The Next Christendom: The Coming Of Global Christianity, By Joseph Vigilante

“The Next Christendom” Book Review by Joseph Vigilante

“The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity” by Philip Jenkins examines the change in global Christianity from being a predominantly Euro-American religion and tracks its fast spread in the South. The thesis of the book is that Christianity has dramatically shifted South to the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and is rapidly growing in those regions while declining in the West.

Throughout the book, Jenkins examines how Christianity as we know it is drastically changing. In the preface he states: “In 1900, 83 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and North America. In 2050, 72 percent of Christians will live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and a sizeable share of the remainder will have roots in one or more of those continents” (Jenkins preface xi). To demonstrate this point further, he states that if we were to project what 2025 would look like, there will be

In his book, Jenkins states that in the near future we could see a new trend emerge in which the Southern nations are actually converting and re-Christianizing the North! He states, “About one-sixth of the priests currently serving in American parishes, some 7,600 men, are foreign born, with roots in Mexico, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines, as well as Poland. One-third of the U.S. Seminarians studying for the priesthood are foreign born” (Jenkins 259). This is an amazing statistic and it shows the tremendous impact that the Southern nations are already having on Christianity in the North. It is happening now and even more so in the future, it is possible to see the South sending an increasingly large amount of missionaries to the Northern countries in the West and