Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl01008)

According to Richtay@aol.com:
>
> Paul,
>
> I also want to compare your figures. Where are yours from? From the World
> Almanac, 1994, the figures for Protestants is 400 million. For Catholics,
> 650 million, and 300 million Orthodox. That makes 1.35 billion. And those
> are Christians by birth, not by "confession."

My 1994 World Almanac, p. 727, gives 1,025,585,000 Roman
Catholics, 170,422,000 Orthodox, 373,698,000 Protestants,
74,883,400 Anglicans, and 188,433,600 other Christians,
yielding a total of 1,833,022,000.
Muslims= 971,378,700

So when I said "almost 3 billion" that was give or take a
hundred million or two.
>
> I don't think we can count Muslims as people who in general think much abot
> Jesus, the tradition honors him mostly as a figure in history, the way
> Christians honor Ezekiel. Does that make Jesus in any way central? No.

Some Muslims expect Christ to return to usher in the Last
Judgment-- not Muhammad. That's pretty central, but in other
ways I'll concede your point. OTOH there are plenty of Hindus
who accept Jesus in their own way.
>
> So out of 5.6 billion people, we can count 1.35 billion as Christian. It is
> also very interesting to me that after 300 years of missionary activity, 2%
> of India is Christian, 1% of Japan, and ZIP among Tibetans. I wonder why so
> little luck?
As compared to Africans, with vast numbers of conversions? I'd
say that a deeply-rooted literate culture is much more
resistant to evangelism.

PJ