World Atheism in Retreat

I recently browsed through two books recently: David Martin's Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America and David Aikman's Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power.

The facts are both amazing and counter-intuitive. A few decades ago, for example, there were hardly any evangelical Christians in Brazil. Now there are 50 million. In 1950, Brazil had 50 million Catholics. Now it has 120 million Catholics. According to Aikman, in a few decades, China will become the largest Christian country in the world. Currently, an estimated 100 million Christians in China workship in underground evangelical and Catholic churches. In Korea, there are numerous mega-churches with more than 10,000 members and is the world's second largest source of Christian missionaries, with 12,000 preaching the faith abroad. The Catholic church in the Philippines reports 60 million members and is projected to have 120 million by mid-century.

Atheism is still strong in Cuba, but with today's news of Castro's resignation, even that may change within a generation.

Men and women of faith are on the march all over the world.