Product Description

Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future.
The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North.
More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements.
It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52668 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his highly acclaimed The Next Christendom (2002), Jenkins boldly proclaimed that the center of Christianity was moving slowly out of Europe and North America to Latin America, Africa and Asia. By 2025, he points out, Africa and Latin America will compete over which area is most Christian. In this compelling sequel, Jenkins probes more deeply the differences between northern and southern Christianity, examining various elements that characterize Christian life, especially belief in the Bible. He argues that the mostly agrarian Christian communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia resemble early Christian communities, enabling southern-hemisphere Christians to read the Bible with fresh eyes. Such communities read the Bible communally rather than individually, and they read it less critically and more literally than their North American and European counterparts. Explosive debates over the ordination of women and homosexuals and the authority of the Bible in various global denominations—such as the Anglican Communion—illustrate not only the stark theological differences between North and South but also the sheer size of the southern communions influencing the debate. As part of a proposed trilogy (his book on Europe's coming religious struggle is scheduled for late 2007), Jenkins's prescient religious histories offer brilliant insights on the state of modern Christianity. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The Africans and Asians who are the world's newest Christians understand the Bible differently than Europeans and North Americans do, Jenkins argues, although probably not much differently than the earliest Christians did. For this new audience, the Bible possesses enormous authority as a gateway to literacy and the political as well as spiritual power of literacy. It systematizes ideas about, as Jenkins' chapter titles denote, "Old and New," "Poor and Rich," "Good and Evil," "Persecution and Vindication," "Women and Men," and "North and South," and it relays usable stories and practical wisdom to help these new Christians cope with and master the challenges in their lives (they prefer the wisdom books Proverbs and the Epistle of James above all the others). Indeed, the Bible has for them the liberatory force it had for the peasants and outcasts who overwhelmed Rome with the first Christianity. Gracefully and cogently synthesizing mountains of research, Jenkins illuminates a crucial aspect of the burgeoning "Two-Thirds World" Christianity that he called attention to in The Next Christendom (2002). Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Jenkins's prescient religious histories offer brilliant insights on the state of modern Christianity." --Publishers Weekly
"An engaging book that invites--no, compels--rethinking the future of the global Christian movement." --Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief of First Things
"Gracefully and cogently synthesizing mountains of research, Jenkins illuminates a crucial aspect of the burgeoning 'Two-Thirds World' Christianity that he called attention to in The Next Christendom."--Booklist
"In this compelling sequel, Jenkins probes more deeply the differences between northern and southern Christianity, examining various elements that characterize Christian life, especially belief in the Bible.... Jenkins's prescient religious histories offer brilliant insights on the state of modern Christianity."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"By introducing the world of southern Christianity to a northern audience, Mr. Jenkins has thus done a good deed for people on both sides of the equator."--Wall Street Journal
"An important new book by one of the preeminent scholars of contemporary Christianity. Perhaps more than any other church historian in the affluent north, Philip Jenkins understands how the church of the global South will transform Christian faith in the world. The New Faces of Christianity challenges our usual reading of the Bible with profound insights from Christians who help us re-learn truths that much of Western Christianity has forgotten. Like his ground-breaking The Next Christendom, this is absolutely essential reading for all who are seeking to understand the future of the church in the 21st century." --Jim Wallis, Editor of Sojourners and author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
"Philip Jenkins has written another essential book. Finally, we have a place to turn for a clear, balanced, and comprehensive explanation of the ongoing revival in the southern hemisphere. I cannot imagine a better rendering of these issues." --Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Snapshot by an Informed Photographer
Here Jenkins continues to offer us eye-opening reports from the field of contemporary Christianity and its ever-changing face. Though heavier in anecdote than analysis, this is a superb addition to this recognized scholar's growing corpus.

Fascinating study of Christianity in Africa and the global South

This book is a companion volume to Jenkins' highly successful "The next Christendom" which looked at the position of Christianity in the global south. As numbers of Christians remain static or fall in the Western nations but grow significantly in Africa, Asia and South America, the Christianity that these nations exhibit can be very different to that with which we are familiar. Jenkins explores, mostly using Africa as an example, how Christianity is experienced in the global south, including the significant focus on healings, demons, witchcraft and persecution, all within a framework of a world like that of the Bible, marked by plague, poverty and exile.

Jenkins shows how Christians in the global south are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, taking new messages or highlighting areas that for post-enlightenment westerners have lost their power. Some of the behaviour and theology of these churches made for uncomfortable reading for me as a western believer but it was a fascinating reminder that Christianity is a global religion and that we are often very different from our neighbours on the planet, and yet the Bible can speak to us all in our own languages. It's a worthwhile and thought-provoking book and an excellent companion to "The Next Christendom".

Fresh Eyes to the Biblical Text
In his concluding chapter Jenkins writes, "Bringing fresh eyes to the [biblical] text suggests new ways of reading that can immeasurably enrich the modern encounter with the Bible, to find things that one never noticed before. Arguably, too, it may give a better sense of the original spirit in which the biblical books were written and read than can any number of scholarly commentaries" (p. 184).

In this book, Philip Jenkins explores the alternative, fresh, and different ways the Christians of the Global South read the Bible. When referring to the Global South Jenkins means Latin America, Africa and Asia. According to Jenkins the hub of Christian thought and theology has moved from the Global North, specifically Europe and America, to the Global South. Jenkins' work is not only well-researched but extremely enlightening for the Western Christian. In many ways the Global South lives in societies and states that are much closer in cultural proximity than Euro-Americans.

Though his book is full of thought-provoking insight, Jenkins concludes Western Christians could learn from the Global South in three areas:

* Rethinking the role of the Old Testament
* Rediscovering ancient means to responding to suffering and calamity. (e.g. wisdom literature and apocalyptic texts)
* Reevaluating the subject of healing.

His chapter entitled "Poor and Rich" was worth the book itself. Not many books leave a grand impact upon a reader's paradigm, but this book did just that for me. This would be a book worth reading again. As Jenkins so appropriately writes, " `Reading from the South' can help free biblical passages and even whole genres from the associations they have acquired from our own historical inheritance" (p. 189).