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COPYRIGHT 2002 National Review, Inc.
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, by Philip Jenkins (Oxford, 304 pp., $28)
The quasi-apocalyptic warnings are all too familiar by now. Christianity is on the way out, and the West's stranglehold on religion is going the way of the dodo (and, most of the critics add, none too soon). If the old faith of the oppressors has any hope at all, opine the advocates of obliterating "reform," it must change or die; meanwhile, the fearsome forces of Islam range unchecked across the globe, as the crescent surely and irrevocably replaces the cross. The religious landscape of this new century holds little hope for the followers of Jesus.
All of these deadly serious predictions are familiar; they also, however, happen to be laughably untrue. At present count, and with the most accuracy that demographic science can hope to achieve, there are 2 billion Christians in the world. By the year 2050, there will be 3 billion, outnumbering Muslims three to two. Christianity is anything but moribund, so whence the rumors of its imminent, whimpering death?
Philip Jenkins, professor of history...
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