Paradigm Shifts In The Global Revitalization Of Christianity

By Timothy C. Tennent

[Timothy C. Tennent is President and Professor of World Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.]

Abstract

An extensive study of Christian revitalization around the world reveals there is no such thing as a global Christian movement. Rather, the new reality of the church can only be fully appreciated from a diverse, global perspective. The study identifies at least three major paradigm shifts: the collapse of Christendom, the emergence of a fourth branch of Christianity, and a shift from modernity to postmodernity.

Introduction

Over a six-year period (2009–2015) Asbury Theological Seminary studied Christian revitalization movements around the world. From North America to Nairobi, from North India to the Philippines, this has been one of the most expansive examinations of the emerging face of global Christianity ever conducted. We are finally moving from statistical analysis from such luminaries as Todd Johnson and David Barrett to actual field-based studies of the world Christian movement in the 21st century. As it turns out, there is no such thing as a global Christian movement, if by that one implies a monolithic new wave of Christian identity around the world. What we have, in fact, is a virtual explosion of very particularized Christian movements around the world. The pace has been breathtaking: at the turn of the 20th century, there were about 1,600 distinct denominations around the world. By the turn of the 21st century, that number had exploded from 1,600 to an estimated 34,000 distinct denominations of Christianity around the world. Even more stunning, since then nearly 10,000 more new Christian movements have arisen, bringing the number to over 43,000. In other words, every twenty-four months of this century, the church has spawned more movements than it did in its first 1, 900 years of existence. This exponential growth has huge implications for the future of Christianity. If successfully crossing cultural, socio-linguistic, and geo-political boun-daries is one of the great markers of Christian vitality, then we can truly say that Christianity is alive and well in the 21st century.

Most current textbooks on world Christianity have underestimated the significance of what we are observing. This story is not merely about the shifting center of gravity of the world Christian movement from the West to the Majority World and the subsequent demise of the “West reaches the rest” paradigm. That shift is happening, but the forces of globalization, immigration, and technology and the impulse of new church planting movements have rendered the situation far more complex and nuanced. Never before has the church had so many dramatic and simultaneous advances into multiple new cultural centers. We are now experiencing what John Mbiti calls multiple new “centers of universality.”[1] Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Latinos, and Africans, among others, can all legitimately claim that they are at the center of the world Christian movement. Furthermore, arenas with strong histories of Christian identity, such as the West, the Philippines, or Australia, are themselves undergoing massive transformation. The emergence of new expressions of vitality even in the old centers testifies that Christian history can no longer be understood from only one vantage point, whether cultural, geographic, or confessional. The new reality of the church can only be fully appreciated from a diverse, global perspective. The 420,000 global missionaries who are crossing cultural boundaries are still not widely understood, but we do know that what was once primarily a Western initiative has changed so that today only 12 percent of missionaries are coming from the Western world.

Our study of global revitalization movements suggests that at least three major paradigm shifts are taking place: (1) The collapse of Christendom and the emergence of a fresh encounter between Christianity and the world; (2) The emergence of a fourth branch of Christianity; and (3) The seismic shift from modernity to postmodernity. These three themes are merely the beginning of the new, global conversation that our consultations have begun to explore. It has been an honor to have New Theological College in Dehra Dun, India, participate in these consultations. Many vital issues that have been explored have enormous implications for how we understand the global Christian movement. The growing particularity of the movement promises to make it increasingly difficult to fully grasp the scope and impact of Christianity in the 21st century.

The Collapse Of Christendom

Christendom refers to a political and ecclesiastical arrangement that reinforces a partnership between the church and the state. The state strengthens the church by promoting Christian hegemony over religious and cultural life. The church, in turn, gives legitimacy to the state by supporting the ruler and tacitly implying divine sanction on the actions of the state. In the context of Christendom, Christianity receives protection from civil authorities. Christendom in its classic form could be summed up by the phrase “cuius regio, eius religio,” broadly meaning that the faith of the ruler was the religion of the realm. The ruler was responsible for the spiritual welfare of the people; the ruler decided how they would worship, and uniformity of faith and practice was considered normal. To embrace a different faith was to be a “dissenter” with all of the explicit and implicit sanctions that term implied. Because of the connection with the state, Christendom often (even unconsciously) regarded the Christian faith in territorial ways. To belong to the realm meant, by definition, that you shared the faith of the realm. Particular embodiments of the gospel were therefore linked to specific geographic regions.

