The end of Christendom
by Sebastian Millbank, The Critic:
Is Christianity now a homeless faith?
It may seem odd to ask whether there is anywhere that Christianity can call home. 2.4 billion people call themselves Christians, and Christianity is the dominant faith of the USA, which remains the world’s hegemonic military and economic power. Christianity is likewise the leading faith of Africa, where the population is swiftly growing, with ¼ of the world’s inhabitants set to be African by the year 2050. In China, Christianity has spread rapidly in the past decades, and if trends continue China may become home to as many as 100 million Christians by 2050.
Yet Christianity finds itself in the path of a new wave of authoritarianism and sectarianism sweeping Africa and Asia. Not only Islamic but Hindu fundamentalism is on the rise, with violence, persecution, censorship, bigotry and abuse visited on Christians more than any other faith group in the world. The past two decades have seen the Syrian civil war, the rise of increasingly violent and totalitarian forms of Islam, the collapse of Libya, the return of the Taliban, the depredations of Boko Haram in Nigeria and terror attacks that reach into the heart of Europe to punish supposed apostates and blasphemers. Converts from Islam or those who dare to depict the prophet Muhammad in art are pursued by lone fanatics or armed death squads.
Against this backdrop of ethno-religious cleansing and theocratic terror, ancient Christian communities in the Middle East have dwindled to ever smaller and more embattled enclaves in the land where Christianity began, and where they had lived in peace and friendship with Muslim neighbours for generations.
In Israel, there have been a series of ever more disturbing reports of Christians threatened, harassed and persecuted by extreme Zionists. Not only Palestinian Christians, but other Christian communities in the Holy Land are targeted. The most recent story involved Israeli men stopping the car of two Armenians in Jerusalem, shouting, “You don’t have a neighbourhood here. This is our country, get out of our country”, then proceeding to pepper spray them. An hour later extremists climbed the roof of the Armenian patriarchate in Jerusalem in an attempt to remove the Armenian flag.
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