Africa the future for Christianity – report
A report in the The Economist, based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS), suggests that a third of Europeans who consider themselves Christian say they attend services only once a month. Across Europe some 190m people go to church regularly from a nominal Christian population of 585m (see map). The survey polled 55,000 Europeans across 29…
A report in the The Economist, based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS), suggests that a third of Europeans who consider themselves Christian say they attend services only once a month. Across Europe some 190m people go to church regularly from a nominal Christian population of 585m (see map). The survey polled 55,000 Europeans across 29 countries in 2012,
The Economist reports: “By contrast, sub-Saharan Africans are embracing the gospel with the literal zeal of the converted. According to the Centre for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, in 1910 just 9{286427c60984e496d8f2e542e7d21c54ddb5734529e6fb3e21d1c17283afa115} of the 100m people on the African continent were Christian; today the share is 55{286427c60984e496d8f2e542e7d21c54ddb5734529e6fb3e21d1c17283afa115} of a population of a billion. Moreover, figures from the World Values Survey (WVS), which covers 86,000 people in 60 countries, indicate they are remarkably devout: across five sub-Saharan African countries for which data are available (Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe), 90{286427c60984e496d8f2e542e7d21c54ddb5734529e6fb3e21d1c17283afa115} of people calling themselves Christian also said they attended church regularly. If those nations are representative of the region as a whole, then perhaps 469m churchgoers now live in Africa. Another 335m or so churchgoing Christians live in Latin America, three-fifths more than in Europe”.
Source: The Economist)
