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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (March 23, 2022)
March 23, 2022 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 9 News Why the Future of the World’s Largest Religion is Female – and African influence, their leader- ship or their service. Nor Nigerian women greet each other at St. Charles Catholic Church in Ngurore, Nigeria, on Feb. 17, 2019. AP Photo/Sunday Alamba By Gina Zurlo, Co-Direc- tor of the Center for the Study of Global Christi- anity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary via The Conversation A t the start of 2019, Bill and Melinda Gates released a list of facts that had surprised them the previous year. Number four on their list: “Data can be sexist.” “There are huge gaps in the global data about women and girls,” they explained. My interest was piqued – not only as a demogra- pher, but as a woman and mother of girls. I research women in global Christianity and am frequently asked what percentage of the religion is female. The short answer is 52%. But the long answer is more complicated – women make up a much more substantial part of Chris- tianity than that number makes it seem. The goal of my research is to put the spotlight on Christian women’s con- tributions to church and society and fill in gaps in our data. Headlines about religion may be fo- cused on the words and actions of Western male leaders, but the reality of the worldwide church is quite different. More and more Christians live out- side Europe and North America, especially in Africa – and women are central to that story. Measuring faith Social scientists have shown for decades that women are more reli- gious than men by a va- riety of measures – ev- erything from frequency of private prayer to wor- ship service attendance. Christianity, the world’s largest religion, is no ex- ception. Data from the Pew Research Center show that, compared to Christian men, Chris- tian women are more likely to attend weekly church services (53% ver- sus 46%), pray daily (61% versus 51%), and say reli- gion is important in their lives (68% versus 61%). It’s not a new trend. In the Gospels, women were the last at the foot of Jesus’s cross, the first at his tomb. Research has shown they were critical to the growth of the early church, being more like- ly to convert to Christi- anity than men, and most of the early Christian communities were ma- jority female. Through- out history, women were exemplars of the faith as mystics and martyrs, royal women convert- ing their husbands and supporting convents, and founders of denom- inations and churches that are now all over the world. Women make up the majority of Chris- tians today. What researchers don’t have is comprehensive data on women’s activ- ities in churches, their are there comprehensive analyses of Christians’ attitudes around the See RELIGION on page 10
