(August 31, 2023 at 10:19 pm)Lek Wrote: It's funny that in this country where we are free to worship, people are leaving the churches in droves. In China where they are persecuted and forced to worship underground the church is growing in
leaps and bounds. China is supposed to have the world's largest number of Christians by the year 2050. It seems that when religions are persecuted that is when they grow the most.
According to Pew Research there are 246 million Christians in the United States and 67 million Christians in China. Only a fraction of Chinese Christians, perhaps a third, are in "house churches" that would experience the growth stimulus of state persecution you claim (state-sanctioned churches would not experience such persecution, presumably). Also Christians make up about the same portion of the world’s population today (32%) as they did a century ago (35%) and China's population is now declining. Meanwhile, over the last century, the proportion of Americans who are Christian has only declined from 90% to 80%. Taken all together, I do not see how China can surpass the US in number of Christian adherents in only a little more than a quarter century.
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-conten...rt-web.pdf