The Church Today

Christianity in the early 21st century is the world's largest religion, with roughly two billion adherents - about a third of the global population. But the geography and character of Christianity have shifted dramatically from what they were a century ago. In 1900, the overwhelming majority of Christians lived in Europe and North America. Today, the largest and fastest-growing Christian communities are in the Global South - sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. The center of gravity of world Christianity has moved, and the Christianity of the Global South is often more charismatic, more exuberant in worship, more attentive to healing and spiritual power, and more directly engaged with poverty and social justice than the Christianity of the Global North from which it partly derived.

In the United States, Christianity faces a period of significant change. The percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has declined steadily from roughly 90% in 1970 to around 63% in recent surveys. The decline is concentrated among mainline Protestant denominations and among younger generations. Evangelical Christianity has maintained numbers better but is experiencing significant internal conflict over cultural and political alignments. The fastest-growing religious category in the United States is "none" - people who claim no religious affiliation. These trends do not mean Christianity is dying in America, but they do mean that the relationship between Christian faith and American culture that characterized much of the 20th century is changing in ways that require honest assessment.

The ecumenical movement - the effort to restore unity among divided Christian churches - has made significant progress since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) opened the Catholic Church to dialogue with other traditions. Lutheran and Catholic theologians reached a landmark agreement on justification in 1999. Orthodox and Catholic leaders have met repeatedly to work toward reconciliation. Many denominations that were bitterly opposed a century ago now cooperate in local communities, in disaster relief, and in advocacy for shared concerns. The full visible unity of the church remains a distant goal, but the hostility between traditions has diminished considerably.

For local congregations like Mt. Zion Baptist Church, the broader context of world Christianity is both humbling and encouraging. Humbling because no single tradition, however faithfully maintained, contains the whole of what God is doing in the world. Encouraging because the story of the church across twenty centuries - through persecution and schism, through periods of corruption and periods of renewal, through the confrontation with slavery and the confrontation with secularism - is a story of remarkable survival and resilience. The community gathered on any given Sunday morning in a local congregation is part of something that has persisted and renewed itself across two thousand years and every continent on earth. That is worth knowing, and worth being grateful for.