February, 2005 (Vol. 20, No. 4)

Charisma (January) magazine looks at the 10 “spiritual hot spots,“ or places where evangelical, particularly charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, is growing the fastest and finds most of them in Asia and Africa.

Researcher Justin Long writes that Christianity is growing most rapidly in those places “considered unreachable [in terms of Christian missions] a few decades ago. In the isolated Himalayan nation of Nepal, the Christian presence has grown from just 25 believers in 1960 to more than one million today. Although Christians are represented at three percent in this predominantly Hindu nation, they are growing twice as fast as other faiths. Although the numbers of Christians have long been in dispute in China, Long estimates that their numbers have increased from 64 million to 90 million todayl with charismatics numbering at 60 million.

Population growth is the main source of Christian expansion in the largely Muslim African nation of Burkina Faso, where from 1983 to 2000, Christians churches have doubled and the number of charismatics doubled to 900,000. The western African nation of Benin is likewise showing sharp growth rate of 3.1 annually, with nearly 120,000 new members joining churches annually. About half of the country’s Christians are Catholics and charismatics number about 650,000.

Singapore is now showing about 500,000 Christians organized in everything from small house churches to mega churches. India, meanwhile, is showing a Christian growth of nearly double the rate of the overall population, with 60 million, half of which are charismatic. The largest mission agencies are based in the country. Vietnam is still officially communist, but the churches are growing at roughly 1.2 percent per year, slight ahead of the population Vietnam missionaries are now being sent abroad.

(Charisma, 600 Rhinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32746)

Partly as an attempt to express Buddhism’s relevance in today’s Japanese society, a number of Buddhist NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have emerged and are expanding following the events of 9/11 and the developments in Iraq.

In a report on Buddhist NGOs in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (Vol. 13, No. 2, 2004),  Jonathan S. Watts (Jodo Shu Research Institute, Tokyo) stressest NGOs in Japan in the latest issue of the  the specific meaning of the NGO in the Japanese context: it refers to groups involved in international cooperation activities, and not on domestic Japanese issues.

Japanese Buddhist NGOs originally were a response to the crisis in Indochina (boat people, refugees at the Cambodian border). Not only critical questions were asked about what Buddhism was doing practically for the well-being of fellow human beings, but Japanese priests who visited Indochina were embarrassed to see that mostly Christian groups were active in humanitarian relief there.

In a second step, the Hanshin earthquake saw a number of “international” Japanese NGOs helping in their home country following the disaster. Then, in 1998, the Non-Profit Organization law was introduced and allowed Japanese taxpayers to deduct donations to humanitarian efforts from their taxes.

Over the years, Japanese Buddhist NGOs have also become active outside of Asia (Middle East, Africa). A Buddhist NGO Network was formed in 2002. The impact of the Iraq crisis is still difficult to assess, observes Watts, who is also the coordinator of a Buddhist think tank, “Think Sangha”. People from many corners – religious and secular – speak much of peace, but Buddhist organizations seem rather to be attempting to catch up with the general movement in society than to lead it.

(Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 18 Yamazato-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8673, Japan. Website:http://www.nanzan-uc.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs)

— By Jean-Francois Mayer, RW Contributing Editor and founder of Religoscope (http://www.religion.info)

Many Muslim and independent Christian schools in England are getting failing grades for their narrow curricula and teaching civic concern and tolerance to their students, according to a recent British government report.

The Economist (Jan. 22) reports that independent religious schools are growing rapidly in England; there were 170 in September of 2003 and now there are 276, of which 118 are Muslim. While these schools do not have to stick to the national curriculum, they do have to meet new requirements on curriculum and citizenship, including tolerance of “non-traditional lifestyles” (largely meaning homosexuality).

While most have managed to pass, 88 of them have yet to meet the requirements on breadth of curriculum, 50 of which are Muslim. Of that number, 18 have been advised to improve their teachings on citizenship or risk being closed down. Some of these Muslim schools are small seminaries that mainly teach the Koran.

There are also state-funded Muslim schools but they have raised little objection. Both Muslim and Christian parents are worried that their schools are facing an “imposed secular standard” by the educational establishment.

Orthodox Jewish musicians are finding growing “crossover” appeal in the secular world and even encouragement from their own rabbis, reportsMoment magazine (February).

Jewish-themed pop music has been gaining popularity in the last decade, with such bands and musicians as Neshama Carlebach,  Moshav Band, Pey Daled and Beis Groove, gaining a hearing among mainstream secular audiences. The most recent addition to such crossovers is Matisyahu, a 25-year-old convert to Hasidic Judaism who once sang reggae and rap.

Today, Matisyahu has gained nationwide press coverage for his blending of reggae and Hasidic-influenced music, largely written by late Jewish folk singer Schlomo Carlebach. Matisyahu, who performs in trendy New York clubs in his Hasidic garb of black hat and coat, views his music as an outreach. The Orthodox crossover artists have “held onto their hip tastes and status,”with Matisyahu’s rabbis using his “hipness to attract too-cool-for-shul young Jews who hang out in New York’s clubs,” writes Dave Gordon.

(Moment, 4115 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Suite 102, Washington, DC 20016)

A movement of alternative minyanim, or prayer groups, ?has emerged among young American Jews who want a middle ground between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism.

