Lausanne: “Africa to the rest”

African Break­through

Africa is the most Chris­t­ian con­ti­nent in the world today. Hal­lelu­jah! In the year 2018, for the first time in history, there were more Chris­tians in Africa than on any other con­ti­nent in the entire world.[1] The con­ti­nent now has well over 670 million Christ-followers.

It gets even more impressive—by 2050 there will likely be more Chris­tians in Africa (1.25 billion) than in the current second and third place con­tenders, Latin America (705 million) and Europe (490 million) respec­tively, com­bined. What shall we say to these things?

Yet we have three con­cerns. First, since the pub­lish­ing of this joyous fact, we have tra­versed nearly every con­ti­nent, includ­ing several coun­tries within Africa itself, and have not found this momen­tous occa­sion in world history acknowl­edged much, let alone pro­fusely cel­e­brated to our satisfaction.

For over a thou­sand years, Europe has had the most Chris­tians, until the last decade when Latin America slightly edged out Europe. And then in 2018, Africa hap­pened. This is a seismic shift hap­pen­ing in our life­time, right on our watch!