The third edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia, just published, boasts accurately of being “the most comprehensive attempt to quantify adherents of Christianity and other world religions.”
The 998 pages are packed not only with such statistics but overview articles and then descriptions about every religion and 45,000 denominations of Christianity as found within each of the world’s 234 nations and territories. This monumental project is the work of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Yes, this is a missionary-minded evangelical Protestant school, but the center's research is widely acknowledged as objective and authoritative. (The center planned a related conference on world religions March 30-April 1 that looks interesting and has just postponed it until September due to The Virus.)
The 40-member encyclopedia team drew upon the 1982 and 2001 editions in a 50-year project now led by the center’s Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo. The latter is also a fellow at Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs. Zurlo (gzurlo@gordonconwell.edu) can help media reviewers obtain access to a full electronic text of the encyclopedia on a “personal use only” basis.
This volume obviously belongs in any serious library, including those at media companies, despite the $215.95 price.
More immediately, there are breaking news articles here for the taking that will be enhanced by maps, charts and graphs by your art department. Here’s a sampling of research findings.
* The encyclopedia’s major theme is that “Global South” nations are the population center of Christianity after long dominance by Europe and North America. Veteran religion writers are generally aware of this shift, but consider the particulars. In 1900, 18% of Christians lived in the Global South vs. 67% currently and a projected 77% by 2050. Africa became the continent with the most Christians in 2018, passing Latin America, which had just surpassed Europe in 2014.
* Other developments: Nations like Brazil, Nigeria and South Korea are energetically sending missionaries elsewhere. In 1800, a third of the world was either Christian or Muslim, but the two faiths will command 64% of the world population by 2050. At present growth rates, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches will have a billion followers by 2050. A remarkable 87% of followers of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism combined have no personal acquaintances who are Christians.
* Muslim statistics are always controversial. The encyclopedia counts 4.9 million in the United States, putting Islam on an inevitable path to surpass Judaism as the nation’s second-largest religion. The new work says that globally Christians currently outnumber Muslims 2.5 billion to 1.9 billion and will maintain a 619 million edge in 2050. Reporters may want to ask the pros at another demographic think tank, the Pew Research Center, why its numbers are different.
* The encyclopedia lists the largest “Christian families” in this descending order: Latin Rite Catholics, Pentecostal and Charismatic groups, other Evangelicals, the Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists, members of united churches, the “Oriental” Orthodox, Lutherans and Presbyterian-Reformed Protestants. The encyclopedia figures 58 million people gather in non-traditional house churches or cells, and that 5.8 million “hidden" Christians must identify publicly with the dominant national religion. The work offers sorrowful details about mass-scale persecution of Christians.
For an example of those 234 country-by-country articles, here’s some of what’s reported about Afghanistan, which is much in the news just now. We learn that Christianity there dates from around A.D. 200 and long prospered, but today the population is 99.9 percent Muslim. Its first Protestant church building was erected in 1970 and demolished by government edict three years later, though expatriate Christians can meet privately for worship.
This is not an easy place to be non-Muslim. No law is allowed to contravene Islam. Missionaries are officially prohibited. Church humanitarian aid workers have been imprisoned and occasionally murdered. Men who convert from Islam are subject to beheading and women to life imprisonment. Even anti-Islamic talk and writings are capital crimes. Thus indigenous converts usually leave their homeland, though several thousand remain as "hidden" Christians.
Reporters’ contacts: Over-all questions can be answered via info@globalchristianity.org, a handy resource reporters should always keep on file. Note encyclopedia-related material on a seminary blog.
In case you need to reach the publisher, that’s the Edinburgh University Press in Scotland: marketing@eup.ed.ac.uk.
Note that the seminary's center continually updates its World Religion Database and World Christian Database, both available online from Brill by subscription.