Global Trends

The Phenomenal Growth of Evangelical Christianity in the Non-Western World

One of the great untold stories in the world – unknown even to most Christians – is the story of the phenomenal growth of Protestant Christianity in the developing world since around 1960.

In 1960 the Church was around 70 percent white, Western and middle class.

By the year 2000 – the Church was predominantly (around 80 percent) coloured, non-Western and poor.

This is not because the Church in the West has collapsed – for it hasn’t. Rather, it is because the Church in the developing world has exploded! [Note: while nominal and liberal (non-orthodox) Christianity has collapsed, rigorous Bible believing Christianity is growing.]

In his 1998 book, The Church is Bigger than you Think, Patrick Johnstone describes four waves of Protestant mission expansion:

The First Wave (1792 to1865) Johnstone explains was an era of denomination mission to the continental coastlands (port cities); the era of pioneer Protestant missionaries William Carey and Adoniram Judson.

The Second Wave (1865 to 1910) he explains was an era of interdenominational mission to continental heartlands, which saw the rise of various “inland missions”.

The Third Wave: (1910 to 1966) he describes as an era of evangelical missions to the countries of the world; an era wherein missionaries engaged in “a slow slog of laying the foundations for growth, of seeing churches planted and of training indigenous leadership”.

This work laid the foundation for . . .

The Fourth Wave (1966 – “present” / published 1998), an era of Global missions to the peoples of the world. It was an era in which the focus shifted from nations to peoples (tribes and language groups), a shift facilitated by the proliferation of indigenous missionaries and indigenous missionary-sending organisations. Churches planted by Western missionaries in 19 Century were, by the mid-20 Century sending out missionaries of their own!

While the Church in the US still sends out more Christian missionaries than any other country, most Christian missionaries are not Americans or even white Westerners. Rather, they are non-Western Christians: Koreans, Indians, Nigerians, Brazilians … the global mission force has exploded.

Consequently, the Church today is increasingly global – something unique among the world’s major religions.

It seems clear to me that a Fifth Wave of mission expansion has begun which is resulting in unprecedented numbers of Muslims coming to Christ.  This Fifth Wave – an era of mission to the Muslims of the world –commenced (I maintain) in 1993 with the launch of the international prayer movement 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World, and went into overdrive after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the USA.

Recommended:
A Wind in the House of Islam, by David Garrison (Wigtake Resources LLC; 1st edition (1January 2014)).

What this means, of course, is that hundreds of millions of believers – multitudes of whom are converts – are today, living as vulnerable, counter-cultural Christian minorities amidst increasingly hostile radicalised Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, animist and atheist majorities… in states known for their gross insecurity, corruption, human rights abuses, and lack of religious freedom, states where followers of Jesus are viewed as an intolerable problem to be controlled, exploited, and/or eliminated.

Despite their minority status, and despite the risks, minority Christians in the developing world are massively over-represented amongst pro-democracy and human rights advocates and activists. Catholics, including many priests, are especially active in the field of social justice and journalism. Protestants, including many pastors, are especially active in the fields of pro-democracy and human rights education and advocacy. As followers of Jesus, Christians -- Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant -- are also eager to provide education, healthcare, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and all manner of humanitarian services to the poor and downtrodden irrespective of identity. Such "Good Samaritanism" is at the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

For Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, see: Luke 10:25-37.

The Rise of Religious Nationalism

Most religious nationalism was birthed during the colonial era and was indeed a response to colonialism.

However, it was after independence that religious nationalism became a threat to religious minorities, specifically in emerging democracies, as unscrupulous and ambitious politicians learned quickly how to exploit the religion card for political gain!

No longer needed as a means to rally the masses against colonial power, religious nationalism is now used as a means to dragnet the majority vote which is achieved by rallying the masses against religious minorities, now deemed a threat to social cohesion and national security.

Whether it is in India or Nepal or Sri Lanka or any Muslims country, religious nationalism is politics by other means. It is a political tool wielded by religious dictators and unscrupulous politicians determined to preserve their status and influence over the masses at the expense of expendable minorities.

Religious nationalism produces sectarianism, communal violence and religious discrimination and persecution.

Islamic Revival

Through the 1960s and 1970s, the trend of Islamic radicalisation – the product of many decades of Islamic reformation and fundamentalist agitation – converged with global and regional population and urbanisation trends to produce Islamic revival.

Drawn by the bright lights and job prospects of the region’s newly oil-rich rapidly developing and modernising cites, multitudes of rural, madrassa-educated, conservative Muslims migrated into cites such as Cairo (Egypt), Homs (Syria), Tehran (Iran) and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia).

There in the swelling slums their needs were met, not primarily by government agencies but by Islamic charities run by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic fundamentalist outfits.

Many of these mostly young and conservative migrants were appalled at the rampant worldliness in, and un-Islamic nature of these cities. Revolutionary and fundamentalist clerics stoked Islamic zeal and harnessed Islamic rage until ultimately it erupted in the late 1970s in the form of anti-government, pro-Islamic, uprisings.

Most people are aware that in February 1979, after 13 months of protests and political upheaval, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran; and on 1 April 1979, Iran declared an Islamic Republic.

The Shi’ite ascendancy had begun!

