The Assemblies of God have a similar heritage and similar beliefs to Pentecostals, and their worship services are similar in style: congregants are moved by the spirit, they call out in praise to the Lord, they raise and wave their hands in praise, they praise and bless the Lord for His goodness and mercy out loud. At the service I attended, I was one of the few people not raising their hands, swaying to the music, shaking tambourines, or dancing in the aisle. (The only time I moved along with everyone else was when we made a big procession to put our tithes and offerings in a box at the front of the church. Thankfully I remembered to bring cash.)
Worship at Great Grace had a similar fervor in its prayer and sermon as Calvary Pentecostal. But where Calvary stressed baptism by the Holy Ghost, the pastor at Great Grace exhorted the congregation (in incredibly loud tones) to have a personal relationship with God, to have faith in God's ability to do anything and answer prayers, and to trust no man's opinion about God but learn about God from experiencing God.
Indeed everyone at Great Grace seemed to be experiencing something greater than themselves. While I'll leave it to Andrew Newberg to explain what exactly these people are experiencing, this is certain: the experience is real, powerful, and the future of Christianity.
Like the Pentecostal movement, the Assemblies of God are one of the fastest growing Christian groups worldwide, and have about 3 million members in the U.S. In the US, AGs are growing fastest in the Southwest, but these numbers pales in comparison the 57 million members worldwide, and the church's incredible growth in Africa, South America, and Asia. Great Grace was in many ways indicative of the future of Christianity. How so, many theologians argue the future of Christianity lies in people experiencing God and being moved by the Spirit. (Great Grace certainly has that down). And all demographers claim the future of Christianity lies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. (Basically everyone at Great Grace was of an African ethnicity.)
And so I'm going to take this post as an opportunity to reflect, not on the service I attended, but on how the service I attended is indicative of Christianity's future.
Much has been made of the recent Pew Reseach Center's survey of Religion in American, and while I encourage you to peruse the findings, I think a few things should be kept in mind. While some of the changes in the religious landscape were religious and/or political, demographics also played a role. Basically, the number of European Americans is decreasing, and so you would expect that religious groups like Mainline Protestants, who are mostly European Americans, to decline. And while some Evangelicals celebrated how they didn't decline nearly as much as Mainline Protestants and Catholics, much of this can be attributed to the fact that the birthrate of Evangelicals, while now identical to Mainline Protestants, fell a generation later, and so they have not yet experienced the drastic declines that other Christians have experienced, and so until they do, they will continue to increase their share of the Christian Pie.
The most important fact about the changing American religious landscape, is that the Christianity is decreasing, and the nones are making a meteoric rise. (Nones include all non-religious people like Humanists and people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious.) While this make you think that religion is declining, I invite you to look at the global picture.
The Pew Forum also released a (somewhat less talked about) report on the global religious landscape, and made predictions about the worldwide religious landscape out to 2050. Here predictions can be made because demographics, not theology or politics, are the guiding factor. And so while secularism may rise in the US to levels similar to Europe and Japan, the number of religious people will increase because the total number of people in places with high levels of secularity, will decrease. Many of the fastest shrinking countries are also some of the most secular while many of the most religious countries, are the fastest growing, not to mention that countries that will experience the largest numerical gains, like India, tend to be very religious. Basically, there's a bunch of factors determining how religions will grow., but the data tell us that the numbers of non-religious will grow for a while, then begin to shrink, as will the numbers of Buddhists, Folk Religionists, and "others." Hinduism and Judaism will grow a bit, and Islam will pass Christianity as the world's most popular religion around 2070.
But what the numbers don't tell us is how the religions will be transformed by these demographic changes. The future of Christianity, lies in the Global South. Check out the countries with the largest Christian populations in 2050, and you'll see what I mean. Much scholarship has been done about the differences between Christianity in the developed world and Christianity in the developing world. The consensus is that Christianity in the Global South is rooted in faith and experience more than creeds and rituals. Harvey Cox describes in his book The Future of Faith how Christianity's future lies in the faithful having an experience of the divine (like at Great Grace Assembly of God) and being inspired/led by the Spirit to transform your life and work for social justice.
