With more conflict over religious liberty in the United States and high-profile martyrdoms around the world, it would seem Christianity is in global peril. But that’s not the case, according to a new report.
Published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, the findings of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary provide an optimistic picture of Christianity heading into the heart of the 21st century. Among the positive trends:
• Christianity is growing. More than one-third (33.4 percent) of the 7.3 billion people on Earth are Christians. That’s up from 32.4 percent in 2000. By 2050, when the world population is expected to top 9.5 billion people, 36 percent will be Christians. Those positive numbers are due to explosive growth in Africa and Asia.
• We are reaching the unreached. In 1900, more than half of the world’s population (54.3 percent) was unreached with the gospel. Today, that percentage is down to 29.3 and will drop another 2 percentage points by 2050. More than 2.1 billion people have not been evangelized, and the number of international missionaries dropped in the last 15 years.
But the gospel is spreading. In 1900, only 4.3 percent of non-Christians even knew a Christian. That number stands at 14.1 percent today and is expected to climb to 15.4 percent by 2050, largely from the spread of the gospel into predominantly non-Christian nations.
For more on this research and projections, see the previous article “7 Encouraging Trends in Global Christianity.”
