Philip Jenkins
The case for prosperity
These days, Elmer Gantry is a familiar spiritual type around the world. The good news is that the prosperity gospel’s excesses are nothing like the whole story.
No exemptions for faith
Earlier this year, a group of English bishops charged that the nation's Christians faced systematic discrimination that endangered their right to hold public office....
Take & read: World Christianity & American religion
Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity, by Miriam Adeney....
Intolerance in India
Religious freedom has
become a potent rallying cry. That is an excellent development—provided
we avoid turning the issue into a partisan weapon in the confrontation
between Christianity and Islam.
Church growth, Korean style
When the World Missionary Conference gathered in Edinburgh in 1910, it would have taken real optimism to identify Korea as a prospect for major Christian growth. Through the 20th century, though, Christian growth in Korea has been astonishing.
Who’s counting China? Phenomenal growth in the number of Christians: Phenomenal growth in the number of Christians
I was perilously close to becoming an agnostic—at least about certain statistics....
Religion by the numbers: Demography drives change
Demography drives religious change....
Decline and scandal: Symptoms of secularization
This has been a dreadful year for the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. Across the continent, churches are suffering from sexual scandals of a kind long familiar in the United States....
Pilgrims of our time: Looking for miracles
Once upon a time, Europe lived in an age of faith, which found buoyant expression in the massive popularity of pilgrimage....
Martyrs in the family: What Seoul and Kampala have in common
What has Seoul to do with Kampala?...
Born again again: When Christians and missionaries meet
In the 19th century, European and North American missionaries spanned the world, bringing the light of the gospel into what they thought were the dark corners of heathendom....
Church-state disconnect: Official secularism
Even after a century of Christian expansion worldwide, Europe still matters immensely in the map of the faith....
One man, one woman? The paradox of polygamy: The paradox of polygamy
Christian attitudes toward polygamy are more controversial today than they have been for many years. As Euro-American churches debate the issue of same-sex unions, African Christians attack Westerners for their moral laxity and for caving in to secular hedonism. In response, some Western liberals retort that Africans themselves need to put their own house in order. Do African churches define marriage as a sacrosanct union between one man and one woman? If so, then why do their leaders tolerate polygamous unions?
Muslims go Dutch: While churches thrive
For many American Christians, the religious experience of modern Western Europe offers a dire warning. European church membership has been in free fall for a generation....
BRICs of faith: Religion and the four emerging powers
When the U.S. government imagines the global future, the term BRIC features prominently....
Mass appeal in Brazil: Catching up with the Pentecostals
At first glimpse, Marcelo Rossi is a textbook example of the pastor as showman. A handsome, stylish man in his early forties, he leads a flourishing São Paulo congregation legendary for its music....
Take and read
What happens when a superb scholar who studies both North American religious history and global...
The Nestorian faithful: Assyrian and Chaldean churches
I had the opportunity to meet members of one of the world’s oldest and most heroic churches recently when I spoke to the national youth conference of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of ...
Nations at risk: Fertile ground for persecution
It’s the world’s least desirable club: the league of failed and failing states. Every year, the Fund for Peace presents its list of the world’s shakiest political entities....
A second Jerusalem: Lalibela, Ethiopia
Lalibela, in Ethiopia, should be high on anyone’s list of contenders for the title of most astonishing site in the history of Christian art and architecture....