Putting It into Perspective: Christianity in the World Today

Binoculars are handy when you want to gaze upon a distant object, but you don’t hold them up to your face as you drive a car or walk down the street. If you did, you’d end up hitting a tree or stepping into a mud puddle. Instead, before using a pair of binoculars, it often helps to first stop, scan the landscape, and then use the binoculars to centre on what you want to see more clearly. Similarly, before you look closely at the Christian faith in the rest of this book, take a step back and put Christianity into a larger perspective. 

Focusing on facts about the faith

Christianity originated with Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago and remains a growing faith in the world today. To help you understand Christianity’s role in the world, consider some of these facts about the faith:

Christianity is the largest religion in the world. In terms of raw numbers, Christianity is the world’s largest religion, with more than 1.9 billion people professing faith, or 33 percent of the world’s population. Islam is next, with 22 percent, followed by Hinduism (15 percent), non-religious (14 percent), Buddhism (6 percent), and Judaism (0.5 percent) (adherents.com, 2002). Check out the section, “Relating Christianity to other world faiths,” later in this chapter, to see the major differences among these religions. 

The developing world, including Africa, Latin America, and Asia, has more Christians than North America and Europe do. As I discuss in the section, “Being forewarned of stereotypes: What Christianity is not,” earlier in the chapter, people sometimes consider Christianity a European religion. But, more and more, Christianity has truly become a world religion, spread out fairly evenly over all the continents: Europe holds 29 percent of all Christians, followed by Latin America (23 percent), Africa (18 percent), Asia (16 percent), North America (13 percent), and Oceania (1 percent) (zpub.com, 1995). Although many people think of North America as the major hotbed for Christian activity over the past 150 years, it’s interesting to note that Africa now has more Christians than the United States and Canada combined. 

More than 8 out of 10 Americans classify themselves as Christians. According to Barna Research, in 2002, 85 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christians. Further, 40 percent of Americans label themselves “evangelical” or “born-again” Christians. 

Not all Christians live biblical Christian lives. Being from Massachusetts, if I were asked what baseball team I support, I’d respond that I’m a Boston Red Sox fan. However, because baseball is one of my least favourite sports, I’ve never been to a Red Sox game nor do I even follow the team in the newspapers. At best, I try to act like I know what I’m talking about when my buddies discuss the Red Sox’s chances of winning the World Series.

 
Truth be told, many of the 85 percent of the Americans who identify themselves as Christians do so in the same way I call myself a Red Sox fan. Therefore, in order to prevent being misled by statistics, recognize the distinction between the season ticket holders (firmly committed Christians) and the fair-weather fans (those who make their faith as much a part of their life as the Sox are of mine).