Christendom has existed in both official, explicit ways as well as unofficial, implicit expressions, sometimes referred to as civil religion. Via the Padroado from Pope Leo X, Roman Catholicism, as anyone in the Philippines knows, has retained this territorial perspective on Christianity since 1521, when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan first landed on Cebu Island. This story is not unusual. Protestantism, as well, originated as a movement within the larger context of European Christianity and therefore was born in the context of Christendom. This profoundly influenced how the word “gospel” was understood. To be a Christian within Christendom is to see Christianity at the center of all public discourse. Evangelism occurs passively because Christianity is the prevailing plausibility structure. Christianity is the normative expression of religious faith and ethical action, and there are no major dissenting voices or alternative religious worldviews. Therefore, the gospel does not need to robustly defend itself against, for example, either secular atheism or an alternative religious worldview such as Islam or Hinduism. Christendom-type Christianity most often engages other faiths as cultural ‘others’ in military campaigns (such as the Crusades) or in sponsoring missionaries who, often unwittingly, transmit gospel and culture in a single package.

Today the gospel is being rediscovered in the West and around the world apart from Christendom. Christianity in non-Christen-dom forms is emerging even in the face of non-Christian religious states (or would-be religious states), such as Islamic Sharia, which merges mosque and state, or Hindu hegemony known broadly as Hindutva, but expressed politically through the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, including a range of expressions such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal.

What are the implications of this for how the gospel is understood? First, the gospel is now reclaiming its long-denied right and renewed capacity to critique culture, not just accommodate it. Only when the gospel is freed from the chains of Christendom can it provide the critique of the state and the prevailing culture that is required when the kingdoms of this world clash with the lordship of Jesus Christ. Christians in the United States have lived so long in the cultural mainstream that it can feel quite strange to find ourselves on the prophetic margins, but this is actually our native home. We just have not been here for a long time. Second, the gospel must become more robust in responding to very specific challenges that hitherto have gone unnoticed. In a Christendom context, the challenges of unbelief or from other religions are distant and remote. Therefore, the gospel gradually becomes domesticated and weakened. Today we are witnessing the rise of many new challenges: post-modern relativistic secularism, Islamic fundamentalism, and the seeping pluralism of Hinduism, to name a few. These will inevitably force faithful Christians to become far more articulate about what constitutes genuine Christian identity. Third, evangelism has to become more intentional. One cannot assume that any of the dominant Christian paradigms of the last century are widely understood. Even basic religious categories like “God” or “sin” or “faith,” which once sat very comfortably within the security of a monoreligious discourse, must now be explained and clarified.

Tertullian famously asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? . . . What has the academy to do with the church?”[2] Tertullian envisioned a culture with the revelation of God’s Word at the center. Divine self-disclosure is seen to trump all other knowledge and discourse. In this sense “Jerusalem” represents a society framed by revelation and therefore theological and cultural stability. “Jerusalem” represents a congregation of the faithful gathered to hear God’s Word, the centrality of the pulpit, and the one-way pronouncements that are issued “six feet above contradiction.” In contrast, “Athens” represents dialogue and speculation. It is the place of religious pluralism. Today, we must recognize that we are no longer proclaiming the gospel from the “Temple Mount” of our “Jerusalem.” Instead, we are seeking to introduce the gospel in the midst of the raucous, pluralistic, experimental, skeptical environment of “Athens,” where competing deities and revelations clamor for attention. The gospel we proclaim is largely unknown, and our witness may need to find collaborative help from general revelation to gain a hearing.

A Fourth Branch Of Christianity

We can no longer conceptualize the world Christian movement as belonging to either Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox communions. We are witnessing enormous changes in Christian self-identity, which, in turn, influence how the Christian message is understood and shared.

The early followers of Jesus were simply known as belonging to “the Way.” The term “the Way” referred to a small movement within Judaism that regarded Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes and expectations. In this early period there was no concept of Christianity as a separate religion. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews, and they understood Jesus and his message within that context. However, with the dramatic influx of Gentile believers, it became necessary to reconceptualize what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it was in Antioch, the home of the first major Gentile ingathering of believers, that the followers of Jesus were “first called Christians” (Acts 11:26).

