Christianity poised to continue its shift from Europe to Africa

By David Mascileave From Pew Research Center

The global Christian population has been shifting southward for at least a century and is expected to continue to do so over the next four decades, according to new demographic projections from the Pew Research Center. Overall, the share of Christians in the world is expected to remain flat. But Europe’s share of the the world’s Christians will continue to decline while sub-Saharan Africa’s will increase dramatically.

Nearly half of the world’s Christians already reside in Africa and the Latin America-Caribbean region. By 2050, according to the Pew Research study, those two regions will be home to more than six-in-ten of the world’s followers of Jesus, with just a quarter of Christians living in Europe and North America.

Global Share of Christians by Region, 2010-2050

This was not always the case. In 1910, for instance, Europe was home to roughly two-thirds (66%) of the world’s Christians, with North America a distant second with 15%.

In 2050, nearly four-in-ten of the world’s Christians (38%) are expected to be living in sub-Saharan Africa, up from 24% in 2010 and less than 2% in 1910.

In addition, by 2050, five of the 10 largest Christian populations in the world – Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda – will be in Africa, which had three of the 10 largest Christian populations in 2010.

By contrast, 35 years from now, the share of global Christians who call Europe home will have dropped to roughly 16% (from 26% in 2010). In addition, only 10% of the world’s Christians will be living in North America, down from 12% in 2010.

The share of the global Christian population in Latin America and the Caribbean also is forecast to drop slightly, from about 25% to 23%. But it will be the region with the second-largest number of Christians, behind only sub-Saharan Africa.

The share of Christians in the Asia-Pacific region, now about 13%, is expected be the same by 2050. But uncertainty over the data from China (which has 1.3 billion people) ultimately could change the 2050 estimate.

The biggest factor in determining the future global distribution of Christians is population growth, which in turn is driven by factors such as fertility rates. Sub-Saharan Africa’s overall population, which is young and tends to have more children than people in other regions, is expected to more than double between 2010 and 2050, from 823 million to 1.9 billion.

Fertility Rates of Christians Worldwide

At the same time, Europe’s overall population, which is older and has the lowest fertility rate of any region, is expected to shrink, from 743 million in 2010 to 696 million in 2050.

Religious switching also plays a role. In Europe, the share of people who say they are Christian is expected to drop from roughly 75% in 2010 to 65% in 2050, with the number of those switching out of Christianity playing a significant role, along with immigration of members of other religious groups and other factors.

Likewise, the percentage of North Americans who self-identify as Christian is expected to drop from 77% in 2010 to 66% in 2050, with similar factors at play (including some people leaving Christianity and becoming religiously unaffiliated).

Despite a decrease in the share of Americans who are Christian, the U.S. is projected to remain the country with the world’s largest Christian population, with an estimated 262 million Christians in 2050.

For more on this story go to: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/07/christianity-is-poised-to-continue-its-southward-march/

IMAGE: simple.wikipedia.org

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Obama wrong on Christianity

By Jerry Newcombe From Newsmax

Osama bin Laden, meet Mother Teresa. Salvation Army, meet the Taliban. After all, you’re just different sides of the same coin anyway, or so says President Obama, essentially.

last February, Obama famously used the National Prayer Breakfast to scold Christians for having more than their fair share of scalawags who have “hijacked” their religion, lest we judge these professed Muslims who are killing, raping, and pillaging all over the world.
Thus, there is a moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity. We all have our good and our bad apples.

He said, “Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. . . . In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

But does the Quran teach that the faithful Muslim should “slay the infidel”? Yes, this is in Surah 9:29. Did Jesus tell us to slay our foes? No, He told us to love our enemies. That’s in Matthew 5:44. Of course, Christians haven’t always lived up to that. That’s part of Obama’s point.

Yet, it does seem odd when discussing the evil deeds of IS (Islamic State) in 2015 — like burning a man alive in a cage — as reported last week-that Obama brings up the Crusades that effectively ended in c. 1300.

Of course, this general idea is not completely unique to Barack Hussein Obama. Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron said a few months ago of IS, “They’re not Muslims. They’re murderers.” I remember within a relatively short time after 9/11 when former President Clinton spoke at Georgetown about the attack, and he basically blamed the Crusades.

One of my favorite books on the subject is Robert Spencer’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).” I re-interviewed Robert who runs the site jihadwatch.org recently for my radio show. I asked him to comment on portions of the president’s speech.

