Move toward militant Christianity? BY DANIEL PIPES

Which of the world's largest faiths, Christianity or Islam, is experiencing the greater ideological reassertion and demographic surge?

"For obvious reasons," notes this professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, "news reports today are filled with material about the influence of a resurgent and sometimes angry Islam. But in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world's fastest-growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place in these and other ways it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the 21st century."

What Jenkins dubs the "Christian revolution" is so little noted because Christians divide into two very different regions - North (Europe, North America, Australia), and South (South America, Africa, Asia) - and we who live in the North only dimly perceive the momentous developments under way in the South.

As "Southern Christians are reading the New Testament and taking it very seriously," increasing tensions then develop with the liberal Northerners.

Demographics: "Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest. During the past half-century the critical centers of the Christian world have moved decisively to Africa, to Latin America, and to Asia. The balance will never shift back."

The numbers are jaw-dropping: Nigeria already has more practicing Anglicans than any other country, with Uganda not far behind. The Philippines has more baptisms per year than France, Spain, Italy, and Poland together. By 2025, two-thirds of all Christians and three quarters of all Catholics - are expected to live in the South. (These numbers actually underestimate the contrast in growth rates, for many Southern Christians are relocating to the North. In London today, for example, half of all churchgoers are blacks.)