In AD 330 the Emperor Constantine relocated the capital of the empire to Byzantium in the East, renaming it Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). Gradually, the church developed two distinct traditions, one Eastern and Greek and the other Western and Latin. Conflicts between these two traditions over, among other things, the authority of the pope and the Western insertion of the filioque clause[3] into the Nicene Creed eventually created a disruption in the church’s unity. The Great Schism that formally separated Roman Catholic from Eastern Orthodox occurred in 1054. From the 11th century onward it was necessary for Christians to reconceptualize the church, taking into account these very different expressions of Christianity, each with its own traditions, doctrinal emphases, understanding of ecclesiology, liturgy, and so forth.

The 16th century witnessed the culmination of a long-standing dissent movement within the church, which finally broke out in what became known as the Reformation. Once the Reformers officially severed ties with Rome and the movement grew in size and scale, it became necessary for Christians to once again reconceptualize the church. The current threefold configuration has served the church for nearly five hundred years.

The identity of the church has gone through major upheaval and transformation over time. Even a cursory glance at most church history texts will confirm that since the time of the Reformation the Christian church has been broadly conceptualized as falling into three major divisions: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. This basic conceptual grid dramatically influences how we understand the world Christian movement. Indeed, one’s self-identity as a “Roman Catholic” or as a “Protestant” or as “Orthodox” carries with it the enormous weight and force of history, the legacy of past decisive struggles, and the peculiarities of our own doctrinal and liturgical distinctiveness.

Because of the territorial legacy of Christendom discussed earlier, these three divisions are also used to identify ethnic, cultural, and political orientations that have very little to do with the Christian gospel, but remain crucial to self-identity. The struggle between what is now called the Republic of Ireland and the six Protestant counties of Northern Ireland that belong to the United Kingdom is a classic example. The breakup of former Yugoslavia into Catholic Croatia, Islamic Bosnia, and Eastern Orthodox Serbia was determined largely by the association of ethnic particularity with religious identity.

However, the dramatic shift in the center of Christian gravity makes this tripartite framework increasingly untenable. Millions of new Christians are pouring into the church throughout the Majority World. Many of these new Christians cannot be easily categorized under any of the traditional headings. The basic practice for many years has been to regard any group that is not explicitly Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox to be, by default, Protestant. However, as the numbers have grown it has become increasingly problematic to lump every non-Roman Catholic, non-Eastern Orthodox Christian movement into the “Protestant” camp when they clearly have no link to any European “protest” movement. Yet, equally, they are not related to the pope or to the magisterium in Rome, nor do they submit to or receive oversight from any Eastern Orthodox patriarch.

Many of these new Christians belong to independent, Pentecostal-oriented movements. Others belong to independent, prophetic movements that are difficult to classify. Some of these movements are currently only quasi-Christian, but are moving toward orthodoxy. Other quasi-Christian movements are emerging as independent movements outside the boundaries of historic orthodoxy. Still others claim to be following Christ from within the boundaries of Hinduism or Islam, a phenomenon known as “insider movements,” which has received considerable attention in missiological literature over the last decade.

In response to these trends, the 1982 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia added several new categories, including “non-white indigenous” and “crypto-Christian.” The 2001 edition of the same work changed the name of the “non-white indigenous” category to “independent” and added an additional category of “hidden” believers. The encyclopedia also reclassified millions of believers from the “Protestant” category to this new “independent” category.[4]

If the numbers in this “independent” category were to remain small, then perhaps the traditional tripartite division might find a way to survive the 21st century. However, the “independents” are easily the fastest growing segment of global Christianity and must become a central part of a new and larger conceptual framework. At the turn of the 20th century the largest blocks of Christian affiliation were Roman Catholics at 266 million, followed by Eastern Orthodox at 115 million and Protestants at 103 million. At the turn of the 20th century it is estimated that there were fewer than 8 million “independent” Christians in the world. However, in the opening decade of the 21st century, there were 1.1 billion Roman Catholics and 423 million independents, followed by 386 million Protestants and 252 million Orthodox. Thus independent Christians now form the second-largest segment of Christian identity.[5]

This new Christian mega-block is not easy to categorize. The other major branches were largely defined because of historical separations with Roman Catholicism that emerged from identifiable historical developments. This brought a kind of cohesion, historically and doctrinally, to these movements that, in turn, formed the main backbone of the narrative that was rehearsed and, in time, shaped and formed the identity of the movement. However, in the case of the independent churches there is no single, pervasive point of identity. It is true that there are certain broad trends that are cited. For example, it is sometimes noted that the independent churches are normally led by laypersons without formal training and have very informal leadership structures. Others point out that they are frequently Pentecostal or charismatic in their experience, rely heavily on powerful, prophetic figures for guidance, and have little sense of the larger sweep of church history. Still others point out the emphasis that these churches may place on legalistic taboos, strange new liturgies, peculiar doctrines, worship practices, or missionary zeal. Still, there is no single galvanizing “mark” of these new Christians.

