IN the face of militant Islam it is easy for Western Christians to feel fearful. It is not only the murderous element of Muslim extremism that makes Christians worry. The good, devout and sincere lives of ordinary, decent Muslims make most Western Christians seem lukewarm, cynical and half-hearted in their faith. Ask yourself: how many Christians are observing Lent as seriously as most Muslims keep Ramadan?

Furthermore, with the declining birthrate in Europe and with established Christianity in seeming meltdown, it is easy to believe that Islam, through immigration, will conquer Europe in the end. But does that mean Christianity itself is doomed? In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington predicts that population forces will decide the question. “In the long run,” he says, “Muhammad wins out.”

But Huntington is wrong. Christianity might fade in Europe, but in global terms, for a long time yet, there will be many more Christians than Muslims in the world. The American academic Philip Jenkins has studied the situation. In his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, he says that the Christian prophets of doom are ignorant of the explosive growth of Christianity outside Western Europe. In 1900, for instance, there were approximately ten million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.

According to Jenkins, the percentage of the world’s population that is, at least in name, Christian, will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world. This is one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, if growth rates continue, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.

What we in Western Europe are reluctant to acknowledge is that the power centre of Christianity is shifting. We are used to being in charge. But within 50 years only one fifth of the world’s Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown. If the Christian population shifts South and East then the power shifts South and East as well.

The shift in Christian power base is not simply geographical or racial. The Christians in Latin America and Africa are far more conservative theologically and morally than those in the West. They have a very different agenda. Thus, as Christianity becomes more Southern, it becomes more “old-fashioned”, while being radically up to date at the same time. All those who say we must abandon traditional beliefs and adapt the Christian faith to modern Western culture are therefore singing to a cemetery. They are calling for change when the change has already happened in a way they never expected.

This conflict became apparent four years ago when the world’s Anglican bishops gathered at Lambeth. Many of the bishops from America and Britain wanted to push through a more permissive stance on homosexuality, but the Asian and African bishops were having none of it. They pointed out that there are more Anglicans in Nigeria alone than in Britain and the US combined. They insisted on a conservative stance and infuriated the British and American bishops who were used to being in charge. When an American bishop accused the Africans of being ignorant fundamentalists, the African bishop replied that he too had a degree from Oxford and accused the American bishop of being patronising and racist.

This revolution in world Christendom touches all the Christian groupings, not least Roman Catholicism. Twenty-five years ago the world was surprised and delighted by the election of a Slavic pope. Will the upcoming power shift affect the selection of the next pope? Will someone such as Cardinal Francis Arinze — a Nigerian who is charismatic, forward looking and yet morally and theologically conservative — ascend the throne of St Peter?

This shift of Christianity’s “centre of gravity” is also a reminder to Western Christians that we are not the whole show. We have to start thinking differently about ourselves. We are part of a much larger community: the worldwide Church. Furthermore, the explosive growth in Third World Christendom may well reverberate in the West in unexpected ways. Already the churches in Africa and South America are training and sending missionaries to Europe. The growth of the Third World Church may therefore be the answer to a dying European Christendom. Those we first evangelised may now return the favour and help European Christianity to experience a fresh and unexpected renaissance.