China (MNN) — The Pew Research Center has revised how it measures China’s religious landscape. Based on this standardized approach, it reports that China is no longer on the world’s top 10 list for largest Christian populations.
Kurt Rovenstine with Bibles for China said the report is sobering but no reason for Christians to slow down.
“I’m not here to debate the data or even to analyze it as much as to say how easy it is to get caught up in what we feel and what we hope, rather than what may actually be the reality,” he says.
The new report is a shift away from the narrative circulated in the 2010s. The story then was that China would soon be the nation with the most Christians in the world. With Pew’s adjusted data, it estimates that in 2010 China’s Christian population was 2.3 percent. Its original 2012 report put China’s 2010 Christian population at 5.1 percent (or 70.9 million).
To learn more about Pew’s revised approach, read pages 120-22 of its report How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020.
(Photo courtesy Bibles For China)
Discipleship needed
Rovenstine says he’s reminded that life is challenging and ministry is hard. “There may be a re-analysis of the re-analysis moving forward, but we have to keep doing the work.”
Gospel ministry in China is still a mix of growth and challenge, such as reaching young people.
“When we go to rural China, we see a lot of older Christians. The younger Christians are a little harder to find,” Rovenstine says. “That informs us a little bit as to [deciding] ‘Where do we work? Who do we partner with?’ so that we can maybe help reach another generation.”
Since it is illegal in China to evangelize children, Bibles for China is limited in what it can do. But among the Chinese diaspora, they distribute a special storybook Bible for kids. Learn more about that in this 2024 report.
In the meantime, pray for the gospel to advance in China!
“That definitely is a prayer for the Christians in China: ‘How can we creatively reach [the] next generation when that’s technically, in many ways, illegal?’” Rovenstine says.
Header photo: Bibles for China provides people in rural China access to the Bible. (Image courtesy of DEZALB via Pixabay.)
