Collideoscope

Posted by: David Bunch

Here is a lengthy but excellent article from Philip Jenkins, a non-Christian author who has made some positive predictions about the Pentecostal movement. In this article Jenkins makes some very positive observations about Christianity, and explores his belief that there are several trends in the Christian movement that indicate an imminent growth or revival. Among the points he makes:

In all periods of Christian history, women have occupied a critical role in the churches, if not formally as leaders, then as key activists and innovators.

The encounter with other religions is an ancient and recurrent fact of Christian history, and the process has had transforming effects on both Christianity itself and the non-Christian religions.

In most historical periods, mission and evangelism are central activities of the churches, so that Christian societies are usually involved with the process of absorbing and inculturating new believers, while being transformed by them in the process.

The best indicator that Christianity is about to experience a vast expansion is a widespread conviction that the religion is doomed or in its closing days.Arguably the worst single moment in the history of West European Christianity occurred around 1798, with the Catholic Church under severe persecution in much of Europe and skeptical, deist, and Unitarian movements in the ascendant across the Atlantic world. That particular trough also turned into an excellent foundation, from which various groups built the great missionary movement of the 19th century, the second evangelical revival, and the Catholic devotional revolution. Nothing drives activists and reformers more powerfully than the sense that their faith is about to perish in their homelands, and that they urgently need to make up these losses further afield, whether outward (overseas) or downward (among the previously neglected lost sheep at home).