Review of Philip Jenkins’ book, "The Next Christendom"

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State. His 2002 book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, chronicles the startling rise of vital Christian faith in the global South: Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, for example, the number of Christians has increased from 10 million in 1900 to 360 million by 2000. In the process, we are reminded that, contrary to popular liberal belief, Christianity is a non-Western religion. “Founded in the Near East,” Jenkins writes, “Christianity for its first thousand years was stronger in Asia and North Africa than in Europe, and only after 1400 did Europe (and Europeanized North America) decisively become the Christian heartland.” Thus, Jenkins sets out to challenge “the oddly prevalent view of Christianity as a White or Western ideology that was foisted on the rest of an unwilling globe, under the auspices of Spanish galleons, British redcoats, and American televangelists.”

We’ve all met these assumptions in conversations and news media. “‘Everyone knows’ the authentic religions of Africa and Asia are faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, animism, and, above all, Islam,” Jenkins says, in reference to current secular Western notions. “A common assumption holds that when we do find Christianity outside the West, it must have been brought there from the West, probably in the past century or two. Images of Victorian missionaries in pith-helmets are commonly in the background.”

Jenkins does a good job dismantling that myth. Here's hoping the book does its part toward ending this mistaken part of Western "common knowledge."

Now, Jenkins’ book is neither a perfect nor a definitive treatment of the subject (more on its imperfections below). But it is an accessible treatment, and because of his well-researched presentation, I’d love to see this book in the hands of two groups of people: secular skeptics and Christian pessimists.

First, this book could serve as a needed corrective to the thinking of secular skeptics. Jenkins shows that Christian expansion existed in some places prior to Western imperialism and thrives in many places independent of the imperialism that first brought it. “The vital growth of Christianity around the world “confound[s] the standard modern mythology about just how Christianity was, and is, exported to a passive or reluctant Third World. Over the past two centuries, at least, it might have been the European empires that first kindled Christianity around the world, but the movement soon enough turned into an uncontrollable brushfire” (page 53). This book can help people in Western countries gain greater insight into the religious convictions of the global South and thus treat those convictions with greater respect.

Another group of people who need to be exposed to this book, however, are pessimistic Christians. Pessimism can arise when you limit your view to the U.S. or to the West in general: For example, a 2000 survey revealed 44% of the British claim no religious affiliation whatever (up from 31 percent in 1983), and two-thirds of those 18-24 now describe themselves as non-religious: almost half of this age range do not even believe Jesus existed as a historical person. (Cited on page 94 in Jenkins’ book.) While the U.S. is more religious than Europe, few doubt that religion’s influence is waning in America, too. Consider the Newsweek cover this past spring with the headline, “The Decline of Christian America.”

But Jenkins’ book can cause Christians to rethink their pessimism, because Christianity is thriving where the majority of the world’s population lives: in the global South. And that Christianity is largely orthodox and quite conservative.

The book is not perfect. I am troubled by Jenkins’ insufficient definition of a Christian as “someone who describes himself or herself as Christian, who believes that Jesus is not merely a prophet or an exalted moral teacher, but in some unique sense the Son of God, and the messiah.” He says it is unimportant for his definition “whether for instance a person adheres to the Bible alone, accepts the Trinity, or has a literal belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection.” While acknowledging that “the vast majority” of self-described Christians do in fact believe these things, “for present purposes, we cannot label as heretics those who do not.”

Well.

With a curious definition such as that, one can see why he refers to those (like me) who do not regard Mormons as Christian as “hard-line” (page 66). And though I regard the Catholic Church as a Christian church, I’m deeply troubled by Jenkins’ favorable depiction of the growing trend among world Catholics to see Mary as “a mediator and co-Savior figure, comparable to Jesus himself, even a fourth member of the Trinity.” He says, “A Catholic Church dominated by Latin Americans and Africans would prove highly receptive to new concepts of Marian devotion, which might serve as a bridge to other ancient Christian communities, and even to other faiths” (page 119).

Jenkins’ inadequate definition of what makes a belief—and a believer—“Christian” leads to these kinds of unsettling observations at several points in the book. However, and ironically, this may serve to make the book more accessible for a skeptical audience. Jenkins arrives at most of the same conclusions of evangelical scholars (despite the unsettling observations I referenced), but secular readers may be more likely to listen to a professor in a northeastern state university publishing in Oxford Press whose definition of the Christian faith is much looser than mine. They may see him as more “independent” than someone from an evangelical university or church who is publishing in the evangelical press.

For that reason, though the book is neither perfect nor definitive, it is accessible. And so I think it should be on the reference shelves of journalists, on the reading lists of religious studies students, and in the libraries of Christians who have conversations with skeptical friends.