Mark and Rex discuss the explosive growth of Christianity in Africa, Latin America, and Southern Asia.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your hosts are one of your hosts, Mark Moore, and your co host, Rex Gurney. Our occasional co host, occasional, you know you're on you're more reoccurring co hosts are sure. And today, we're starting kind of part one of a two part series that might turn into an 18 part series and easily do that of global Christianity. And talking about how the numbers are just exploding in the church outside of Western Europe and America. And we've kind of we've noted the decline in Western Europe for a long time. But I think it's really good for American churches to start recognizing, hey, The kingdom of God is so much bigger and so excited to In this episode, just kind of talk about that shift that's happening. Right, right. And then looking forward to part two, we'll be looking at some more stories from African churches, and Latin American churches. Right, looking forward to it. So hope you enjoyed this part one as we kind of dive into global Christianity.

1:09

Well, no, today on there, on the episode, we're going to be talking about global Christianity. And we're going to kind of with that we're going to be defining some terms and defining maybe exactly what we mean by global Christianity. And I'm excited and maybe some other episodes, we're able to pull in some other faculty to kind of talk about their experience exactly with the with the global church. But I think just kind of maybe I think what brought this issue up with you, Rex, and kind of why how you brought it kind of to the table. And and I think something that I've seen in my own life is, it's really easy to view your own faith, kind of through only the lens or simply the lens of your culture. Right. Right. And maybe not just your culture, but your country. And I think that that is particularly a part of maybe American Christianity.

2:04

And, you know, I guess one of the reasons for that, as you could probably make a historical case that for around 100 years or so, probably, you know, the most vibrant, you know, center as far as numbers and money and yeah, theory endeavor and things like that. Were from here, right? That is actually no longer true. Maybe the money thing is

2:24

right, but is, is Yeah, is the United States still the the number one on population of country? I think it still is still is. But yeah, the numbers are shifting, they're showing those numbers are really radical. I guess, when we bring up that term global Christianity, what do we mean by that term?

2:46

Well, I think we've already kind of sort of answered the meaning of it already. Yeah, Christianity is not the, you know, property or, or it doesn't belong to anybody. You know, it's interesting. So when you look at the geographical sort of center of Christian vibrancy over the last 2000 years, it's always shifted. I mean, you start with Jerusalem, you know, then you end up I don't know, Antioch, then somehow gets to Rome, sort of sticks with Rome for a while, then we start talking about Christendom. And when we start talking about Christendom, we're really talking about Western Europe. Right. And then, you know, you could make a case that it kind of jumped the Atlantic, and then North America became a real center of Christian vibrancy. And now that train has already left the station and it is gone somewhere else. And yeah, a lot of us really aren't aware of that. And and I guess it's just sort of important to know and and to understand what that might or might not mean for us as Christians here in the United States. Yeah. And a lot of the kind of studies in the statistics you look at talk about the center of the of the, of Christianity shifting from what is termed the global north to the global south. Well, I was just looking at some stats just recently and in 2010 of the 10 countries with the largest Christian populations