Sylvan Manor

I recently finished reading Philip Jenkins’ “Future of Christianity” trilogy: The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, and God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. I don’t intend to write full reviews of the three books, but I do want to recommend them, and to do so for several reasons.

First, The Next Christendom is a much-needed antidote to the pessimism of so many American Christians about the future of Christianity in the world. Jenkins paints a compelling picture of a vibrant and growing Christian faith in Africa and Asia – a faith with many weaknesses, to be sure, but one that is in many ways on the right track and growing in the right direction.

We have confessional reasons to be optimistic about the future of the church – Daniel 2 says the kingdom will grow, and Jesus made it clear that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church he is building. He ascended to heaven as one who has received all authority in heaven and on earth. The church’s victory is along the path of suffering and death – but it is victory nonetheless.  Jenkins argues that we can see this growth happening around the world. Whatever weaknesses – and even decline – we may think is present in the West, Western Christians need to fight their myopic tendencies and broaden their sense of the kingdom. We should be able to be excited about what God is doing around the world.

Second, The New Faces of Christianity does a wonderful job of portraying the diversity – in faithfulness, maturity, and traditions – within global Christianity. There are many weaknesses, many deep and troubling problems in the churches in Asia and Africa. (Though, as Jenkins is quick to point out, there are plenty of problems in the Western church as well.) At the same time, there are large and growing expressions of historic Christian orthodoxy – often as a result of many of these cultures not suffering the effects of the Enlightenment. The global church never thinks to doubt the supernatural, communal, and public aspects of the Christian faith. Jenkins paints compelling pictures of the churches in Africa, for example, giving a central place to church community, to the public reading of Scripture, and to the implications of the Christian faith for all of life.

Third, God’s Continent makes a convincing case that the decline of European Christianity and the rise of Islam in Europe is not reaching quite the apocalyptic heights feared by so many. Islam is growing, but it is in many ways capitulating to the same forces of modernism and secularism that have weakened European Christianity. At the same time, the immigration trends that are bringing Islam to Europe are also bringing to the continent the vibrant Christian faith of Africa and Asia – a faith that has not capitulated to modernism’s insistence upon a deep divide between the sacred and the secular, between the religious and the political. Jenkins argues that this growing Christian faith is often ignored – not because it isn’t real or vital, but because it is found primarily in immigrant communities. Old-stock Europeans see immigrants from Asia and Africa and simply assume that Islam is on the rise – when, in fact, many of those immigrants are bringing a Christian faith that is often quite orthodox and vibrant.

Jenkins certainly grants that the rise of Islam is a real challenge for Europe, and he devotes quite a bit of effort at describing a way forward. Too much of his proposed solution, however, involves hoping that both Islam and Christianity make their peace with Western secularism, embracing a deep divide between the sacred and the secular, the religious and the political. The rise of Islam is exposing the bankruptcy of Western culture’s gods of pluralism and multiculturalism. The solution is not for the church to defend those gods. Rather, we have much to learn from global Christianity’s embrace of the communal and public character of Christian faith.