Union College News

Global Change or Global Schism?
Philip Jenkins Discusses Christianity in the Global South

Dr. Philip Jenkins at Union College

Dr. Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has addressed an array of subjects in his publications, lectures, and media appearances. From Enlightenment criminology to native spirituality in mainstream America, Dr. Jenkins’ expertise spans diverse disciplines, contexts, and historical periods. He has published twenty books, dozens of articles, and has contributed to such publications as the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Atlantic Monthly. Dr. Jenkins has also appeared on CNN, FOX, and NPR.

During a recent visit to Union College, Dr. Jenkins delivered two lectures with a very specific focus: the shifting center of Christianity to the global South. Dr. Jenkins defines the global South as consisting of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where the Christian population and faith are flourishing.

The first lecture, “Reading the Bible in the Global South,” examined the relationship Christians in the global South have to biblical texts and how their culture and history inform interpretation. The second lecture, “The Futures of Christianity,” provided a context in which to understand Christianity’s development in the South and the implications of that development for the future.

Both lectures were based on material in Dr. Jenkins’ most recent book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. In the book and lectures, Dr. Jenkins cites compelling examples of a geographical and related theological shift in recent decades. Christian communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America far outpace the global North in growth, Spanish is the faith’s dominant language, and many parts of the world rely upon the global South for clergy and other church leaders.

Theologically, too, the global South is changing Christianity. While, as Dr. Jenkins puts it, the Old Testament is “so distant it’s almost become irrelevant” for the West, the South can relate culturally and historically to much of its content. Concepts such as “blood sacrifice, nomadism, and polygamy,” says Dr. Jenkins, are easily related to by cultures in which these are currently practiced or were practiced just a generation or two ago. The biblical texts’ direct relationship to the daily reality of those in the global South has spawned a passionate faith that is typically far more orthodox and conservative than is common in the global North.

Dr. Jenkins does not predict a global schism, though some early indications, he believes, are there. He sees, instead, Christianity “forming different futures in different regions and cross-pollinating... a new global Christianity.” This point in history is an “exciting time of Christian growth, not of schism.”

March 19, 2007

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