Exactly what the future holds for Christianity and how global trends will affect Christian practices in the US remains to be seen. Perhaps we will have a wave of missionaries coming to the US from Africa, Asia, and South America. Perhaps more and more Christians and churches will quit worrying about creeds. And perhaps Christianity will become the force for social justice that Walter Rauschenbush, Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis, Desmond Tutu, and so many others believe it is called to be.
Worship at Great Grace had a similar fervor in its prayer and sermon as Calvary Pentecostal. But where Calvary stressed baptism by the Holy Ghost, the pastor at Great Grace exhorted the congregation (in incredibly loud tones) to have a personal relationship with God, to have faith in God's ability to do anything and answer prayers, and to trust no man's opinion about God but learn about God from experiencing God.
Indeed everyone at Great Grace seemed to be experiencing something greater than themselves. While I'll leave it to Andrew Newberg to explain what exactly these people are experiencing, this is certain: the experience is real, powerful, and the future of Christianity.
Like the Pentecostal movement, the Assemblies of God are one of the fastest growing Christian groups worldwide, and have about 3 million members in the U.S. In the US, AGs are growing fastest in the Southwest, but these numbers pales in comparison the 57 million members worldwide, and the church's incredible growth in Africa, South America, and Asia. Great Grace was in many ways indicative of the future of Christianity. How so, many theologians argue the future of Christianity lies in people experiencing God and being moved by the Spirit. (Great Grace certainly has that down). And all demographers claim the future of Christianity lies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. (Basically everyone at Great Grace was of an African ethnicity.)
And so I'm going to take this post as an opportunity to reflect, not on the service I attended, but on how the service I attended is indicative of Christianity's future.
Much has been made of the recent Pew Reseach Center's survey of Religion in American, and while I encourage you to peruse the findings, I think a few things should be kept in mind. While some of the changes in the religious landscape were religious and/or political, demographics also played a role. Basically, the number of European Americans is decreasing, and so you would expect that religious groups like Mainline Protestants, who are mostly European Americans, to decline. And while some Evangelicals celebrated how they didn't decline nearly as much as Mainline Protestants and Catholics, much of this can be attributed to the fact that the birthrate of Evangelicals, while now identical to Mainline Protestants, fell a generation later, and so they have not yet experienced the drastic declines that other Christians have experienced, and so until they do, they will continue to increase their share of the Christian Pie.
The most important fact about the changing American religious landscape, is that the Christianity is decreasing, and the nones are making a meteoric rise. (Nones include all non-religious people like Humanists and people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious.) While this make you think that religion is declining, I invite you to look at the global picture.
The Pew Forum also released a (somewhat less talked about) report on the global religious landscape, and made predictions about the worldwide religious landscape out to 2050. Here predictions can be made because demographics, not theology or politics, are the guiding factor. And so while secularism may rise in the US to levels similar to Europe and Japan, the number of religious people will increase because the total number of people in places with high levels of secularity, will decrease. Many of the fastest shrinking countries are also some of the most secular while many of the most religious countries, are the fastest growing, not to mention that countries that will experience the largest numerical gains, like India, tend to be very religious. Basically, there's a bunch of factors determining how religions will grow., but the data tell us that the numbers of non-religious will grow for a while, then begin to shrink, as will the numbers of Buddhists, Folk Religionists, and "others." Hinduism and Judaism will grow a bit, and Islam will pass Christianity as the world's most popular religion around 2070.
But what the numbers don't tell us is how the religions will be transformed by these demographic changes. The future of Christianity, lies in the Global South. Check out the countries with the largest Christian populations in 2050, and you'll see what I mean. Much scholarship has been done about the differences between Christianity in the developed world and Christianity in the developing world. The consensus is that Christianity in the Global South is rooted in faith and experience more than creeds and rituals. Harvey Cox describes in his book The Future of Faith how Christianity's future lies in the faithful having an experience of the divine (like at Great Grace Assembly of God) and being inspired/led by the Spirit to transform your life and work for social justice.
Exactly what the future holds for Christianity and how global trends will affect Christian practices in the US remains to be seen. Perhaps we will have a wave of missionaries coming to the US from Africa, Asia, and South America. Perhaps more and more Christians and churches will quit worrying about creeds. And perhaps Christianity will become the force for social justice that Walter Rauschenbush, Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis, Desmond Tutu, and so many others believe it is called to be.
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