ABSTRACT

Christianity is the largest of the world’s religions, and the most extensive across the globe. Estimates of the total Christian population of the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century put the figure at around 2 billion, or 32 per cent of world population. Its status as a truly global religion is fairly recent. At the beginning of the modern period Christianity was largely confined to the Northern hemisphere. Rapid expansion of Christianity in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia has gathered pace during the course of the twentieth century, and is shifting Christianity’s centre of gravity from the developed to the developing world. At the same time that it has been growing in the Southern hemisphere, Christianity has also been declining in many parts of the Northparticularly in Western Europe (see Chapter 13). This, of course, has only served to accelerate the shift in numbers and vitality from North to South.