What has been driving this trend? "As I travel," says author and journalist Philip Yancey, "I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God 'moving' geographically from the Middle East, to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where He's wanted."

If Yancey's supposition is correct, it would explain a lot, because Christianity does seem to be waning in the West -- especially in Europe. In an article for The New York Times, writer Frank Bruni says that "Europe already seems more and more like a series of tourist-trod monuments to Christianity's past. Hardly a month goes by when [Pope John Paul II] does not publicly bemoan that fact, beseeching Europeans to rediscover their faith."

Rev. David Cornick, the general secretary of the United Reformed Church in Britain, says, "In Western Europe, we are hanging on by our fingernails. The fact is that Europe is no longer Christian."

Secularism deserves much of the blame, say some Christian leaders, including the pope, who has complained that the proposed constitution for the European Union completely omits any reference to God or the continent's Christian past.

One sign of the weakness of Christianity in Europe is church attendance. According to a major survey in the 1990s, the percentage of people attending church on an average Sunday in some European countries is a mere fraction of the total population: England (27%), West Germany (14%), Denmark (5%), Norway (5%), Sweden, (4%) and Finland (4%).

More than even secularism, however, Gene Edward Veith, culture critic for World magazine, says the problem is found in many of the churches themselves: "This decline is directly attributable to the theological liberalism of the once-powerful state churches."

Veith says that, where the more conservative Catholic Church holds sway, church attendance is far higher: Ireland (84%), Poland (55%), Portugal (47%), and Italy (45%).

"These are Catholic countries where the church has remained conservative," Veith says. "Catholic churches that have gone liberal -- in the United States, France, the Netherlands -- have the same low attendance rates as liberal Protestants."

In the Global South, however, Christianity is finding converts by the millions. According to researcher David Barrett, author of the well-respected World Christian Encyclopedia, Africa is gaining 8.4 million new Christians a year, and that number is a net total -- that is, new converts minus those who leave the faith.

South Korea is another example of a nation in which the growth of Christianity has been stunning. In 1920, Jenkins says, there were only about 300,000 believers in all of Korea. But today, in South Korea alone, there are 10 to 12 million Christians -- about 25% of the population.

"And it is not modernist, liberal Christianity that is sweeping through the Southern Hemisphere," says Veith, "but a Christianity in which the gospel is proclaimed, that believes God's Word, that refuses to conform to the world."

Christianity and Islam