In Lionel Young’s World Christianity and the Unfinished Task: A Very Short Introduction, “world Christianity” is a shorthand for the remarkable way in which, over the last century or so, the demographic center of Christianity shifted from Europe and the West to the Global South or the Majority World. This global community is a challenging topic for a “very short introduction.” Nevertheless, Young succeeds in covering a large amount of ground succinctly while also avoiding being merely descriptive. The author also succeeds in his aim that the prose should be accessible. The intended reader seems to be a North American evangelical for whom biblical warrant is necessary, world mission is imperative, and a confessional approach is needed.
The book’s agenda includes dispelling myths about the rest of the world. Young quotes some startling statistics—for example, there are now over 600 million Christians in Latin America and by 2050 African Christians will reach 1.3 billion (32) – to argue for the need for Western churches and missions to engage constructively with existing churches in the majority world. Young helpfully gives some background information about the scholars who compiled and analyzed such statistics, and who were the first to see their significance for the future of the Christian faith, such as David Barratt and Andrew Walls. Young also claims that 85% of Christians today are people of color (129) and calls for a reorientation of White churches vis-à-vis the rest of the world. This call includes a brief but brave examination of the White supremacist and racist attitudes of many Western missionaries.
Young situates his work within a growing body of introductions to world Christianity. The context of this literature shows that his necessarily truncated approach is missing some important dimensions that are represented by scholars who identify with this growing field of study. First, his attention to the past one hundred years gives the impression that the minority position of Europe is without precedent. Others, such as Philip Jenkins and more recently Vince Bantu, have drawn attention to the Christianity of the first millennium which was predominantly in Asia and Africa.
Second, the attention to mission and numerical growth contrasts with other studies in world Christianity that give greater attention to indigenous expressions of faith and local theologizing, or to the social transformation, political impact, and other effects of the gospel in different contexts. These studies are too numerous to mention but The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (Wiley-Blackwell 2016) is a good starting point.
Third, the tendency of the author to divide the world into the West and the rest obscures complexities such as the increasingly multipolar world, the parts of the world that were not colonized by the West (such as the former Soviet Bloc), the intersecting transnational diasporas, and so on. The use of globalization theory in the study of world Christianity, for example by Jehu Hanciles, enables economics, migration, and other global flows to be taken into account.
Fourth, although there are references to Catholic missions, the impression is given that most of the world’s Christians are evangelical, whereas numerically, Catholicism and Pentecostalism are more significant. Studies of the latter are numerous in world Christianity, but global Catholicism is a neglected theme.
Although not comprehensive in its coverage of world Christianity, Young does introduce a lacuna in world Christianity studies by calling attention to parts of the world where Christianity is not, or once was and is no longer, and to Christian mission. The author attributes to Christianity an inherent imperative to evangelize the whole world and the latter part of the book focuses on this “unfinished task.” He takes Christian mission to be the primary reason for the growth of Christianity in the Majority World—not only the Western missionary movement but also the efforts of local people to evangelize, of which he gives an upbeat account. Since most religious growth is biological rather than by conversion, and considering factors such as Christian migrations, this is only a partial explanation, but nevertheless, the faith does not spread without it.
The book also includes a defense of Christian mission as distinct from the colonial enterprise. The main argument used is that of Dana Robert, who found that the rapid growth of Christianity in the formerly colonized world took place mostly after colonialism. This is not sufficient for the case, but it does show that majority-world churches should not be regarded merely as products of colonization. Young gives several examples of revivals in majority-world contexts that led to the growth of existing or indigenous churches. The author brings world Christianity and missiology together by arguing that ongoing evangelical missions to the estimated half of the world’s population who remain “unreached” should take account of the churches that are already in the region. He urges the formation of global partnerships between South and North as the way forward toward the goal of world evangelization, stressing that these should be based on relationships and result from listening by the Western churches, taking into account power differentials to empower majority-world partners.
This addition to the literature on world Christianity is undergirded by significant research and there is an impressive bibliography. It is a well-informed statement and documentation of the worldwide nature of Christianity that offers a powerful challenge to Western Christians to change their attitudes and mission approaches according to this changed landscape.
Kirsteen Kim is Paul E. Pierson Professor of World Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Kirsteen Kim
Date Of Review:
February 16, 2022