The Encyclopedia of World Religions

88 S Christianity, independent

in ways traditional European and North Ameri can denominations perhaps never could. Many contain elements of S PIRITUALISM , Pentecostalism, or S ANTERÍA as well as such indigenous features as ANCESTOR VENERATION and traditional music and dance. The face of Christianity in the 21st century and after will definitely look different from that of the past. SIGNIFICANCE Christianity is the largest single religion in the world today, practiced by roughly a third of the world’s population. For centuries Christianity has made major contributions to European culture. During the 20th century, strong, independent Christian churches also developed among those who were not of European ancestry. Further reading: David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Encyclopedia, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995); Robert S. Ellwood, and James B. Wiggins, Christianity: A Cultural Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988); Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Daniel L. Migloire, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 2004); Ninian Smart, The Phenomenon of Christianity (London: Collins, 1979); Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, Rev. Ed. (New York: Scribner, 1984). Christianity, independent Christian churches that do not belong to a broader Christian institu tional organization. That definition would seem self-evident, but in fact it means different things, depending upon what broader institutional organi zations prevail in a given place. In the years immediately after J ESUS , there seem to have been many communities that called

Roman Catholic or Protestant in Ireland or is Cath olic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim ( see I SLAM ) in Bosnia-Herzegovina and surrounding areas. But in most parts of Europe not more than a small percent age of the population attends church regularly. In the United States, church attendance by the professedly Christian 85 percent of the population is markedly higher than in Europe; the situation in Canada is between those of Europe and the United States ( see C ANADA , RELIGION IN ). But the 225 million Christians in the United States in 2000 represented only a little over 10 percent of world Christianity, and that percentage will decline as the 21st century advances. Worldwide, according to projections, by 2025 half the world’s Christians will live in Africa and Latin America; by 2050, only about one fifth of the world’s then 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic “whites,” and some four-fifths of Christians will be Hispanic, African, or Asian. This is partly because of anticipated rapid popula tion growth in those parts of the world and partly because Christianity is attracting converts there as it loses adherents in regions that were once its heartlands. More significant are the changes this demo graphic (population) shift is making in the char acter of Christianity. In worldwide traditions such as A NGLICANISM , tensions between European/North American and Asian/African/Latin American wings of the denomination have already reached a critical point, as the former tend to be far more liberal than the latter on such issues as homosexu ality and ordaining women. Moreover, increasingly Christians in the South ern Hemisphere regions of rapid growth is moving away from traditional “mainline” denominations. P ENTECOSTALISM , with its vibrancy, its strict moral standards, and its provisions for spiritual expres sion on the part of virtually everyone in its con gregations, has flourished. It is now estimated that as many as one-fourth of active Christians in the world are Pentecostal. Many other new forms of Christianity ( see C HRISTIANITY , I NDEPENDENT ) have appeared in Latin America, Africa (as many as 8,000 on that continent), and Asia, accommodat ing Christian expression to surrounding cultures