World Christianity Shifting
REV. RAYMOND DE SOUZA
December 29, 2006

Excerpt: "The major religious story in the Christian world over the next two years will likely be the fracturing of the Anglican Communion. A formal schism is expected at the decennial Lambeth Conference in 2008, with the issue of homosexuality the proximate cause of the division. The more liberal churches in the North will be broken away from by the much larger and traditional Anglican churches of the South, led by Africa. Given that more Anglicans in Nigeria attend church on Sunday than the combined attendance in Canada, the United States and England, it is valid to ask who is breaking away from whom.

Indeed, the Anglican story could easily be told as the breaking away of dwindling heterodox churches from the more vibrant, orthodox mainstream — except that the mainstream is not Canterbury and Toronto, but Lagos and Kampala.

The same shift to the South can be seen in the Catholic Church. There is hardly a diocese of Canada that does not depend upon priests from Eastern Europe, India and Africa to keep parishes open that would otherwise be without a priest. In Europe, the situation is even more advanced. " the rest-excellent