A rebel is one who breaks with tradition or with some widely accepted organisation or set of ideas. In neither case does Jensen seem in the Che Guevara class.

Take, for example, the origin of the current crisis, the consecration in the United States of an openly gay man as a bishop. Most Australians would know this is a break with Anglican tradition. But many seem to believe it represents some sort of mainstream opinion within contemporary Anglicanism. This is not so.

The key failing in the way many of us think about Christianity today is that we wear Western blinkers and ignore the rest of the world, where the majority of Christians live. The main churches are global organisations and have been so for hundreds of years.

The current crisis within Western Anglicanism looks different if considered within this broader context.

In 1998 at the Lambeth Conference of the global Anglican communion, 736 bishops were presented with a liberal statement on homosexuality. But more than half those bishops came from Africa and Asia. Not only did they reject the statement, they went on to pass another statement about the evils of homosexuality and the impossibility of reconciling homosexual conduct with Christian ministry. Many Westerners were appalled.

That account comes from the book The Next Christendom, by the US academic Philip Jenkins. It's a fascinating description of how demographic change is altering Christianity, mainly by shoring up traditional beliefs.

There are about 2 billion Christians, one-third of the world's population. The main groupings are: Europe 560 million; South America 480 million; Africa 360 million; Asia 313 million; and North America 260 million. The West is already the minority. Jenkins says by 2050 only one-fifth of the world's 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites.

He notes that history shows the content of religion is affected by such shifts in demographic and geographical emphasis. So what changes might the de-Europeanising of Christianity create?

"The most immediately apparent difference ... is that southern Christians are far more conservative in terms of both belief and moral teaching. The denominations that are triumphing all across the global south are stalwartly traditional or even reactionary by the standards of the economically advanced nations. The churches that have made the most dramatic progress ... have either been Roman Catholic, of a traditional and fideistic kind, or radical Protestant sects, evangelical or Pentecostal."

Social attitudes in the Third World support traditional Christianity, perhaps because they resemble the West as it was in the days when Christianity was developing, rather than the post-Enlightenment West of today. Women should maintain traditional roles. Abortion is banned in most African countries. Homosexuality is wrong.

Jenkins points to one of the curiosities of attacks on biblical authority, which is that "much of the liberal dissidence within Catholicism stems not from the laity but from clergy themselves, and from Catholic universities and teaching institutions. Both priests and institutions are much more likely to be located in the north than the south." In terms of the ratio of priests to their congregations, the north is four times better supplied than the south.

One example is the Dutch church, home to prominent critics of the Vatican since the 1960s. Yet despite all its radical theologians, The Netherlands has only half as many Catholics as the Phillippines. There will be an African pope before a Dutch one.

Another Sydney church leader in the mainstream of religious globalisation is Cardinal George Pell. This week he said: "Undoubtedly the most basic tension in all Christian denominations today is between Bible Christians and liberals who want to conform basic Christian teachings to contemporary and usually secular understandings ... I regret the turmoil within the Anglican communion. Naturally I support the Bible Christians. Unfortunately, Anglican authority structures are not well suited to dealing with profound theological crises."

There's no doubt churches in the West will continue to experience rocky times. Consider abortion. In the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, US law professor Jeffrey Rosen looks at recent appointments to the US Supreme Court and says there's a good chance it could overturn the Roe v Wade decision that effectively legalises abortion.

This decision was made 33 years ago, bypassing an enormous amount of debate and personal angst that would otherwise have occurred, within churches as well as everywhere else. Imagine what bringing this all out into the open could mean for the millions of Christians who have never really reconciled their own abortions with the teachings of their churches.

But even a controversy on that scale would not affect the fact that the present and the future of Christianity lie largely beyond our shores. Some Christian liberals have talked of leaving the mainstream churches and starting a second Reformation. But it would die out quickly. In general, Christianity is in rude health and booming. It's just not very white anymore.

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