A minor

Warmth in the Global South

I have seen more and more stuff lately about the global south's emerging church (i.e. in Africa, South America, southern Asia). It seems that the center of the Christian faith is already shifting from the global west and north. I went to the university library to get Philip Jenkins' book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (OUP, 2002), but it wasn't on the shelf; I keep waiting for an email from the library telling me they found it. Anyway, I got Alister McGrath's The Future of Christianity (Blackwell, 2002) instead, which was right next to Jenkins' empty spot on the shelf. Fascinating. Here's a quote from McGrath's preface that stuck in my head:

"It has been entirely natural in the past for members of the Church of England to think of themselves as the bastion and epicentre of the Anglican Communion. Yet on any given Sunday, there are now more Anglicans attending church in the west African state of Nigeria than in the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia, taken together." (page x, original italics)

I've compiled a short list of reviews and related articles:

The Atlantic Monthly, October 2002
"Christianity's New Center"
by Katie Bacon

Books & Culture, March/April 2002, Vol 8, No 2
"Turning the World Upside Down"
by Mark Noll

AMiA Bishop's Corner, no date, accessed 6 November 2002
"White Soldiers Following Black and Brown Generals"
by the Rt Rev Thaddeus Barnum

Books & Culture, July/August 2002, Vol 8, No 4
"Should the Lord Tarry: The Future of Christianity"
by Philip Jenkins