Why Liberal, Western Churches Despise Their African Counterparts

While the Christian Church is becoming increasing old, grey and marginalized in Europe and North America, it is growing in size in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In a recent article by Mark Tooley, this growth is explained thusly.....

"Amid growing United Methodist churches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, among others, and a U.S. church losing about a 1,000 members weekly, the 11.4 million denomination likely will soon be majority African.... According to the World Christian Encyclopedia of 2001, Africa was less than 10 percent Christian in 1900 but was over 45 percent Christian by 2000. (This compares to Islam's growth in African from 32 percent to 40 percent.) About 20 percent of the world's Christians now live in Africa, and rates of active church attendance are higher in Africa than in much of old Christendom. One Congolese bishop estimated that more Congolese are in a United Methodist Church on a typical Sunday than in all the United States."

Of course, along with such steady growth, there is a bit of jealousy against the young upstarts in this example, the African church....

"liberal U.S. church activists usually sorely underestimate the depth and richness of African Christianity, including its intellectual traditions, some of which date to the early Church Fathers. Infamously, revisionist retired U.S. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong once derided African Anglicans for having "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity," while condemning Third World "religious extremism" and "Pentecostal hysteria." In the patronizing spirit of Bishop Spong, some liberal activists claim African church leaders, in their opposition to liberal U.S. church trends, especially about sex, are merely U.S. pawns."

Preposterous. While the conservative elements of Western churches are a kindred spirit of the African churches, I doubt that conservatives could no more affect church policy in Africa than the liberal wing which would desperately want to do so. One thing that the African churches and conservative Western churches share is a common interpretation of Scripture unaffected by the commonly held (in the West), Modernistic worldview. Tooley concludes his article thusly...

"Undoubtedly United Methodist liberals will craft new attempts to marginalize the growing African churches. And U.S. Episcopalians will largely ignore the protests of the nearly 80 million member Communion, now dominated by large African churches that increasingly dwarf the dwindling U.S. denomination's 2 million in both numbers and vitality. How persuasive will the emptying old-line churches of New England and California be against the arguments of hundreds of millions of African Christians?"

Indeed, what sway does a nearly empty church have when standing in opposition to a vibrant growing church? Perhaps someday, in our lifetimes, the words of author Dinesh D'Souza will seem almost prophetic when he wrote.....

"We may be seeing the beginning of a startling reversal. At one time Christian missionaries went to the far continents of Africa and Asia, where white priests in robes proclaimed the Bible to wide-eyed and uncomprehending brown and black people. In the future, we may well see black and brown missionaries proclaim the Bible to wide-eyed and uncomprehending white people in the West."