Ghanaihan theologian Kawme Bediako began a 2006 lecture by pointing at a map of the world, and saying ‘we need to set things a bit in context as we (just) prayed about turning the world upside down.’ The map showed the countries of the world shaded by colour according to where the Christians were. Europe and North America were shaded pink, (indicating a large number of Christians) and Africa was shaded grey, (virtually no Christians). ‘This map of the world’s religions and missions’, he said, ‘is now outdated. You see the pink shading shows where the Christians are, but that is where they were...If we were to remake this map at the end of the twentieth century, we would shade this pink along here (the lands south of the equator) and shade the other colours and the heathen colours here (North America & Europe). He paused before adding:‘That there should be in our own time such a radical shift in the centre of gravity. No one saw it coming.’
No one indeed. In 1900 one fifth of the world’s Christians lived in the global south. By last year two thirds of Christians lived there, and it is reckoned by 2050 it will be more like three quarters. Bear in mind that the term ‘global south’ includes the whole of Africa, the Americas, from Mexico downwards, the Middle East and Asia, but not Australasia. That means that every Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu majority nation is in the global south, yet it still contains 67% of the world’s Christians: that’s 1.65 billion followers of Jesus. Consider too how the number of Christians in the global north is bolstered by the US Bible Belt, Catholic Poland and the Orthodox of Eastern Europe and Russia. And still we represent only a third of Christendom.
Why has Christianity spread like wildfire in the global south while declining and dying in the global north? One might think that Christianity is a colonial imprint that they are yet to shake off. One might suppose that the less developed world is still poor and superstitious enough to believe the things that our missionaries took to the world back in the imperial era. But there are some stubborn facts standing in the way of such theories.
Firstly, Christianity only really got going in Africa when indigenous evangelists started to lead the missions, and the explosion in Christian belief occurred after the end of colonial rule.
Secondly, Christian Missions never had real success in Asia during our imperial phase. The spread of Christianity has, for the most part, happened in Asia more recently, and without outside intervention. The huge growth in Christianity in China is certainly an indigenous phenomena. Because of this, many Chinese Christians believe that they will be able to convert the Muslim world, since they do not have our crusading, imperial past. Christians are a very small minority in India, and yet the number of Indian Christians is equivalent to half the population of England. In South Korea, where Christianity is booming, it is Buddhism that is the religion of the occupiers. Christianity, if it is associated with any foreign power, is seen as the religion of a friendly, protecting power. There are waves of Christian conversions in Iran, despite extreme state pressure to counter this, and there are more Arab Christians in Muslim countries than we might imagine. None of this looks like a colonised people unable to let go of a former occupier's religion.
Why has Christianity gone south so dramatically? Did we in the West make this happen back in the day when we still believed?
The Kenyan theologian John Mbiti suggested that we had less to do with the rise of African Christianity than we like to imagine. He wrote:
The God described in the Bible is none other than the God who is already known in the framework of our traditional African religiosity. The missionaries who introduced the gospel to Africa in the past 200 years did not bring God to our continent. Instead, God brought them.
They proclaimed the name of Jesus Christ. But they used the names of the God who was and is already known by African peoples -- such as Mungu, Mulungu, Katonda, Ngai, Olodumare, Asis, Ruwa, Ruhanga, Jok, Modimo, Unkulunkulu and thousands more. These were not empty names. They were names of one and the same God, the creator of the world, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One African theologian, Gabriel Setiloane, has even argued that the concept of God which the missionaries presented to the Sotho-Tswana peoples was a devaluation of the traditional currency of Modimo (God) among the Sotho-Tswana.
Mbiti challenged us to view African Traditional Religions, not as demonic or pagan aberrations to be destroyed, but as divinely ordained preparation for the gospel. Africa has been ‘good soil’, for Christianity because the religious shape of African hearts and minds, and of daily life, were so richly prepared in advance. What a shocking and refreshing thought this is: God made Africa ripe for the gospel, drew the missionaries to it, but then required they and their colonial associates to depart for his church to really flourish there.
Mbiti’s contention that ‘pagan’ religion or myth might play a positive part in the history of the church is reminiscent of CS Lewis’s notion of the gospel as myth that became fact. Responding to criticism that the Biblical account of Jesus’s birth, death and resurrection, was suspiciously similar to certain pagan myths current in the Roman Empire, Lewis wrote:
“The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. …God is more than a god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “Pagan Christs”: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”
For Lewis, as for Mbiti, the mythology and pagan religion that held sway in the lands that received the gospel was, by God’s providence, a work of providential preparation.
Such a view has not gone uncontested. Mbiti has been accused by other African theologians of imposing an unwarranted cohesion on the myriad beliefs of the continent. Others have protested that the 'demonisation' of African traditional religions was not Western inspired, but came from African Christians drawing their own conclusions. But Mbiti’s explanation of the spectacular rise of Christianity across sub-saharan Africa is worth stating, not just because there might be something in it, but because it is an authentic African voice explaining an African phenomenon.
And that’s the point. Christians in the global north, especially in the UK and the other secular hotspots of Western Europe, need to start paying attention to theology that comes from the new beating heart of Christendom. We need to listen to voices that are a long way from where we are, and not just geographically.
That’s not to suggest we give a patronising thumbs up to the first non-western theologian we encounter. But to disagree with someone you first have to take them seriously enough to digest their work properly. Better to read and refute than to continue in ignorance of ideas that are now at the centre of Christendom.
And anyway, there is no 'it' to agree or disagree with. Africa, is not Asia, is not South America, and there are many differences and disagreements within these continents too. And why not? Why should theological propositions from the Global South be any less varied than those from Western theology?
Some evangelical churches in the global south have simply absorbed and replicated the theology of Europe and North America. It's their right to do this, and they counter that they are adopting biblical, not western ways. Certain liberation theologians from the South have done the equivalent, proposing theologies whose intellectual framework is straight out of the European academy. But they are not the full story by a long chalk. As Mbiti told the New York Times: “The days are over when we will be carbon copies of European Christians. Europe and America westernized Christianity. The Orthodox easternized it. Now it’s our turn to Africanize it.”
What is happening to Christianity in the Global South certainly throws up some intriguing questions. Why is it that African Christianity has identified so closely with the nation Israel in the Old Testament, yet Western Christianity identifies more with the European church that left Israel behind? Why has Pentecostalism, and associated charismatic churches, had such a huge impact, not just in Africa but in South America compared to the West? What do we know of Pentecostalism? Might we have to take it more seriously? And what should we conclude from the fact that those Chinese churches which are approved by the Chinese Communist Party are never eschatological, whereas the independents are nearly all premillennialists, eagerly awaiting the second coming?
British Christianity is a mere outpost of Christendom. The real action is happening a long way away. Isn’t it time to stop waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with us, and to make an effort to learn from those places where the gospel is on fire?
Why don’t we study theology from the global south more? Why isn’t it part of our seminary and university theological curricula? Maybe it’s an unconscious sense of cultural superiority. Maybe we fear that the Christians of the global south will tell us things that we don’t want to hear. Whatever the reason is, we need to get over it. We have too much to gain.
For myself, I regret that I don’t know enough about African, Asian and South American theology, but I’m excited to start trying to change that.
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