How has Christianity changed over the past decade? The opinions of a number of people have recently been published by Christianity Today. Some of the ideas: the emerging church movement has dissipated; the Christian consensus against homosexual marriage in North America has collapsed; there has been a huge surge of Christianity in China; nearly every religious group in America has become involved in faith-based politics.
Islam has re-emerged as a political and religious force, and there is now a much more pragmatic engagement between the West and the Muslim world. Evangelicals are trying to rediscover who they should be and what they should stand for. The global centre of Christianity has moved from North America to Africa, Asia and South America. Knowledge of and commitment to Christian doctrines has declined rapidly.
Are these trends good for Christianity or bad for it? On the whole, I think that they show that Christianity is struggling in North America while at the same time it is thriving in many other parts of the world. Is American Christianity inevitably following the decline of European Christianity? Not necessarily. God moves in miraculous and unexpected ways, and it is therefore almost impossible to predict what the future may hold.