Nevertheless, the term “independent” seems an insufficient and somewhat inaccurate descriptor, even though it is a vast improvement from “crypto-” or “marginal” Christian.[6] It will probably take several more decades before it becomes evident whether there might be enough shared perspective or a grand narrative that can recognize larger points of coherence, connectedness, and identity. For example, what distinctive features might be found in movements as diverse as the African Initiated Churches of the Apostolic variety, the Fourth Watch in the Philippines, the City Harvest church in Singapore, the Fill the Gap Healing Centers in South Africa, the Meiti in India, the Cooneyites of Australia, the Igreja en Pente of Brazil, and the Han house churches in China? Eventually, leaders from these movements will find ways of describing themselves as they interact with other segments of the global church. As dialogue increases, they may discover deeper points of convergence.

Until then, phrases like “independent churches,” “Majority World church,” “house churches,” “indigenous churches,” “emerging Global South churches,” or “younger churches” will continue to be used. The important point is that, whatever the nomenclature, this “fourth branch” of Christianity must become central in understanding the 21st-century church and what it means to be a participant or global player in God’s mission in the world.

The Shift From Modernity To Postmodernity

Finally, Christian revitalization movements are shaping the transition between modernity and postmodernity. Peter Kuzmic, the internationally renowned leader from Eastern Europe, once commented that the most defining word of our time is “post.” We live in a post-communist, post-Christendom, post-denominational, post-Western, post-Enlightenment, and post-modern world. There seems to be a growing consensus that there is a crisis occurring within modernity that may signal the end of, or a major modification in, the Enlightenment project. This crisis, described as postmodernism, is already having a profound influence on how the gospel is being understood and communicated by evangelicals.

One of the earliest writers to recognize the collapse of modernity and the movement toward a post-Enlightenment world was the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard.[7] In 1979, he was the first to use the word “postmodern” in the way that it is used in today’s discourse. He stated that the fundamental shift of our time is a growing crisis of truth.[8] The modern world had a belief in an overarching truth, whether informed by a Christian worldview or even a secular belief in progress and the perfectability of humanity. Lyotard argued that modern societies produced order and stability by generating what he called “grand narratives” or “master narratives.” These grand narratives provided a clear sense of telos of destiny. Intellectual reflection meant embarking on a journey with a clear destination—the pursuit of truth.

In contrast, the postmodern context is marked by a collapse of all grand narratives. Postmodernism marks the movement away from claims to objectivity and a greater emphasis on fragmented forms and discontinuous narratives. In short, the very notion of truth as Truth has begun to collapse. There is no longer a cohesive “canopy of truth” or metanarrative that gives meaning and purpose to our civilization. We are left with only our personal narratives. The only “truth” that remains is what is true “for me,” leaving little courage or confidence to speak about objective or universal truth. To use the language of Lesslie Newbigin, in postmodernism there are no more “public facts.” All that’s left are “personal preferences.”[9]

Looking back from this perspective, it is easy to see how the evangelical understanding of the gospel has been influenced by Enlightenment thinking. On the positive side, the gospel benefited from the notion of a metanarrative and the idea of a final, all-encompassing telos to which all of human history was moving. The Christian metanarrative and final goal of history may have been different from those of the Enlightenment, but the paradigm was there to build on. On the negative side, the overemphasis on reason sometimes produced hyper-rational expressions of Christianity. Furthermore, the deeply imbedded notions of human progress often caused evangelicals not to take sin seriously enough and to render the gospel as nothing more than the greatest self-help plan.

How is postmodernism influencing the evangelical understanding of the gospel? What implications does this have for Christian mission? How do we inhabit a postmodern world where Christianity is regarded as merely one local story among many?

