Christianity: The Global Faith that Comprises the Majority of the World's Nations
by A. Joseph Lynch
The above map displays the Christian nations of the world, with purple-coding for those nations whose Christian population exceeds 50% and the pink-coding for nations where Christianity comprises 10%-50% of the population. Christians should resist ideologies that split the baptized Body of Christ into the West, the Latins, and the Slavic Orthodox. These regional distinctions obfuscate our underlying unity as Christians and our distinctive political forms as nations.
In a previous Map on Monday, we presented a map of the top ten most populous Christian nations. Only one of those nations - Italy - was located in Europe. What's more, although neither Nigeria nor China are shown above as purple, they are nevertheless host to the sixth and eighth largest populations of Christians in the world. Christianity is truly a global faith that is rapidly increasing throughout the world.
Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (book review coming soon), notes that 10 million Africans were Christian in the year 1900 - but this number is projected to be 633 million by 2025. The 2025 projection for Christian populations of Latin America and Asia will grow to 640 million and 460 million Christians respectively.
A mere glance at today's map reveals the stunning majority of the world's nations having a Christian majority, yet few of these nations have acted to protect persecuted Christians. In a Minneapolis Star Tribune essay regarding Christian persecution, Dr. Pence rightly asks "Where are the Christian nations?"
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