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EDITORIAL The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition – September 24, 2002

“The growing popularity of the annual Jerusalem march among Christians worldwide is a testament to the rising support Israel enjoys in various Christian quarters, particularly among Evangelicals in the United States. As Michael Freund noted in a feature story in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post, “No one outside the Jewish community has been more supportive of Israel than US Evangelical Christians, and they’ve just begun to get better organized.” The reasons behind this groundswell of backing are linked both to our security predicament and the phenomenal growth of Evangelical Christianity, now said to number as many as 50 million people in America. Bible-believing Christians throughout the US hold firm views regarding the State of Israel’s role in the divine plan for history and, more than ever before, they have begun to put their money, and their political clout, to work on its behalf.”

By John Pomfret

Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A01

“Protestant denominations are the fastest-growing religious groups in China. In 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists seized power and vowed to wipe out independent religions, there were fewer than 1 million Protestants in China. The Bureau of Religious Affairs, which monitors religion, recently estimated the country now has 25 million Protestants. Western researchers estimate there are at least 50 million, if unauthorized churches are taken into account

Within Protestantism, the evangelical approach has taken China by storm. Membership has skyrocketed in groups practicing faith-healing, laying-on of hands, prayer sessions lasting three days and three nights, speaking in tongues and full-body baptism

But the growth of evangelical Christianity has presented an enormous challenge to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council, the two government-sanctioned Protestant organizations.

In the past, Protestantism could be neatly divided into two categories. On one side was the official church that practiced a mainstream Protestant theology that stressed good works. Anglican Bishop K.H. Ting, long-time leader of the China Christian Council, once even wrote that ardent Communist Party members could go to heaven because they were good people, too. On the other side were unauthorized churches, meeting in houses discreetly and stressing faith-healing and individual salvation.

Now, the evangelical movement is taking over the mainstream church.”

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

UPI Religion Correspondent Published 12/8/2002 10:07 PM

(Analysis)

“Anthropocentric theologies, which have contributed significantly to the crisis involving homosexual and pedophile priests, are in steep decline in all denominations. At the same time a robust new orthodoxy is emerging. Even more stunning is the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity in the developing world, about which United Press International repeatedly reported since this spring.

Nowhere is the failure of 19th and 20th-century theological liberalism more evident than in Germany, the homeland of the Reformation, where the membership in the state-affiliated Protestant churches dropped from 47 million in the 1950s to 23 million today.

A recent poll showed that the German churches ranked at the bottom of 17 public institutions enjoying public trust. The police, the military, the United Nations, the media, even the troubled Deutsche Telekom corporation were among those that fared better.

What is true for Germany applies, in varying degrees, to much of Europe and North America. Because mainline churches “have become secularized and are cowering to the zeitgeist,” to cite German author Gabriele Wohmann, they have lost their relevance and are losing members.”