Another Copemican Revolution!
This is a review article o f the book, The Next Christendom (Oxford University Press, 2007) by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor o f History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University; pp 316; $ 14.95. The volume is a revised and expanded edition o f his earlier book published in 2002. Maps o f the various continents and a dozen lists o f tables help to suitably illustrate the content o f the book. Every assertion o f the author is copiously documented. He uses the term "Christendom", not in a political sense, but in a neutral, supranational sense. The book takes up a well known theme, first popularized by Walbert Buhlmann in his book The Coming o f the Third Church (St. Paul Publications, 1976), which I reviewed in Vidyajyoti, 1990, pp 295-299. In that book Buhlmann startled the Christian world when he pieced together, as in a jigsaw puzzle, a mass o f scattered data on the Christian churches. The resultant picture was astonishing: a "Third Church" was at hand ! The "First Church", in time, is the Eastern (Oriental) Church; the Second is the Western Church. The Third Church is part o f the new nations, now entering as a new factor into the history o f the Church. The Third Church contains what Buhlmann calls the "surprise packets" of the near future. A decade later, Omer Degrijse surveyed further data in his book , Going Forth, Missionary Consciousness in Third World Catholic Churches (Orbis, 1984). This only served to confirm the continued development o f the trends described by Buhlmann.
