Smoke, mirrors and incandescence: introduction

The light of the star guided the Persian astrologers. The light of men was born in Israel; “I am the light of the world,” declared the bright Morning Star. “You are the light of the world,” said the Son.


At Christmas we celebrate the arrival of “God-with-us.” Immanuel's best friend wrote in his memoirs about Him, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

Could this somehow supply a clue as to why only 0.4% of all Spaniards are evangelical compared to a whopping 35% of all Americans ?! (Whether these people are born again is another issue, but by definition evangelicals consider their ranks to be individuals who have received spiritual life by God’s unmerited favor through trust in Christ’s salvific work. And there are of course regenerate people who are not evangelical.) These percentages mean that:

...if one randomly selected 300 Americans to receive free tickets to the Super Bowl, 105 of them would claim to be evangelical.

...if one randomly selected 300 Spaniards to receive free tickets to the World Cup final, there would be 1, that’s right just ONE, very lonely Spanish evangelical !


Now, the apostle John went on to write, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” In light of the above reliable Joshua Project statistics, a syllogism could go like this: Americans love good and therefore receive the light, while Spaniards love evil and therefore remain in darkness. Hm-m-m, I think I just heard the tearing of cloth as David and Paul rent their garments in unison (Psalm 14:1-3; Romans 3:10-12).

So how then might one explain such numbers, an enthusiastic response in one part of the West — U.S. Americans = 35% evangelical, and lack thereof in another, Western Europe — English = 8.5% evangelical, Portuguese = 3.1%, Germans = 2.9%, French = 0.5%, Spanish = 0.4%, Czechs = 0.25% ?

This will be the first in a series of blog posts about missional dynamics in Europe entitled, “Smoke, mirrors and incandescence.” (Editor's note: Originally posted on January 5, 2006; I have updated the statistics for 2010.) We will explore differences between the N. American and European contexts salient to the spread of the gospel because there are reasons for why there is just 1 Spanish evangelical among 300, as compared to 105 Americans.

Three factors, relatively unimportant in the United States, that have forged the European ethos provide some enlightenment: 1) religious carnage that led to 2) atheistic philosophy, both of which were embodied in 3) high civilization. These three factors form a triple-thick, all-but-impervious full-body armor worn by a vast majority of Europeans.

So sometime within the next few weeks we’ll plunge into “RELIGIOUS SMOKE (part one): the Crusades.” (To prepare for this, all of you Orlando Bloom fans may want to re-watch the film “The Kingdom of Heaven.”)

But before signing off, a few observations. One thing is obvious, the sparse evangelical presence in Western European cannot be attributed to a lack of quality or faithfulness of the Christian workers serving among these people groups because these are statistics for ALL evangelical denominations.

A second observation, I believe we can readily understand that the one Spaniard would be confronted by a more daunting task, face different challenges and use different means to reach the other 299 ticket winners for Christ, than would the one-hundred-five Americans to reach the remaining 195 people. Equity would, therefore, dictate sending at least a handful of the 105 to help the lonely Spanish brother in need of reinforcements.