However, few are aware of the failed Sunni Revolution in Saudi Arabia, which has actually proved to be more problematic!!

On 20 November 1979, Sunni revolutionaries laid siege to the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Because it was the Grand Mosque and because it was Mecca (a city forbidden to infidels) – the ruling House of al-Saud needed a fatwa (religious ruling) from the clerics that would grant foreign non-Muslim troops permission to enter the holy site. As the oil baron al-Sauds fell to their knees – the Wahhabi clerics (led at that time by Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Bin Baz) knew they finally had the upper hand!

To secure the fatwa the house of al-Saud would have to agree to fund the Wahhabi religious establishment’s campaign to disseminate Wahhabi fundamentalist Sunni Islam worldwide, and to fund international jihad. The house of Saud did not object as by these means they could both appease the clerics (who essentially controlled the masses and were sympathetic to the revolutionaries) and keep the jihadist out of the country. Once the deal was brokered and the fatwa was secured, US and then French Special Forces were brought in and the revolution was put down.

While the Sunni Revolution failed, it paved the way for the Wahhabi clerics to secure a most strategic win!

The Sunni ascendancy had begun!

Recommended:
The Siege of Mecca, by Yaroslav Trofimov (Penguin Random House, Sept 2008)

Thus 1979 was a pivotal year in which revolutionary, fundamentalist, and aggressive Islamic factions within both main sects of Islam – Shi’ite and Sunni – were massively empowered.

In Iran – where the revolution succeeded – that power is overt as Shi’ite clerics, specifically the Ayatollah and ruling clerics of the Guardian Council, wield ultimate political control.

In Saudi Arabia – where the revolution failed – that power is covert as the Wahhabi religious establishment exercises extraordinary power from behind the benign façade of the US-allied Royal House of al-Saud.

In his book Hatred’s Kingdom, (Regnery Publishing, June 2004), Ambassador Dore Gold explains that after the siege of Mecca the Saudi leadership gave the Wahhabi clerics/ulama much greater authority in the kingdom’s affairs; as such the power of the ulama increased considerably, especially that of Sheik Abdelaziz Bin Baz, whose influence grew phenomenally. And as Gold notes, Bin Baz was tremendously hostile to Christians and Jews, teaching: “According to the Koran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of Muslims it is a requirement of the Muslim to be hostile to the Jews and the Christian”, and “it is a religious requirement to despise the infidel Jews and Christians (. . .) until they believe in Allah alone.”

Bin Baz advanced the idea that Islam must have a global reach if it is to counter Christian missionary activity. He was a strong advocate of jihad (Islamic holy war) as the means of removing all obstacles to the spread of Islam. He taught that jihad was the means by which the door was opened to da’wa (Islamic missionary activity). Bin Baz also promulgated the idea of financial jihad (jihad bi-l-maal), leading to the rise of Islamic “charities” and other money-raising schemes such as Halal certification, from the early 1980s.

The fatwa ensured that Bin Baz and the Wahhabi ulama would have an unlimited flow of Saudi petro-dollars with which to spread intolerant, pro-Sharia, pro-jihad, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian, Wahhabi Islam right across the globe.

Since the end of 1979, Saudi petro-dollars have been used to build thousands of large, beautiful mosques all around the world—mosques designed not primarily to provide for Muslims, but to attract locals to Wahhabi Islam. Many of these mosques, which routinely offer free (Saudi funded) education, are built in strategic areas where no Muslims exist.

Since 1979, Saudi petro-dollars have been used to grant scholarships to poor African and Asian Muslims so they can be educated in Wahhabi Islam in Islamic Universities across the Middle East before returning home to radicalize the locals.

Since 1979, Saudi petro-dollars have been used to finance international jihad in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Africa, the Caucasus, Asia, the Middle East and now also in Europe and the West—ensuring the jihadis are kept not only busy, but far away from Saudi Arabia.

Since 1979, Saudi petro-dollars have been used to establish departments and fill Chairs in Islamic Studies in Western universities through which the Wahhabis can take control of the narrative and subvert the West with regards to Islam’s political mandate and intentions.

The Islamic uprising of 1979 served to heighten Islamic zeal and widen the gap and exacerbate tensions between:

• Sunnis and Shi’ites
• Islamic traditionalists/fundamentalists and modernisers/liberals
• Islam and non-Islam.

This, and not “Islamophobia”, is the reason why so many long-peaceful, long-blended communities and multi-cultural societies are now tearing apart.

Through the 1980s the house of al-Saud sponsored the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Islamisation of Pakistan, all with the aim of hemming in revolutionary Shi’ite Iran and keeping the Sunni jihadists busy elsewhere!

The US-backed Afghan jihad both birthed and internationalised the modern Sunni jihadist movement.

When the Afghan jihad ended in 1990, the jihadists return home: to South Thailand, Southern Philippines, Indonesia, Somalia, the Balkans etc.

Meanwhile, those who couldn’t return to North Africa or the Middle East, because those states refused to let their most committed jihadis back in, either moved on the next jihad – in Bosnia, in Chechnya, in Kosovo, in Eastern Indonesia, in Southern Philippines etc – or they settled in Europe as political refugees, joining many thousands of MB exiles already at home there.

The era of international Islamic jihad had begun.