While every day in the West, roughly 7500 people in effect
stop being Christians every day in Africa roughly double that
number become Christians.
The espasion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has
been so dramatic that it has been called ’the fourth great age of
Christian expansion.’
According to much-quoted, statistics, there were 10 million
Mrican Christians in 1900, 143 million in 1970, and there will be
393 million in the year 2010, which would mean that 1 in 5 of
all Christians would be an Mrican. There are other estimates and
the range of variation reflects the ambiguity and incompleteness of
the raw data on which they are based. Much depends on how one
defines a Christian, and Africa is full of small，independent churches
that have never filed a statistical return.
Kenya has the largest Yearly Meeting of Quakers in the

world, outside the United States, and more Anglicans attend church
in Ugand than in England.
It is clear that, in the words of one thoughtful scholar,
perhaps one of the two or three most important events in the
whole of Church history has occurred ... a complete change in the
center of gravity of Christanity， so that the heartlands of the
Church are no longer in Europe, decreasingly in North America,
but in Latin America, in certain parts of Asia, and ... in Africa.
Since 1970s to an ever-increasing extent, African intellectuals
are reconstructing the text of Christianity’s encounters with African
cultures.

• 유부웅(한신대학교 /교수) | Yoo, Boo-woong