MMRC: Proliferation of tribal religionists

Proliferation of tribal religionists
by David B. Barrett

The most startling new figure published in this year's Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission (International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January 1998, p. 26-27) refers to this decade's volcanic eruption of tribal religionists almost everywhere across the developing world.

In 1910 the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh quoted as the universal opinion of missionaries and theologians of that day on the subject of tribal religions: "Most of these peoples will have lost their ancient faiths within a generation, and will accept that culture-religion with which they first come into contact." Our annual report up to last year recorded how wrong that prognosis has provided and showed tribal religions (animists, polytheists, shamanists) maintaining their total of 100 million throughout the entire 20th century. This year comes a startling new discovery: analysis of these new censuses results in a global total of 244 million tribal religionists today, located among 5,600 distinct ethnic peoples.

The explanation for this phenomenal new megatrend is simple. It is now one generation since the majority of the former colonies of European countries won their independence. It is also nearly one decade after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. What has now happened in country after country and state after state is that millions of peoples who were previously classified as adherents of their countries' majority religions or antireligions--chiefly Hinduism and Islam, as well as Marxist atheism--have thrown off these labels and are asserting that instead they are followers of their own traditional local religions. Bearing in mind that the United Nations' 1946 Declaration of Human Rights states that every person's religion is precisely what he or she states it is, and that no one else has the right to deny this assertion, we must respect this new development.

It thus appears that in the last decade the total number of local tribal religionists in the world has risen to 240% of what it was in AD 1900. Missiologists, mission leaders, and missionaries must now ask, "What is the significance of this massive religious shift?"

Some readers may see this as a new and formidable anti-Christian force arising just at the moment when they were savoring the collapse of Communist state atheism. Others, however, will see immediately that in actual fact, far from being a threat, this is actually a highly significant opportunity for global Christianity and its world mission. As former Hindus or Muslims, the ethnic peoples involved were difficult or even impossible to reach and evangelize. The history of missions has long demonstrated that local religions, whether animists or fetishists or pagans or shamanists, have always been far more responsive to the Gospel than the resistant great world religions.

This means that in this huge bloc of tribal religionists, Christ's world mission now has one of its greatest opportunities. Mission agencies that launch into this new arena and invest personnel and energy sharing the Good News with any of the 5,600 peoples involved will find an open door. But let us be warned: this new door may itself remain open for only the next five or ten years.