How did Christianity shift from a European religion to one centred in the Global South?

Over the twentieth century, according to historians. A number of historians have noted a twentieth-century "global shift" in Christianity, from a religion largely found in Europe and the Americas to one found in the Global South. In 2020, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center study, Christians numbered 2.3 billion, 28.8% of the world's population, making Christianity the largest global religion.

Africa shows the scale. As of 2024 there are an estimated 734 million Christians from all denominations there, up from about 10 million in 1900. But it is not one story. Christianity arrived in Africa in the 1st century AD, and the Ethiopian church was not Christianised through European missionaries: it was highly independent and itself spread missionaries through much of sub-Saharan Africa before the contact of European Christians. In the late 15th century, Portuguese traders and missionaries arrived in West Africa and later the Kingdom of Kongo, where they converted prominent local leaders.

The twentieth century added a new chapter. The 1918 influenza pandemic accelerated the Africanization of Christianity: European governments, churches and medicine were powerless against it, boosting growth of independent and prophetic mass movements. The Aladura movement in Nigeria began in step with the pandemic. Much of Africa's recent Christian growth is due to indigenous African missionary work and evangelism and high birth rates, rather than European missionaries.

Elsewhere the shift is visible too. The largest share of Pentecostals is in Sub-Saharan Africa (44 percent), followed by the Americas (37 percent) and Asia and the Pacific (16 percent). In Europe there has been a general move away from religious observance, and in the 21st century Christianity lost its majority in the United Kingdom, Australia and France. When Pope Francis succeeded Benedict, he became the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere.