Belatedly I have just read a report issued in June 2011 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an organization that has been producing interesting survey data about worldwide religion with astounding frequency. This one is titled “Evangelical Protestant Leaders”. It contains the results of a survey of Evangelical leaders from all over the world who gathered in Cape Town in October 2010 at the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization. The first such gathering occurred in 1974 in Lausanne (Switzerland), convened by none other than Billy Graham. It issued a document called the Lausanne Covenant, a lengthy and feisty statement of core Evangelical beliefs. The original impetus has continued in something (what else?) called the Lausanne Movement, which has its headquarters in the US. In case you wondered, the Second Congress took place in Manila in 1989. (Who said that Evangelicals are averse to globe-trotting?)
A total of about 4,500 delegates attended the Cape Town event—43% from the so-called Global North (aka as Europe, North America, and some outliers like Australia) and 57% from the so-called Global South (aka as everyone else—in Latin America, Africa and Asia). The survey questionnaire was distributed to all delegates in nine languages (including English); 50% completed the survey (which indicates very strong interest). The report is, by its very nature, chock full of statistics. I don’t know about readers of my blog, but my eyes tend to glaze over when presented with mountains of figures. (I like to say that every time arithmetic was being taught in my elementary school in Vienna, I had the measles—like four times a week. I have had the measles ever since.) Sometimes, though, slogging through such statistics is very instructive. It is in this case.
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