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USA, China and Africa will have the most Christian population

President of the Ukrainian Association for Religious Freedom Victor Yelensky predicts that Christianity will soon completely "lose its European exclusivity," reports Interfax-Religion.

"By mid-century the ten countries with the most Christian population will include the USA, China, Brazil, Congo, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Ethiopia, and Uganda", he stated in his interview published by NG-Religii newspaper on Wednesday.

According to Victor Yelensky, the number of Christians increases by 56 thousand every day, "however, with the daily increase of the number of Christians in Africa by 23,000, the number of Christians in Europe reduces."

At the same time, Mr. Yelensky believes that the growing number of Moslems of Arab origin in the Old World will "reinforce importance of Catholicism and Protestantism as European identity centers."

He quoted Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom, "a book much discussed by theologians lately," who believes that in the foreseeable future there will appear 20 countries with almost equal balance of Christians and Moslems; and he predicts ten of them to have "strained relations, at best."

Yelensky thinks that "the future of Christianity will largely depend on its dialogue with other religions, and Islam above all".

According to Yelensky, Christianity will go through further division: until 1880 the world had only 500 Christian denominations, now this number has increased to 40 thousand it will grow in the longer term "essentially, due to the so called independent churches - African, Afro-American and Afro-Latin-American denominations - which often interpret the Testament quite freely," he said.

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TAGS: USA China Africa Christian population Catholicism Protestantism

[03/05/2009]

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