Touchstone magazine (January/February) reports that young Orthodox Jews unhappy with the male-only leadership of their synagogues, and young Conservative Jews believing that their denomination is not traditional enough, have joined forces to create their own minyanim. These prayer groups, traditionally constituted by ten men now include women, who often  lead the prayers.

Though all of the groups are lay-led, often in apartments or borrowed spaces, some are sponsored by Conservative congregations to serve as alternatives for their young people, slightly over half of whom are leaving the denomination, most for no other religion.

Political viability and media sophistication mark those who are considered the most influential evangelicals in America by Time magazine (Feb. 7).

The magazine composed a list of the 25 most influential evangelicals with input of preachers, politicians, scholars and activists. Number one is Rick Warren, megachurch pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life, a best-selling book that has become a phenomenon among pastors and churches. Warren is said to stand next in line after Billy Graham as “America’s minister.“

The political cast of the list of  influential evangelicals is seen in the choices for runners-up: James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and family values activist, is listed second, followed by conservative Christian financiers Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Diane Knippers of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, and then neconservative Catholic Richard John Neuhaus. The latter was chosen because of his strong influence on Bush as well as for his work in forging an evangelical-Catholic coalition on issues of public life (another Catholic on the list is Republican Senator Rick Santorum).

Among the other influential evangelicals chosen were Billy and Franklin Graham, Charles Colson, J.I. Packer (the only theologian of the 25), historian Mark Noll, Stephen Strang of Charisma magazine and Stuart Epperson, founder of Salem Communications which owns 104 radio stations blending Christian music and teaching with talk radio.

Yet Billy Graham remains the most trusted spokesman among American Protestant church leaders, according to a recent Barna Poll.  The poll, taken among 614 senior pastors, found that Billy Graham was chosen as their greatest influence by 34 percent of respondents, followed by Rick Warren (26 percent).

The only other leaders listed by at least 10 percent of the pastors was President George Bush (14 percent) and  James Dobson (11 percent). Evangelical leaders were the “top influencers,” rating 59 percent among all pastors. In contrast, only six percent of the top influencers were associated with mainline Protestant denominations and five percent were Catholic.

Restrictions and punishments  against those converting from Islam to other faiths are common in Muslim countries, but increasingly the issue is being played out in the U.S. and other Western countries, reportsCommentary magazine (February). “Muslim apostasy” is forbidden both by religious and political authorities in most Islamic nations, sometimes under penalty of death or imprisonment.

Those who convert to other faiths (often through intermarriage) often face strong family and community pressure, especially from Islamic radicals, writes Daveed Gartensein-Ross. “Converts from Islam, especially those who become involved in Christian ministries, often use assumed names, or only their first names, in order to protect themselves and their families.”

Pressure coming from the family are the greatest for Western converts, Ross writes. Some immigrant converts have had their lives threatened by relatives still living in their home countries. Family ostracism, common for converts from all faith backgrounds,  exerts a special toll on immigrants who depend on family networks for their livelihood. Some North American Muslims are even trying to make the case that Muslim apostasy should be discouraged by law.

In Canada, Syed Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, has argued that Canada’s policy of granting multicultural group rights to ethnic groups should allow Muslims to sanction apostasy and blasphemy in their communities (although Mumtaz adds that recognizing Islamic law does not necessarily entail enforcing the “Islamic punishment” of death for blasphemy and apostasy within the Canadian jurisdiction.) Washburn University (Kansas) professor Ali Khan has likewise argued that Islam has the “right of integrity“ in safeguarding the “protected knowledge [of Islam] from…repudiation, internal disrespect and external assaults.”

The strong opposition to Christian conversion from Islam stems largely from Muslims’ encounter with missionaries from colonial times– a fear that, if anything, has increased in recent years. In the British journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (January), H.J. Sharkey writes that the use of the term “crusader” to describe Western and American power in Islamist literature is often still directly tied to the fear of past and present missionary influence, even though these efforts have yielded few converts. Although Muslim apostasy has been an age-old taboo in Islamic societies, the current evangelical interest in Muslim evangelism may well be intensifying this concern.

A look at the figures of actual Christian mission efforts to convert Muslims  suggests that cases of “Muslim apostasy” are far from widespread both in the U.S. and abroad. The International Bulletin of Missionary Research(January) found that only 13 percent of the world’s missionaries work in Muslim areas. Of this percentage, the majority of missionaries work mainly with non-Muslim tribal groups or with existing Christian communities, not with the 95.9 percent of the population who are Muslim.

Todd M. Johnson and David R. Scoggins add that social betterment projects are more essential to missions in this region rather than planting Christian churches (often because of anti-proselytizing laws). Additionally, the country sending the largest number of missionaries to Muslim nations today is the Philippines, challenging the perception that Christianity is a Western religion in opposition to Islam.

Johnson and Scoggins adds that Muslims are not doing much better in missionary work among Christians and other non-Muslims. They estimate that 85 percent of the Muslim efforts to extend their faith are directed toward other Muslims, particularly those in the Diaspora. Missionary groups sponsored by multiple foreign governments (or by usually the Saudi government) and by voluntary independent groups are often the most influential.

Johnson and Scoggins conclude that “Christians and Muslims both send the bulk of their missionaries to people of their own faiths. In this sense, the foreign missionary enterprise of the world’s two largest religions is largely an attempt to renew their own traditions.”

(International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 490 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511; Islam & Christian-Muslim Relations, 325 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106)