Close on 2,200 evangelical Christian leaders were surveyed by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life at the Lausanne Conference in Cape Town last year.
The results were released this week with some interesting findings.
Approximately half of the globe’s evangelical Protestant leaders are optimistic about the future, confident that Christians have an increasing influence in their countries and that things will be better for them in five years.
The other half are pessimists, and of the opinion they are losing influence within their countries and most are not convinced that things will be better for Christianity where they live in the future.
This split on optimism is between the northern and southern hemispheres and interestingly enough, it is the more impoverished south who see a brighter future. This includes Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Leaders from the United States proved to be the most pessimistic of all, with 80% saying that Christianity is losing influence in their country.
Other interesting results from the survey include:
- Only 3% of evangelical Christian leaders believe in evolution as defined by scientists, with 40% saying evolution was guided by God, while around 50% believe God created the planet and life on it as it is now.
- A clear majority saw abortion as usually or always morally wrong, with a similar number saying the same thing about homosexuality.
- Half of those surveyed believe the Bible should be read literally, while the other half said not everything in it should be taken literally.