Over at The American Spectator, Mark Tooley examines the continued pattern of condescension and patronization demonstrated by mainline Protestant denominations, in their dealings with their more conservative (and soon to be more numerous) African counterparts.
Liberal church activists are reluctant to acknowledge that African Christianity has a firm mind of its own, preferring condescendingly to portray it as primitive and easily manipulated by conservative U.S. religionists. It is true that much of African Christianity is new, somewhat similar to fast growing, early American frontier revivalism in its earnest faith, populism, and strong sense of the supernatural. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia of 2001, Africa was less than 10 percent Christian in 1900 but was over 45 percent Christian by 2000. (This compares to Islam’s growth in African from 32 percent to 40 percent.) About 20 percent of the world’s Christians now live in Africa, and rates of active church attendance are higher in Africa than in much of old Christendom. One Congolese bishop estimated that more Congolese are in a United Methodist Church on a typical Sunday than in all the United States.