Speaking to a Pentecostal congregation recently, I made a faux pas by trying to imagine the fate of Christianity in the coming decades. As the pastor politely corrected me, such developments need concern us little, given the imminence of the return of Christ—though my speculations might be worth considering "should the Lord tarry." For many secular observers likewise, the future of Christianity scarcely seems a worthwhile topic for discussion, since the religion is self-evidently in such precipitous decline. In both cases, the perception seems to be that a book with the title The Future of Christianity should be a joke item with entirely blank pages. To the argument about Christ's return, I can say nothing worthwhile; but the view of Christian decline is easily rebutted. Two recent books by Anglican authors—theologian Alister McGrath; priest and future-watcher Richard Kew—show beyond question that the faith is booming worldwide, not just in raw numbers (though these are impressive enough) but also in terms of its spiritual and intellectual ferment.

These two idea-rich books have a great deal in common, and not just the fact that both are written by Anglicans of British origin. Each is, in its way, a masterpiece of compression, covering in a very short space a range of topics that a less skilled or disciplined writer might have blown up to a thousand pages. Both also offer an impressive historical vision of the recent past.

McGrath's book begins with the disasters that Christianity suffered across the West in the twentieth century, events like the Armenian genocide, the Communist persecutions, and the churches' failure to confront Nazism. Significantly, it is in this horrendous company that he places the general moral and spiritual crisis that the West experienced during the 1960s, and history may yet justify this grim classification. As he remarks of attempts to "modernize" Christianity in this era, "it was almost as if these people deliberately set out to create a Christianity which would be lukewarmly welcomed in 1960 yet regarded as laughable in 2000." He draws an apt comparison between the repackaging of liberal Christianity and the Coca-Cola company's disastrous marketing experiment for "New Coke" in the 1980s. Just as popular demand forced the reinstitution of the old model under the title of "Classic Coke," so religious consumers transferred their loyalty from failed innovation to revived tradition, in the form of fundamentalist and evangelical churches.

McGrath moves immediately from reporting cultural death (or near-death) to triumphant life, as he traces the astonishing growth of Christianity across the global South over the last 50 years, the passionate upsurge of Christian commitment in much of Africa and in nations like Korea. He also tracks growth trends in North American Christianity, showing in the process that, yes, there do still remain useful and novel things to say about megachurches like Willow Creek, as well as smaller nondenominational community churches.

Indeed, one of McGrath's central concerns is to trace the likely fate of denominationalism in the new Christian configuration, the "new ways of being church" that we see evolving before our eyes. Reasonably, he sees the major Christian trends of the next century as Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism, though in both cases with an emphasis on innovative types of organization, such as the cell church. I am surprised that he is also quite optimistic about the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which seems to me to suffer a dreadful handicap from its concentration in regions of steep population decline. McGrath, like Kew, points to the urgent need for all churches to grow through mission rather than merely hoping to survive. In this respect both books offer the same message: evangelize or die.

Kew is also centrally concerned with changing notions of denominationalism and the impact of globalism. He pays much more attention than McGrath to issues of technological change, most obviously the Internet, with all that implies for changed concepts of community as well as for mission. These questions will become all the more pressing when computers break their reliance on keyboards and permit easier and more intuitive interfaces, a development that cannot be more than a few years distant. Nor can it be much longer before human-machine interfaces erode the boundaries between the biological and the electronic, as computers are implanted in bodies.

In coming decades, all denominations will have to confront the issue of just how far religious experience can be conveyed through the Internet or similar remote means, and the whole language of "attendance," "participation" and even "going to church" will need careful re-examination. More immediate communication will encourage the growth of global denominations and parachurch networks, which will gain importance as migration continues to reduce the significance of national boundaries. At the same time, these changes will galvanize antimodernization and anti-Western movements, which find their most acute expression in violent terrorism. Kew raises these questions deftly, though he obviously makes no attempt at definitive solutions.

Kew also offers more detailed analysis than McGrath of the demographic trends that will shape the future of the churches, in North America as much as the global South. We are all familiar with the growing ethnic diversity of the United States, but churches also need to be aware that ethnic divisions will correspond with generational chasms. Anglo whites, especially, will be a distressingly elderly population. Within a quarter century or so, representative American types will include young adult Latinos and Asians and elderly whites. All social institutions will have to think hard how to accommodate these very different populations, with their fundamentally different economic interests and political outlooks, but churches especially need to consider these potential generational conflicts. Kew's chapter on "The Fast Approaching Gray Wave" is an excellent introduction to these themes.

Confronting present growth, both authors go far beyond mere boosting, since both have real concerns about the successful churches and religious trends of recent years. McGrath in particular is worried that some flourishing evangelical churches seem to measure their achievements by raw numbers, and he raises reasonable concerns about the slick instant solutions offered by many popular Christian books. He makes good use of the metaphor of the "McDonaldization" of Christianity—over two billion souls saved? This kind of marketing threatens to mesh all too neatly with what consumers think they want, with the shapeless and sentimental New Age-ism so widespread in society at large, and which is easily mistaken for spirituality.

Such vulgarization is all the more perilous when it entails the dumbing down of language in order to make a semi-Christian message appeal to the largest possible mass audience. McGrath is deeply concerned with issues of language. The fact that English has become the lingua franca of global Christianity is potentially a very positive development for mission and ecumenism; yet at the same time McGrath rightly worries how the language has been used and abused in Bible translation.

The books by Kew and McGrath complement each other beautifully. While McGrath offers a more academic and theological response to religious megatrends, Kew is more highly attuned to social and technological change (and also has a better grasp of American realities). Inevitably, given his writings over the years, McGrath is at his best in his discussion of academic theology, and his chapter on this theme is one of his book's real strengths. In a mere 35 pages he provides a splendid introduction to the rival assumptions that divide liberal and conservative scholars. He speaks plausibly of the two wings as "two nations," borrowing Disraeli's language: "between [the nations] there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets." In addition to these traditional lib-con divides, modern theologians have of course to take account of the much more culturally and geographically diverse nature of global Christianity. McGrath ends with a plea for a new "organic" theology, liberated from the snobbery and isolation of the academic world, and more in tune with popular concerns and mainstream culture.

In religion as in the secular world, it takes a bold writer to make predictions about the shape of things to come. It might well be deeply galling when in 20 years time, someone holds up to ridicule your outdated and ludicrously flawed predictions. Only fools rush in . …Yet a futurologist can also perform an invaluable service by raising critical questions, to make people think beyond the immediate present, and perhaps even to help society or the church develop in a more positive way. By this standard, both Kew and McGrath deserve immense gratitude for their thoughtful and creative ventures. Both books can be heartily recommended for individual readers, but also for discussion groups: Kew, indeed, offers a series of stimulating discussion questions at the end of each of his chapters. Both, in short, are books to be used, preferably together. Thank you, fools.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author most recently of The Next Christendom: The Coming Global Christianity (Oxford Univ. Press).

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.