In order for it to continue on it must modernize its beliefs. The average Christian is white, middle class and is from Europe or America. The religion of Islam is expanding quickly and will soon dominate Christianity. These are all common claims made about Christianity that many people believe, yet Philip Jenkins claims and proves them untrue in his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. .
According to his book, Christianity is moving out of the global north and into the global south. In fact, Christianity is growing rapidly in countries such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He also writes about how Africa and Brazil will, within the next fifty years, replace Europe as the center of Christianity. Both of these countries have been heavily missionized within that past hundred years, and the number of Christians in each has raised millions. The expansion growth in these countries is due primarily to their high reproduction rates and their hunger for the Christian beliefs that the missionaries brought with them. Jenkins says in this book that the missionaries faced no problems trying to explain about a higher deity or other "bafflingly alien world views" to the Africans, because it followed closely with many of their own tribal beliefs. Many of the tribes worshiped one higher power already and also found that many of the Christian beliefs fell in sync with their own heritage and customs. They did though, encounter one problem: the beliefs fell so in sync with their tribal traditions, that eventually the African culture started to incorporate their customs such as exorcism, dream visions, prophesy, healing, and mysticism into their Christian churches, creating an entire sub group of Christianity. These sub groups are closely related to the more Pentecostal churches, but are far from the ritualistic practices of the Anglicans and Catholics that primarily missionized them.
