NEW LAUSANNE REPORT HIGHLIGHTS GLOBAL SHIFT OF CHRISTIANITY A report released by the Lausanne Researchers’ Network highlights the profound southern geographical shift of global Christianity over the past hundred years. It provides new data on the southern shift in the evangelical movement from its roots in the United Kingdom and the United States. According to the study, over 80 percent of all Christians in 1900 were from Europe and North America, yet by 2005 it was under 45 percent.

This statistic correlates with the finding that out of the estimated number of evangelicals worldwide – from 250 million to 688 million – most are increasingly found outside of the Western world. Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans are more typical representatives of evangelicalism than Americans or Europeans. People of African descent represent 30.8 percent of all Evangelicals, while Asian and Latin American make up 15 percent and 13.2, respectively.

Source: The Christian Post

March 2006