"God's Continent"

Philip Jenkins talks about his forthcoming book on "Christianity, Islam & Europe's Religious Crisis) here. (Curtsy: Insight Scoop.) In sum, he thinks the next 15 years will be rough, but long-term things look bright. Christianity's not as weak in Europe as people think; Muslims are more prone to assimilation than we think; and radical Islamists aren't procreating as fast as we think (Iran's birthrate is below replacement rate, too, e.g.). Worth reading on many points, especially because he's re-assessed some of his earlier civilizational distress, but I thought this was interesting --on how Africans & Asians read the Bible differently than we do:

because they are coming at it with fresh eyes, when they read the Bible, they read of a society that makes more sense to them. For example, if you're debating the subject of homosexuality, then it's very tough in North America to cite something from Leviticus because Leviticus is obviously written for such an alien world, and it invites so many comebacks, such as: "So you believe the skin of the pig is unclean? Football's out."
In Africa, the main problem is not getting people to take the Old Testament seriously, it's getting them to realize that the New Testament takes precedence. In so many ways the Old Testament describes a world which is familiar. It might not be the world they're living in, but they know about worlds nearby where there is no medicine, polygamy, paganism, blood sacrifice. That means that a lot of the debates in the Bible, about the proper role of sacrifice, ancestors, and so on, are immediately present debates.