Southern Christianity

By Russell Shaw
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 6/20/02)

What is the biggest challenge the next pope will face? When a talk show host asked me that, this is what popped out:

"The next pope is going to have to deal with the fact — and help the Church as a whole deal with it, too — that the center of gravity in Catholicism, as in Christianity generally, is shifting from north to south.

"Eighty years ago Hilaire Belloc said, 'Europe is the Faith.' The Eurocentrism of that was wrong then, is even more mistaken now, and will be laughable in a few more years.

"By far the larger number of Catholics and other Christians already are in countries of the South, not in Europe and North America. For instance—there are twice as many Catholics in metropolitan Manila as in all of the Netherlands.

"The southward shift already is far advanced and will continue and accelerate in the years ahead. The big job for the next pope—and, very likely, of popes for a long time to come—will be to help the Church adjust to the implications of this momentous change."

A fact-filled, thought-provoking new book by Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom (Oxford University Press, 2002), provides plenty of striking data to support this view.

Consider: Europe and North America had 357 million Catholics in 2000 and will have the same number in 2025 (with Europe losing 10 million and North America gaining the same number). The numbers for Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania are 699 million in 2000 and more than a billion in 2025.

Consider: Of the 10 countries with the largest Christian populations in 2000, the U.S., Russia, and Germany had 373 million, while Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and China had 467 million. By the year 2050, the first three may have 506 million Christians, while the countries in the second group may have 868 million.

To a significant extent, popes have been facing up to the changing situation for the last half-century and more. Native hierarchies have replaced missionaries throughout Africa and Asia in the post-colonial era. The makeup of the College of Cardinals similarly has changed. The Roman Curia has been successfully internationalized, with Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians moving into key posts. Soon enough, the change will be reflected in the papacy itself.

Contrary to widely-held expectations 30 years ago, the emerging Christianity of the South is not a version of Marxist-tinged liberationism, but is doctrinally and morally conservative, even fundamentalist, with a marked charismatic tilt. The churches that have made the "most dramatic" progress in the South, says Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State, are either "Roman Catholic, of a traditional, fideistic kind, or radical Protestant sects, evangelical or Pentecostal."

One scenario foreseen by Jenkins is a kind of reverse evangelization—in place of the North-to-South missionary endeavor of the last 500 years, a South-to-North movement accompanying population shifts in the same direction.

The emerging reality involves problems. In some places Christians are in competition—for example, Latin America, where proselytizing Pentecostals subsidized from their U.S. base give established Catholicism a run for its money.

In other places, expanding Christianity comes up against expansionist and aggressive Islam. Whatever may have been true in the past, Jenkins remarks, "the threat of intolerance and persecution chiefly comes from the Islamic side of the equation."

It adds up to the fact that the next pope will have his hands full. But so will the rest of us, for that matter.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

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