Tuesday, December 09, 2008

What's So Great About Christianity?

Maybe I should start a category called "Books I Haven't Read Yet."

From the recently resurrected Anti-Itch Meditation, there is a pointer to this interview in Salvo Magazine with author Dinesh D'Souza. If, like me, you've heard that name on the TV news, but couldn't quite place him, it turns out he is a card-carrying renaissance man with multiple areas of high expertise. He has written a new book of Christian apologetics called "What's So Great About Christianity?," and has been spending the last year or so publicly debating noted atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. I have not yet read the book, but if this interview is any indication, it would seem he is likely handing them their secular humanist heads on a platter.

Here's one of the best, most surprising bits from the interview, in response to the widely held and oft reported assertion that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world:

"That's actually not true. Islam is indeed growing, but primarily through reproduction. Muslims have big families, which translates into an increase in their numbers. But Christianity is growing both by reproduction and by conversions. The rate of Christian conversions in places such as Africa and Asia is really startling. Even the U.S., which is in some respects more modern, affluent, and technological than any other nation in the world, has also remained perhaps the most religious country in the West."


and

"The truth is, however, that if you go to South America, you will find a huge number of conversions to Protestant Christianity. If you go to Korea, you will find Christian churches with 100,000 members. If you go to China, you will find 100 million Christians. And if you go to Africa, you'll find that countries whose populations were only five percent Christian 100 years ago are now 50 percent Christian. These trends have not gone unnoticed by historians, who are startled by them and have attempted to explain them away, and they are the empirical basis for my claim that God is doing very well in this world."


Interesting.

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