Marxism has served as a kind of John the Baptist to the rapid emergence of Christianity among Chinese intellectuals," Professor Jeffrey said. Indeed, it seems possible to me that in a few decades, China could be a largely Christian nation.
Whether in China or Africa, the commitment of new converts is extraordinary. While I was interviewing villagers along the Zambezi River last Sunday, I met a young man who was setting out for his Pentecostal church at 8:30 a.m. "The service begins at 2 p.m.," he explained - but the journey is a five-hour hike each way.
So where faith is easy, it is fading; where it's a challenge, it thrives.
"When people are in difficulties, they want to cling to something," said the Rev. Johnson Makoti, a Pentecostal minister in Zimbabwe who drives a car plastered with Jesus bumper stickers. "The only solution people here can believe in is Jesus Christ."
People in this New Christendom are so zealous about their faith that I worry about the risk of new religious wars. In Africa, Christianity and Islam are competing furiously for converts, and in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and especially Sudan, the competition has sometimes led to violent clashes.
"Islam is a threat that is coming," the Rev. William Dennis McDonald, a Pentecostal minister in Zambia, warned me. He is organizing "operation checkmate" to boost Christianity and contain Islam in eastern Zambia.
The denominations gaining ground tend to be evangelical and especially Pentecostal; it's the churches with the strictest demands, like giving up drinking, that are flourishing.
All this is changing the character of global Christianity, making it more socially conservative. For example, African churches are often more hostile to gays than mainline American churches. The rise of the Christian right in the U.S. is finding some echoes in other parts of the world.
Yet conservative Christians in the U.S. should take heed. Christianity is thriving where it faces obstacles, like repression in China or suspicion of evangelicals in parts of Latin America and Africa. In those countries where religion enjoys privileges - Britain, Italy, Ireland, Spain or Iran - that establishment support seems to have stifled faith.
That's worth remembering in the debates about school prayers or public displays of the Ten Commandments: faith doesn't need any special leg up. Look at where religion is most vibrant today, talk to those who walk five hours to services, and the obvious conclusion is that what nurtures faith is not special privileges but rather adversity.
Update: Ken Masugi, writing on the Claremont Institute's Local Liberty blog sets the proper context on Kristof's well-meaning but oh-so-pc bit of liberal spin on spirituality (best read here at the Local Liberty site, with italics and hyperlinks intact):
The Future of Christianity and the Future of the World
Despite some silly statements--e.g., “The rise of the Christian right in the U.S. is finding some echoes in other parts of the world”—Nicholas Kristoff’s NY Times column presents an informative survey of the world-wide condition of Christianity: down in the West, flourishing everywhere else.
DETE CROSSING, Zimbabwe — So with Easter approaching, here I am in the heart of Christendom.
That's right - Africa. One of the most important trends reshaping the world is the decline of Christianity in Europe and its rise in Africa and other parts of the developing world, including Asia and Latin America….
On Easter, more Anglicans will attend church in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda - each - than Anglicans and Episcopalians together will attend services in Britain, Canada and the U.S. combined.
More Roman Catholics will celebrate Easter Mass in the Philippines than in any European country. The largest church in the world is in South Korea. And more Christians will probably attend Easter services in China than in all of Europe together.
Might China have its Constantine, muses David Lyle Jeffrey of Baylor University.
"Among those disappointed true-believer Marxists, it may well be that Marxism has served as a kind of John the Baptist to the rapid emergence of Christianity among Chinese intellectuals," Professor Jeffrey said. Indeed, it seems possible to me that in a few decades, China could be a largely Christian nation.
Would such a Christian church truly be independent or a tool of the party elite, as the Russian Orthodox Church was? Might the great world schism consist in a Chinese Church of the AntiChrist, headed by an Emperor-Deity, a new Caesar, against the world?
Kristoff’s exasperating conclusion: “the obvious conclusion is that what nurtures faith is not special privileges but rather adversity.” Like other liberals, he clearly does not understand America’s unique religious freedom, based on the natural rights political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. (Besides Harry Jaffa's essay, read Philip Munoz's reflections.) Note Kristoff's own exclusion of American Christianity from his comparisons above, other than the mention of the Anglicans, who committed a kind of ritual suicide over homosexuality, among other issues. He might have asked what accounts for American churches seeking affiliation with African ones. Consider the case of the former Epsicopal parish of Newport Beach, CA affiliating with the Ugandan Anglican Church. See this transcript of an interview with church representatives on the Jim Lehrer Newshour. This reflects the vibrancy within non-mainstream American churches.
In other words, Kristoff's conclusion that "what nurtures faith is not special privileges but rather adversity" points rather to the opposite of what he intends: The "special privileges" of the establishment churches, which have yielded to the moral and political correctness of the times, have shrunk, while churches embracing traditional Christian teachings are flourishing. It is not coincidental that they overlap with politically conservative notions:
JEFFREY KAYE: St. James Church in affluent, predominantly Republican Newport Beach, California, is a place one wouldn't normally associate with rebellion and radical change…. But St. James is a house of worship in revolt. In August, it severed its ties with the Episcopal Church of the United States. With its 2.3 million members, the Episcopal Church is the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. For 58 years, St. James was a part of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Now, say its lay leaders, their bishop is 11 time zones away.
Further Update:
Here is a reflection on Ugandan worship by Tim Wakeling - focusing on the differences in spiritual energy between Uganda and the United Kingdom:
"Church is different in Uganda. But not that different. We do after all worship the same God, though Ugandans are more down-to-earth about it. And where the UK is nominally Christian only, Uganda is evidently Christian. In a big way. Most churches have two services: in English at 8am and Rukiga at 10am - the latter is much fuller. In both, Anglican tradition is evident but watch your step when reading well known phrases from the prayer book - the odd word and phrase is subtly changed for no apparent reason! Preaching is direct, simple and practical: "we must pray for protection from AIDS, from overpopulation (and the resulting shrinkage of inherited farmland from generation to generation)..."
Church denominations are less friendly than in the UK. We were advised to stick with Anglican churches since we were with the Diocese project... this doesn't however stop unashamed Christianity (which is big in Uganda) invading every area of life. "Jesus Is Lord" and other proclamations shout from vehicles, shops, signs. Even shop names - "Faith Photo Studio", "Trust In God Enterprises Inc", are designed to share Jesus! Musically, 80s choruses are in, Thees and
Thys are out, tempo is high and you always clap to songs. And we sung "O Lord My God When I In Awesome Wonder" at a tempo the UK can only dream of, to the beat of African drums and the drone of an electronic organ! Surreal."
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