Anglicanism was the fastest-growing major Christian tradition in Africa between 1970 and 2010, while the centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the Global South, reports a study published by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts,.
Demographic data published in “Christianity in Its Global Context, 1970”“2020: Society, Religion, and Mission” reports that while agnosticism and atheism has grown in Europe and Christianity plateaued, Europe remains the exception on the world scene as religions continue to gather new adherents round the world.
I’m glad George Conger has called attention to this major report from a highly reliable source. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell is the research team that will soon be releasing the third edition of the massive Oxford stat collection on Christianity around the globe. Former Anglican missionary David Barrett founded the ministry, and Todd Johnson has very capably carried the baton since Barrett passed it on to him. There’s much food for thought, and much that ought to encourage us, in the global trends documented here. For example, Anglicanism is the fastest growing form of Christianity in Africa (i.e., in terms of percentage growth, the RC’s outgrow us in raw numbers).
But did anyone else notice the astonishing forecast for the growth of Anglicanism in Africa during the decade from 2010-2020? This report predicts that African Anglicanism will swell from about 50 million in 2010 to around 65 million by 2020. We all know that Anglicanism is growing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, but that’s truly amazing, an astounding increase of perhaps 15 million more Anglicans in just ten years. That would mean adding more new members than the combined active members of all the Anglican provinces in the Global North!! Wow. Praise God.
David Handy+
I think it is telling that TEC has no interest in studying churches that grow. So much for the decade of evangelism. One of the tenets of my parish is that healthy things grow. By any objective standard, TEC is failing as a church. All is not well.
Of course, we too often forget there was a looooong time when Christianity was not primarily Western/white.