The Shift of the Centre of Gravity of the Church from the West to the Majority World: A Response 1

As Hwa Yung says, there has been a huge shift in the last 100 years in the composition of the global evangelical church. One statistic to demonstrate this will suffice. At the World Missions conference in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1910, 95% of the participants came from the Western church; only 5% came from the Majority World. At a similar global conference in Cape Town South Africa in November 2010 at which both Hwa Yung and I were present, together with participants from 198 countries in the world, 65% of the participants were from the majority world and only 35% from the Western world. This demonstrates the enormous shift in the centre of gravity of the Evangelical church globally in only 100 years.

I am in wholehearted agreement with many of the points which Hwa Yung has made in his presentation. By way of response, perhaps then the most helpful comments I can make as a historian are to reflect on the reasons why the church grew in the West, particularly in Europe, and suggest how we might learn from the strengths of the church, as well as our weaknesses and failures in the hope that you don't repeat them. I aim to do this briefly by looking at three key periods in European church history:

AD 30 to AD 330, the Early Church

The sixteenth century, the European Reformation

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, missionary expansion and decline

AD 30 to AD 330, the Early Church

In answer to the question, ‘How did the early church grow from a despised minority to a significant force by the mid fourth century?’ one great German historian, Adolf Harnack, said simply that it grew because the early church out-lived and out-argued the pagans. In other words, it grew because of a combination of their godly lives allied to the building of attractive communities alongside an articulate defence of the wonder, uniqueness and power of the gospel over against alternative pagan worldviews. They emphasised both the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel.

A seminal book published in the last 20 years entitled, The Rise of Christianity ² , by Professor Rodney Stark brilliantly traces the reasons for the growth of the church. They revolved around the uniqueness, power and authenticity of the gospel message, allied to the engagement of the early church with people in the surrounding cultures. Stark argues in particular that the Early Church proved to be attractive for at least two major reasons. Firstly, in the context of a time of frequent pandemics most notably in the periods around 150 AD and 250–265 AD, possibly when measles first came to Europe. Perhaps as many as one-third of the population in most of the major cities of the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean region died because of the pandemics. However, believers reached out to the suffering and dying, many of whom responded by embracing the gospel. Even the pagan Roman Emperor Julian stated that if the pagans could not match the believers in their compassion for the sick, suffering and dying, that the church would take over the pagan world. Many elders and leaders of churches died as they gathered sick people and nursed them, risking their own lives as they came in contact with the pandemics. There was a huge spike in the growth of the church during the time of those two major pandemics. That perhaps has a lesson for us today.

In addition, Stark argues that the message of the church proved especially attractive to women. These early believers took a firm stand on at least four issues related to women: the widespread practice of abortion; the killing of female children as male children were preferred; resistance to the practice of young adolescent girls being forced to marry much older mature men; and the acceptance in the cultures of the time that when a husband died his family, especially his brothers, were free to take over all his possessions in preference to his widow and children. In this context you can understand the Apostle James’ exhortation that ‘true religion is to care for the widows and orphans’ (James 1:27). Church leaders took a strong stance on all of these things, which led to many women, both high-born and poor, being attracted to the gospel message.

Allied to this demonstration of Christian love was the fact that God raised up many gifted defenders of the gospel who were able to articulate the truth of the gospel in the public sphere. These included Polycarp, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine and others who served and lived in Europe and in North Africa. I‘m reminded of Hwa Yung's view that to succeed, the church has to be both rooted in Scripture (and ready to defend it) as well as being culturally relevant.

So, a defence of the gospel allied to engagement with the culture proved to be decisive contributory factors in the growth of the Early Church. You could say that ‘proclamation and demonstration characterised the mission of the early church’. Today, many people would call that ‘integral mission’. Sometimes we may have a tendency to retreat from engagement with the world. This was not the case with the first believers. I‘m reminded of John Stott's words ‘the calling of the church is to be morally distinct without being socially segregated’ – and sometimes we have confused the two.

The Sixteenth Century European Reformation

If we fast forward to the sixteenth century, we can see the impact of what became called the Reformation period on both the growth of the church and the transformation of European cultures. Under the leadership of Martin Luther and John Calvin I would suggest that the sixteenth century European church succeeded in three ways.

Firstly, they rediscovered the essence of the Christian gospel, especially the much- neglected doctrines of justification by grace, the trustworthiness of scripture and the priesthood of all believers, all of which had been obscured within the Roman Catholic tradition in the Middle Ages.

Secondly, this rediscovery led to the Reformation of European cultures because Luther and Calvin both taught Christian doctrines and sought to apply biblical truth and the Lordship of Christ in every sphere of life including in the worlds of education, the visual arts, science, which led to the vast expansion of university education, great expansion in the education of women, a new view of vocation, the birth of liberal democracy, the growth of religious toleration. and so much more. Some historians have even argued that Calvin was responsible for the creation of the banking system in Europe.

