Both Barrett and Johnson call themselves Charismatic, part of the Holy Spirit movement in old-line denominations, and their estimate that the related Pentecostal and Charismatic movements encompass 524 million believers will be one of their work's more controversial statistics. No one else has attempted such an estimate. The encyclopedia is interested in material as well as spiritual needs. Barrett and Johnson arrived at this estimate by collecting news clippings and questioning experts in church finance. As the encyclopedia documents, Christianity's population center is inexorably shifting.
Growth is in the Southern Hemisphere especially, notably in Africa.
Johnson, who may succeed Barrett as the world's top soul-counter one day, looks ahead. He sees that Christianity started out the past century 81 percent white and ended at 45 percent. And he knows that's not going to stop. Christianity is steadily moving from this Caucasian, European-dominated, modern way of life, even beyond Christianity as an institution,'' he says. Pages on this site may not be copied or framed.