The World Is Not What We Think

China is poised to become the “most Christian nation” in the world:

Prof Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

Muslim women get more dignity in Middle Eastern mosques than U.S. mosques:

As someone who has had the privilege of exploring mosques in many different places, I have to say that North American mosques are—with a few notable exceptions—among the worst I have seen in terms of the access and dignity afforded to women. The best? Iranian mosques. By a long mile. The world is never as black and white as it seems.

(That comment by G. Willow Wilson was also repeated at the Festival of Faith and Writing, where she gave an interesting rationale:  the difference in how a religion acts when it’s in the minority vs. in the majority.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *