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Religion, and specifically Christianity, if not by the numbers, is nonetheless alive in Europe. It is still the majority religion and it is still a powerful voice “in public discourse.” The numbers are indeed hard to pin down. So are opinions about what is happening to Christianity in Europe. But there is ample evidence that the decline of church attendance in the national churches may be slowing as they shed past practices leftover from medieval Christendom and the age of empires. Some Church of England dioceses are actually growing, particularly dioceses in urban areas with younger communicants.
Evangelical Christians, both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist, make up only about two percent of Western Europe’s population. But their numbers have grown eightfold in the last half of the twentieth century and their numbers are still growing exponentially. They are mostly young, well educated and committed. Immigrants, thought of as largely Muslim, are also significantly Christian and their numbers are growing as well.
Boston University sociologist Peter Berger notes that the modern world, pretty much everywhere, is “as furiously religious as ever.” But it is outside of Europe that this is particularly so. It is outside of Europe where Christianity really thrives.
The growth of Christianity in China has been explosive. Today there are about 16 million members of government sanctioned Christian churches and an estimated 50 to 100 million Christians who belong to non-sanctioned house churches. This is a communist country, and though the constitution of the Peoples Republic of China officially guarantees freedom of religion, it is highly restricted in the same way that the right of assembly is restricted. It is thus significant, as the University of Birmingham’s Edmond Tang reports that,
Today it is an open secret that Christian fellowships—a new kind of 'house church', run by Chinese professors and students, are active in most Chinese universities. More than 30 academic faculties and research centres are devoted to the study of a once maligned religion. The question is why.
In Africa, the growth of Christianity is astounding. Stanford University’s Dinesh D'Souza in his book, What's So Great About Christianity, writes in the first chapter entitled "The Twilight of Atheism: The Global Triumph of Christianity:”
A century ago, less than 10 percent of Africa was Christian. Today it’s nearly 50 percent. That’s an increase from 10 million people in 1900 to more than 350 million today. Uganda alone has nearly 20 million Christians and is projected to have 50 million by the middle of the century. Some African congregations have grown so big that their churches are running out of space. While Western preachers routinely implore people to come every Sunday to fill the pews, some African preachers ask their members to limit their attendance to every second or third Sunday to give others a chance to hear the message.
D’Souza, and many others who are studying the phenomena of Christian growth are reporting significant growth in every part of the world except the Middle East, North America, Australia and Western Europe. But in the United States, though Christianity is not growing, it remains strong. Ninety percent believe in God and eighty percent believe in the central tenet of the Christian assertion, the resurrection of Jesus. About fifty percent of the population attends church regularly.
But just as Christianity is showing extraordinary growth, perhaps the most significant growth since the first-century birth of this religion, there can be no denying a clamorous new outburst of atheism—the atheists that Higgins tells us are taking to the pulpits. Pundits have labeled this phenomenon as new atheism, evangelical atheism, anti-theism and even fundamentalist atheism. The names of its thinkers and writers are becoming household words: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett. Their books are trade books, readily found in popular bookstores. Sales are brisk of for titles such as (in order), 1) The God Delusion, 2) God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 3) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, 4) Darwin's Dangerous Idea.