Says Spencer, “One of the things I thought most noteworthy about it was that in trying to make his moral equivalence argument and give people the impression Islam is not in the least different from Christianity in being able to inspire its adherents to violence is that he had to go back 800 years to the Crusades. The glaring gap there is that you can’t point to any Christian group around the world today or in recent memory that are committing violence in the name of Christianity and trying to justify that violence on the basis of Christian teaching . . . ”

In great contrast, notes Spencer, is Islam. “Whereas, there are hundreds of armed Muslim groups around the world that are condoning violence in the name of Islam and justifying that violence on the basis of Islamic texts and teaching.”

But what about the Crusades, Robert? “The Crusades are nothing like Islamic Jihad. They were late, tardy small-scale defensive reactions to 450 years of Islamic Jihad that had actually rolled up and conquered and Islamized what had been up to that time half of the Christian world. The Crusades were not based on any teaching about making war against and subjugating unbelievers, which is what Jihad is all about.”

I would add in short — no Islam, no Crusades.

I also asked Spencer about Obama’s reference to slavery and Jim Crow, which at least brings us up to the 19th and 20th centuries. Says Spencer, “There he’s got a point. Slavery certainly was justified by Southern slave owners and defenders of slaver on the basis of the Old Testament and on the basis of passages of the New Testament as well.”

He also says, “And yet what [Obama] also leaves out here is that the anti-slavery forces were also Christian, were also in many cases, pastors — people who knew the Scriptures very well. They understood that working out from St. Paul’s letter to Philemon and going from there to the idea that . . . [people] had equal dignity before God and thus to have one person enslave another is contrary to these understandings.”

Spencer adds, “There was never an abolitionist movement in Islam because Islam does not teach that the unbelievers are equal in dignity before God . . . Muhammad owned slaves . . . so it’s very hard to mount any cry against [slavery].” Indeed, slavery is a major problem even today in many Islamic countries.

Every Muslim you see in America is a reminder of the freedom our Judeo-Christian heritage has afforded to people of all faiths or of no faiths. Regardless of the president’s moral equivalence, many Muslims are voting with their feet as to which type of system they would like to live under. You can’t possibly equate Mother Teresa with Osama bin Laden.

Jerry Newcombe is co-host/senior TV producer of Kennedy Classics. He has written/co-written 25 books, including “The Book That Made America, Doubting Thomas” (with Mark Beliles), “What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?” (with D. James Kennedy), and George Washington’s Sacred Fire” (with Peter Lillback).

For more on this story go to: http://www.newsmax.com/JerryNewcombe/Barack-Obama-Crusades-IS-Osama-bin-Laden/2015/02/12/id/624339/#ixzz3WkeFiAd7

Megyn Kelly: Obama scolding Christians could have chilling effect

By Jennifer G. Hickey From Newsmax

Fox News host Megyn Kelly believes President Barack Obama’s recent comments about the “less-than-loving expressions by Christians” could have a chilling effect on those who want to speak out against ongoing religious persecution of their religious brethren.

“I mean, the question is whether those comments do real damage not just to morale among Christians about what their own president thinks of them, but… that they feel he won’t stand up for Christians who are under threat,” Kelly said last night on “The Kelly File,” according to Mediaite.

Kelly was reacting to off-script comments made by Obama to an audience at Tuesday’s Easter Prayer Breakfast in which he reflected upon his own faith.

“On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned,” he said possibly referring to the current controversy over religious freedom legislation in Arkansas, Indiana, and several other states.

“But that’s a topic for another day… I was about to veer off. I’m pulling it back,” the president added.

Kelly took exception to the timing of Obama’s criticism.

“His remarks come as Christians are increasingly being targeted by terrorists worldwide,” she added, referring to the 147 Christians who were killed in a recent attack at a university in Kenya.

The president’s decision to publicly scold Christians is not the first time he has created controversy.

In a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, Obama called on the audience not to forget the “terrible deeds” people have committed in the name of Christ.

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” noted Obama.

Obama’s Easter Prayer Breakfast comments came after Pope Francis used his Easter homily to urge the global community to speak out against the persecution of Christians.

Pope Francis urged “concrete participation and tangible help in defense and protection of our brothers and our sisters, who are persecuted, exiled, slain, beheaded, solely for being Christian,” according to Reuters.

Obama’s repeated references to the sins of Christians while not discussing the religious affiliation of the perpetrators of the attacks exposes a fundamental hypocrisy, says Nina Shea, the director for Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“In an attack in Syria over the past weekend, the administration had no problem expressing condolences for the Alawites and Ismailis who were murdered,” Shea told The Christian Post. “This is in stark contrast to President Obama and the State Department’s failure to mention that Christians were hunted down and executed in Kenya during the same period. This is a typical pattern for the administration.”

For more on this story go to: http://www.newsmax.com/US/Megyn-Kelly-Fox-News-Obama-Christians/2015/04/08/id/637247/#ixzz3Wkeoe1e1