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Christianity is as vital as ever - in Africa, Asia and South America
Sunday, April 23, 2000 By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
"Christianity is not the dying religion of an older age. It's as vital, possibly, as it ever has been," said the Rev. Scott Sunquist, associate professor of world mission and evangelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
"But that growth is not in our neighborhoods."
More than 65 percent all Christians live in Africa, Latin America or Asia. That fact is evident at universities such as Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, where campus evangelical fellowships are dominated by Asians, said Sunquist, co-author of a forthcoming textbook on "The History of the World Christian Movement."
This recently became apparent in the Episcopal Church, when two Americans were consecrated as Anglican bishops of Singapore and Rwanda and sent to establish evangelical Anglican parishes in the United States.
Churches in India support 15,000 to 20,000 cross-cultural missionaries, probably surpassing the United States as a mission-sending nation, Sunquist said. India sends Catholic missionaries to East Africa and Latin America, while Indian Protestants are establishing medical missions in Nepal.
Sunquist's textbook "starts from the fact that Christianity is a non-Western religion which, for a while, was dominated by Westerners," he said.
"We don't start by talking about Rome and Europe and England. We start by taking a look at Christianity as it spread into Persia and Ethiopia and North Africa. Then we go to Europe. So the story is told in a way that gives credibility and priority to the places where most Christians live."
Sunquist is Presbyterian and his co-author, the Rev. Dale Irvin of New York Theological Seminary, is a Baptist. The Catholic-based publishing company is Orbis Books. Sunquist and Irvin work with 50 consultants from Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and indigenous churches worldwide. Thirty of those scholars will gather at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary May 4-6 for final discussions on the first draft of the first of two volumes.
When it is published in 2001, "The History of the World Christian Movement" will be translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese and, possibly, Indonesian.
Before joining the faculty at Pittsburgh, Sunquist taught at an ecumenical seminary in Singapore. Most students wanted to become missionaries, he said, and one of his ethnic Chinese students now teaches the Bible to women in a Muslim village in West Africa. Another Chinese couple was so saddened by the eclipse of Christianity in Western Europe that they embarked as missionaries to Paris.
Sunquist sees little hope of a quick rebound from Western Europe's 4 percent rate of church attendance. He expects Christianity to continue to decline in Canada, while the practice of Islam, Buddhism and neo-paganism grows.
But because the United States never had a state church and its religious life developed around popular revival movements, he expects Christianity to at least hold its own here.
A widely used estimate of the world's five largest faith groups is that, out of 6 billion people, 2 billion are Christian, 1.2 billion are Muslim, 900 million are Hindu, 900 million are secular nonbelievers and 350 million are Buddhist.
In 1900, Africa was about 9 percent Christian. By 1950, it was 25 percent Christian, and today, it is 50 percent Christian, Sunquist said. Out of an African population of 760 million, there are 130 million Catholics and at least that many Protestants.
But the most spectacular movement has been in African Indigenous Churches, which are not Protestant because they have no link to the Reformation.
"These revolve around a local prophet who has read the Bible, had a vision and started a church," Sunquist said. They are completely African in style, structured according to tribal practices and often have services that last all day.
The Kimbanguist Church, founded by the Rev. Simon Kimbangu of the Republic of Congo, has about 7 million members, which makes it much larger than the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) combined. The Africa Israel Church, with 1.5 million members, has worked successfully in Muslim regions by holding worship services on Friday rather than Sunday.
"Probably the work that was originally done by Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries had to die in order for this new thing to grow. If [Christianity] continued to be dominated by the West, it would never have flourished like this," Sunquist said.
"They are fired up with a vision that you would have found in the first or second century. They are developing their theology, their forms of worship. Everything is fresh," he said.
Third World Christianity most closely resembles Pentecostalism, with its freewheeling style.. A sociologist would explain that popular movements have a bright burst of growth before becoming institutionalized in their second or third generation.
"But what do you say when you see a continuous revival or renewal movement? The revivals in East India go back to the 1920s and are still going on," Sunquist said.
"As a theologian, it seems that somehow God's spirit is working among the poorest. Jesus said 'Blessed are the poor,' and they are blessed."
Several years ago, a Russian Orthodox priest arrived at the International Association of Mission Studies conference in South Africa carrying pictures of his decrepit church building in an impoverished village. After checking to make sure the priest was legitimate, Sunquist decided to help.
He hopes to send students from the seminary, along with an agricultural specialist and volunteers from Hosanna Ministries, to rebuild the church and begin to develop a village economy. He would like to involve Orthodox congregations from Pittsburgh, and perhaps some black and Asian congregations as well.
"It could be a wonderful moment of reconciliation," he said.
But persecution is a growing fact of Christian life worldwide. In Malaysia, for instance, although "Allah" is the generic word for "God," it is illegal to say "Allah" in a Christian context.
"Some do, very quietly and carefully. But some are still imprisoned," he said.
Sunquist believes that devout Muslims and devout Christians are capable of understanding and respecting each other's missionary impulses, and that inter-religious dialogue helps keep the peace in mixed communities. But when the regional religious balance shifts, the social and political repercussions can lead to violence. Nigeria, India and Indonesia have all seen recent deadly examples of this.
Asian and African Christians understand that "if you are going to be faithful to Jesus Christ, you can count on suffering. Americans tend to assume that you can protect yourself from that, because we have been able to," Sunquist said.
"But in a minority context, Christians expect to suffer for their faith. In Asia, most of the people in the churches are first generation Christians because the growth curve has been so steep. All of these people have, in some way, had to suffer a break with their past. They may have been kicked out of their homes or had rocks thrown at them. They may have had a plot on their life."
Because they have staked so much on their faith, they need the support of American Christians more than ever, Sunquist said. American resources, including technical support, volunteers, money and education, are needed. Christians of different cultures need each other, he said.
"Christianity is, by definition, intercultural. There is a risk of an African Indigenous Church becoming an ethnic church. Well, Germany experienced an ethnic church, a church that was kept ethnically pure. That is a scary thing," Sunquist said.
"One of the problems of the church in the west is that we have not recognized that Christendom is dead. We are very self-satisfied. We need to humble ourselves and realize that we now need to receive teaching and spirituality from the non-Western world."
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