Global Talk

For over 1,000 years the Western hemisphere has been the heartland of the Christian faith. For example, when William Carey, the humble cobbler who would later be called the father of the modern missionary movement, arrived in India in 1793 to preach the gospel, ninety-five percent of the world’s Christians lived in the Western world. Even one hundred years later, at the dawn of the 20th century, nearly ninety percent of all Christians still lived in the Western world. 1 Is it any surprise that 19th century Africans often referred to Christianity as the “white man’s religion”? After all, most Africans had never met a non-white Christian in their entire lives. For much of the world, Christianity seemed inextricably bound up with the rise and fall of Western civilization.