Book Report - The Next Christendom by Phillip Jenkins

Phillip Jenkin’s thesis is that the face of the Christian faith has changed forever. The center of and the form of expression of faith has shifted from a Euro-American Center to a globocentric proposition. The fulcrum of this proposition is located in the great new cities of the Southern hemisphere.

This shift is critical but it is not new. Jenkins described such a transition that happened one millennium ago. He sketched the process by which thoughts and concept of faith which was rooted in Mediterranean realities became transformed and reinterpreted in a largely Germanic and Aryan context. Social and gender relationship were redefined, law and feudal imposition were introduced, at that time, this was new, even strange to a context that was basically communal. New synthesis of culturally specific versions of the truth of faith gave us what we now know as the Western Christian expression. Jenkins sees this process occurring all over again, only now, the context is a re-interpretation and a re-presentation from the perspective of the global South. Conservatism, supernatural orientation, personal salvation and communal orthodoxy rather than politics and economics will characterize this New Christendom.

In using the term the New Christendom, Jenkins resurrected an old term res publica Christiana. This res publica Christiana- New Christendom commands a loyalty to the faith that transcends affiliation to petty temporal kingdoms or nations. It is an enduring reality, it possesses standards and mores that is higher than that which any state can posses. Jenkins also traces a non- Western history of the faith that included accounts of Nestorian influence in the Mongolian court, the Catholic influence at the African court of Affonso I in Kongo. He showed how acculturation and such a thing as the decision to wear or not to wear silk determined the rise of the Nagasaki Bishopric of 1596. He asserts that Western cultural insularism created a reversion of the expansion of the church. There is a need to capture anew the strategic activities of the Jesuits that contextualized the faith for China, India and Africa.

Christianity has a global appeal that has not shown the slightest sign of waning. Even though the Europeans that brought it took along a generally unacceptable “sense of cultural superiority and an insatiable lust for wealth” (p. 40). Jomo Kenyatta was quoted to have said, “When missionaries came, to Africa, they have the bible, we had the Land. They said, “let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the bible, they had the land.” Mission expansion and colonial intrusion became synonymous in the minds of African writers; the people began to see missionary Christianity as a kind of cultural leprosy. In spite of this caricatures however, Christianity grew. Starting at the edges of the society such as among the efulefu – the worthless men of Igboland, it inexorably proceeded into the heart and the center of communities in the global South. Tthe core of the spread of Christianity was the word of mouth; it was deployed as an effective tool of networking the community. According to Achebe, “there was a poetry to the new religion, something felt in the marrow; a relief poured into parched soul...”

Critical to the process of growth in the global South was what Jenkins termed “purging the essential truth of its foreign cultural trappings…” The church had to “let the message speak intelligibly in African, Latin American or Asian terms.” There was a synthesis of old and new (p. 45), visionary, messianic, millenarian and utopian leaders facilitated this growth. Kimpa Vita of Kongo embodies the essential characteristics of these visionaries. Wade Harris of Liberia/Ivory Coast rejected the power of the Christian elite to become a catalyst for a process that converted over 100,000 people. His church survives to this day appealing to the poorest of the poor.

The book traced the progress of the church and the massive growth that has far outstripped its Western roots. Catholic impact in former Spanish, Portuguese and French dominion is massive. There are 424 million baptized Catholics in Latin America, over 70 million baptized Anglicans, over 100 million Christians in China. Common to all these growth is that it is an urban driven phenomenon. Secondly, it is a refuge for people confronted by a time of immense and barely comprehensible social change. Churches are fulfilling new social needs that cut across gender and race. Jenkin quotes Peter Brown who calls this “a radical sense of community whose demands and relations are explicit” (p.76). “Material support, mutual cooperation, spiritual comfort and emotional release” are all critical features of this growth.

Jenkins made projections that he likened to fools rushing in where angels feared to tread. However, his reasoning stands on solid grounds. He projects a shift in global population from a Northern center to a Southern center. His perception of this is that it is a mixed blessing. New markets in the south will be pressured by energy and resource availability; there will be a curious admixture of stagnation and stability. Jenkins described emerging urban realities. His future cities will be “unsecular” (p. 92) and they will be composed of new urban dwellers majority of who will work totally outside the legal economy and have no effective relationship with the officialdom. This is already happening – as far as I know – in the major cities of Africa.

Jenkins described how massive secularization has created dechristianization of the West. People in the Britain, Germany, France, and Italy are moving from Christianity to religious indifference, they are not moving to active participation in another religion. Massive immigration has hastened the dechristianization of the West. Southern people facing pressures of poverty moves up into Northern lands facing shortage of workers; the resulting religious consequences is massive. Immigration brings with it the challenge of new religions – especially Islam; it also brings the hope of revitalization of Christianity by Christian immigrants from foreign lands.

Jenkins tried to separate between the core belief of Christianity from its cultural accidents. He observes that Christianity cannot fail to absorb the habits and thought –worlds of the region in which it is strongest. Liturgy must use the language of the people, art must represent the context of the land, we must retell the myths of faith in the word-pictures of the masses. We must “transform Jesus into African for African hearer…, and Chinese for Chinese followers” (p. 113), “lex orandi, lex credendi…;” the “law of prayer must become the law of belief.” Religion must be built on cultural compromises, we need to see traditional contexts as prearatio evangelica, a preparation for the gospel.

The global church must engage with and accept certain patterns of believing which flows directly from the southern pre-Christian worldview but which are not necessarily antithetical to the essence of faith. The church needs to engage with veneration of ancestor, engagement with and power over witchcraft, exorcism, healing, spiritual warfare, a vibrant use of the Old Testament. This must lead the church back to the tangible signs that Jesus pointed out to those who questioned his messiah ship (p.121, 127). A global faith must represent the practical realities of its adherents.

Practical realities of the people often involve an engagement with oppression. Christian leadership are often the last hope the people in oppressive situations. This has been shown to be the case across the face of the nations from Latin America to Asia to Africa. Christian church however needs to watch out for unholy patronage. The recent cases of Philippine and Zambia boldly illustrate the point. Uncritical acceptance of patronage can hurt the church. The church must protect its role of being a prophetic voice in the midst of the people and on behalf of the people.

Jenkins investigates the clash of civilizations. Islam comes up against Christianity, Christianity itself sometimes takes on the cloak of intolerance and religious loyalties become the root of political intolerance and civil strife. Conversion, which is at the core of Christian experience, becomes the major flashpoint of this scenario, immigration will contribute, inability or unwillingness to maintain religious or national boundaries will be a factor. Key battle points will be (and are already!) Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia (ethnically motivated), the Balkans and the mega-cities of Europe. Jenkins asserts that it is not just a Christian – Muslim engagement but that other religions will engage with Christian in battle over the definition of boundaries of faith in the nations.

The future of the faith lies in its former mission fields and this future will have interesting undertones. A Catholic (or Anglican for that matter) future may end up having persons from the global South in charge. This may actually lead to the revival of a very conservative era. Churches of the global south are more comfortable with notions of authority and charisma than with new ideas of consultation and democracy. The South is morally, sexually and theologically conservative.

Immigrant communities in Northern lands will become important resources. Jenkins cites RCCG (the church under whose auspice I now minister) as one such critical resource. Such churches must however “treat white habits and world views with due respect and sensitivity.” I am one of those immigrants in Northern lands. I see what we can do from my own little corner; but I wonder at our effectiveness and the tendency of our activities not to reach out beyond what Mathew Ashimolowo of Kingsway Church in London calls the “Sea of Black faces.” I desire to see effective “Breaking of Barriers” that stand before the average Global South minister. I am working in my own corner; I hope to succeed.