It is clear that postmodernism poses a number of serious challenges to the gospel. First, postmodernism erodes the very concept of objective truth rooted in God’s self-revelation. Therefore, the authority of the Bible, the trustworthiness of expository preaching, and the call to repentance, to name just a few, all suffer. Second, postmodernism’s emphasis on personal narrative apart from any overarching metanarrative has further pushed the church toward a privatized understanding of the gospel. Under the sway of postmodernism, the gospel loses its historical, missional, and cosmic dimensions and through a radical kind of reductionism becomes merely a prescription for obtaining personal peace. Third, postmodernism’s emphasis on the autonomy of personal choices has further pushed the church toward a full acceptance of marketing strategies for attracting new believers, business models for long-term planning, and a general entertainment orientation because in this new world the “consumer is king.” Once the gospel must be made “fun,” there is little room for the prophetic imagination, the cost of discipleship, and the call to repentance.

On the other hand, there are Christian thinkers who argue that postmodern thinking, on the whole, is really a reaction to the Enlightenment project more than a rejection of the category of truth per se. Carl Raschke, for example, sees postmodernity as the necessary check to the autonomous individual and the over-reliance on human reason.[10] Postmodernity is not necessarily the total abandonment of the correspondence theory of truth, and it does not necessarily lead to philosophical nominalism, rejection of all absolutes, total relativism, or nihilism. Rather, through this reading, postmodernity calls out for more room for mystery. It longs for community and the reawakening of the modern consciousness to the power of story and narrative.[11] Christianity flourished prior to modernity, so we must believe that Christianity can flourish—at least potentially—in its absence.

While the emergence of postmodernism does pose a potentially grave threat to the entire notion of truth, positive prospects exist in the sunset of the Enlightenment project. The great task before this generation of Christian leaders is to reconstruct the great metanarrative for a postmodern world, and through that, proclaim anew the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must take advantage of the newly awakened consciousness of the power of story and tell a bigger story—the grand metanarrative of God’s redemption, the missio dei. We must be serious about theological discourse and put an end to minimalistic approaches. Evangelicals have become experts in finding a thousand new ways to ask, “What is the least one has to do to become a Christian?” We have boiled the entire glorious gospel down to a single phrase, a simple emotive transaction, or some silly slogan. It is time for a new generation of Christians committed to apostolic faith to declare this minimalistic, reductionistic Christianity a failed project. It is wrong to try to get as many people as possible to acknowledge as superficially as allowable a gospel that is theologically unsustainable.

The good news is that the global emergence of Christian revitalization is helping the church regain confidence in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are receiving a long-needed fresh understanding of the rule and reign of God as the great eschatological fact to which all history is moving. The biblical vision of the eschaton simultaneously trumps the modernist notions of human progress as well as the postmodern malaise about any ultimate meaning. We need a renewed call to repentance, a metanoia about what it means to be the people of God called to mission. Finally, we are discovering a deeper ecumenism that looks beyond institutional aggrandizement and discovers an overarching unity that can move the church forward in our day.

Notes

1. As quoted in Kwame Bediako, Christianityin Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 157.
2. Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum 7.9.
3. That is, the phrase “and the Son,” which was added to the affirmation about the Holy Spirit: “who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
4. The 1982 edition projected 154 million Christians in the “non-white indigenous” category. David B. Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 6. The name of this category was changed to “independent” in the 2001 edition, and the number of Christians in this category was revised to 385 million “independent” believers. David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The World Christian Encyclopedia also found “hidden” believers within Hinduism in seven countries and within Islam in fifteen countries.
5. David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing, “Missiometrics 2008: Reality Checks for Christian World Communions,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32 (January 2008): 29. The estimated 423 million Christians classified as “independent” do not include an additional 36 million who are classified as “marginal” Christians.
6. The word “independent” implies sovereignty and self-sufficiency, neither of which can properly be applied to a church, which, by definition, is submitted to the authority of Christ.
7. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Theory and History of Literature 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
8. This trend and its implications for the contemporary church have been expounded brilliantly by David F. Wells. See especially his No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) and Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).
9. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
10. Carl Raschke, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).
11. Richard Lints, “The Vinyl Narratives: The Metanarrative of Postmodernity and the Recovery of a Churchly Theology,” in A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times, ed. Michael S. Horton (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 99.