E-Book Overview
Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future. The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North. More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements. It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.
E-Book Content
the new faces of christianity Also by Philip Jenkins Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know about Terrorism The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania 1945–1960 Synthetic Panics: The Politics of Designer Drugs Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America A History of the United States Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania 1925–1950 Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Great Britain A History of Modern Wales 1536–1990 Crime and Justice: Issues and Ideas The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640–1790 the New Faces of Christianity Believing the Bible in the Global South Philip Jenkins 1 2006 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemal