“Laws of Christian Thermodynamics”

by John L Allen Jr
Dec. 23, 2011

I happen to groove on population statistics, but I realize that for most people they rival watching paint dry, or the heartbreak of psoriasis, as a good time. Faced with a new report from the Pew Forum on the global Christian population, therefore, let's start with a few deliberately bold assertions to get the blood moving.

Based on the study, here are three rules of thumb about Christian growth and decline -- extrapolations which go well beyond the contents of the Pew report, but which can be supported by the data it contains:

•If you want Christianity to shrink, give it wealth and privilege and back it up with the power of the state.
•If you want Christianity to show surprising resilience, suppress its structures and persecute its people.
•If you want Christianity to thrive, drop it into a free market environment and force it to hustle.

One might call these conclusions “Laws of Christian Thermodynamics”, meaning generalizations about how Christian systems change when they interact with their environment. Pondering the massive Pew report released Monday, titled “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population," it's tough not to find them persuasive.

Here's why.

Europe, the erstwhile capital of Christendom, has lost its pride of place. A century ago, two-thirds of all Christians lived in Europe; today, only a quarter of the world’s 2.18 billion Christians are on the old continent. In ultra-secular Western Europe, majorities still identify as Christian, but the percentage share of the population is down sharply.

Despite decades of state-imposed atheism, Christianity is doing remarkably well in Communist lands (either former or current.) Two in three Russians still identify as Orthodox, and some analysts believe there’s a renaissance afoot in Russian Orthodoxy. China is experiencing a spiritual boom, and today China is the third-largest Protestant nation in the world, trailing only the United States and Nigeria.

Christianity’s greatest growth is in Africa, a wide-open spiritual marketplace marked by stiff competition among religious alternatives. During the past century, Christianity in Africa grew by an astonishing 6,000 percent, from 8.5 million to 516 million. Christians were nine percent of the African population in 1910; by 2010, they were 63 percent. Over the same span, sub-Saharan Africa went from 1.4 percent of the global Christian total to 24 percent.

Put all that together, and the Laws of Christian Thermodynamics look pretty solid. In any event, it’s food for thought during the holiday season. the rest