They developed the concept of the Christian mind, by which I mean an attempt to apply biblical truth to every sphere of life, including the realm of ideas. They exhibited a concern to expand the Lordship of Christ both through the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth as they knew it, which was mostly in Europe, but also to every sphere of life, including the realm of ideas. They espoused both the proclamation of the gospel, and the development of the biblical worldview as they attempted to apply scripture to every sphere of life. There was no separation between doctrine and practice-between doctrine, praxis, engagement and mission. One of their successors, Abraham Kuyper, as a consequence argued that ‘There is not an inch in the whole area of human existence of which Christ, the sovereign of all, does not cry: “It is Mine”.’ ³ The impact on the continent of Europe was profound and it led to the creation of the modern world. The Reformation shaped and created modern Europe

Thirdly, they had a renewed vision for evangelism and mission outside of their own culture. This has often been minimised and missed by many church historians. But if we take Calvin as an example, under his ministry evangelicals in France grew to at least 2 million out of a population of 20 million soon after his death. Luther’s doctrines spread from Germany to Scandinavia, England and Eastern Europe. Diaspora missionaries went out from Wittenberg and Geneva all across Europe, and some even travelled to Brazil. Some historians argue that the Reformers’ teaching, profoundly impacted William Carey and his work in India.

Therefore, in answer to the question, ‘Why did the Reformation have such a profound impact in Europe lasting for several hundred years?’ my answer would be that it was because the reformers had a beautiful balance of rediscovering the essence of the gospel, reforming the culture, and the recovery of the missionary vision. All three came together. ⁴

Hence, we saw Reformation and revival in many parts of the continent. All three must come together. If we only focus on doctrine, the church can become inward looking and moribund. If we only focus on taking the gospel to the ends of the Earth, without applying biblical truth to every sphere of life and without having the rootedness of sound doctrine, our message can become superficial. If we only try to reform a culture without the undergirding of biblical doctrine, a Christian worldview, and an evangelistic heart, we will lose direction and rootedness. The impact of the Reformation lasted so long because these three emphases came together at the same time.

I hope this will happen in Asia too!

The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Missionary Expansion and Decline

Finally, if we fast forward to the 1800s, we can see that it was again a period of great expansion and the initiation of the modern missionary movement. In many ways it had its roots in the ministry of John Wesley and his supporters. The 1800s was a period of missionary enterprise with Protestant missionaries travelling from Europe to the ends of the earth. However, even during that period we can see the seeds of decline from about 1850 onwards.

Powerful alternative views began to be expounded as a result of that period which came to be called the European Enlightenment, which essentially moved God from the centre of European thinking to the periphery – to be replaced by man at the centre of the world. A secularist view began to be developed which sought to portray what life could be like without the presence or intervention of a sovereign God. Some believers were even seduced by this view which led to the de-supernaturalisation of God and a loss of confidence in the Scriptures.

Two competing views addressing the desire for human freedom began to develop. The one, issuing from the Bible, argued for the provision of freedom within the framework provided by the Scriptures for finite human beings; the other argued that human beings should be free of all constraints without any restrictions to do whatever they wanted, and certainly without any reference to God. In the midst of a great missionary enterprise therefore, which also led Christians to contribute to the abolition of the slave trade, the birth of trade unions, labour laws and so much else, the church was faced by the growing challenge of the enlightenment secularist Worldview. Sadly, in the second half of the 1800s, even during a period when there was considerable missionary expansion within Europe itself many church leaders, instead of confronting the emerging secular worldviews, retreated from engaging with it into a pietistic corner.

We should have learned from the early church apologists, and from Luther and Calvin of the vital importance of both proclaiming the gospel in public and articulating the superiority of the biblical worldview – in universities, media and all other spheres of society. We did not. As a consequence, over a period of time when the Bible came under attack, we did a poor job of defending it, we embraced alternative critical worldviews, retreated into pietism, so that within a short period of time political and other leaders began to say to us: ‘You can worship on Sunday, but keep it as a private affair, and you have nothing to say to us in other spheres of society or the workplace.’ We realised rather late that it’s important to expose the weaknesses and inadequacies of other worldviews in public and, as the door opens, proclaim the gospel into the vacuum. In this sense we have much to learn from the contribution which believers made in the early centuries and during the Reformation in expounding both a biblical worldview and proclaiming the gospel in response to contemporary intellectual challenges.

It is somewhat disconcerting, if Hwa Yung's reports are accurate, that there appear to be few public apologists who are able to proclaim the gospel and articulate the biblical worldview in many Asian countries. If this is the case, I recommend you deal with the challenge urgently in order to avoid your missionary endeavours being derailed at home and further afield. Please learn from our mistakes. The confident articulation and defence of the biblical gospel and the biblical worldview in the public sphere is central to the calling of the church. Please pray for us as we seek to be faithful to that calling as we will pray for you.