The Pew Forum recently released new data regarding global evangelism that is worth a look. Christianity Today created the helpful infographic below illustrating the major differences among those polled from around the world at the Lausanne Congress last October.
Pew describes their approach to the study this way:
The Pew Forum conducted the survey in nine languages, including English, from August to December 2010. A total of about 4,500 people registered to attend the Third Lausanne Congress, and nearly half completed the survey, using Web and paper questionnaires.
The survey’s 2,196 respondents turned out to closely mirror the full set of leaders attending the congress in terms of region, gender, age and organization type. The organizers of the gathering sought to create a body that was representative of the geographic distribution of evangelicals around the world. Thus, they divided the world into 12 regions and invited delegates in rough proportion to their estimates of the number of evangelicals in each region and country. About six-in-ten of the evangelical leaders surveyed (57%) are from the Global South while about four-in-ten (43%) are from the Global North, including 16% from the United States. They are ethnically and racially diverse: 36% identify as Caucasian, 23% as black, 17% as Asian, 5% as Hispanic and 1% as Arab, with the remainder either not identifying as any of these (10%) or indicating they are of mixed race (7%). But they are less diverse in other ways: Nearly three-quarters of the evangelical leaders surveyed (74%) are employed by churches or other religious organizations, and they are predominantly college-educated, male and middle-aged, with very few under age 30.
Though all affirmed many tenants of orthodox Christianity, there was – according to Pew’s research – some disagreement regarding other moral and theological issues. Some of the major disagreements include:
- Homosexuality – Societal acceptance of Homosexuality
- Politics – Religious leaders speaking out in policial issues
- Gender Issues – Whether women should stay at home
- Eschatology – Belief in the Rapture
Read the Pew Forum article here, or the Christianity Today article here. Does this reflect your experiences?
- the acceptance of homosexuality among evangelical leaders from South America
- the overwhelming belief that Jesus will will return in our lifetime
Two additional things are worth mentioning.
First, the fact that evangelical angst is much less common in the Global South than in the North (for more informaiton about my “evangelical angst” thoughts, I’vecommented on this in Christianity Today).
Reposted with permission from Edstetzer.com. You may comment below or, if you wish to interact with Ed, comment at the original post on his blog here.
