Urbanisation hasn’t undermined importance of religion, says UN report

10 July, 2007:

The popular notion that increased urbanisation around the world would lead to a more “irreligious” state has been rejected by a recent study by the United Nations Population Fund. In fact, what is happening may be just the opposite.

According to the report, “rapid urbanisation was expected to mean the triumph of rationality, secular values, and the demystification of the world as well as the relegation of religion to a secondary role. Instead, there has been a renewal in religious interest in many countries.”

George Martine, a demographer and chief author of the United Nations Population Fund’s report, said the renewed religious fervour has been spurred by the increasing waves of immigrants flooding major cities.

It is a noticeable fact, says George Martine, that people in cities nowadays tend to find in religion a new form of belonging. He cites the immigrant experience in European cities as an example.

Urbanisation is particularly intense in the Third World, which also has the fastest-growing segment of Christianity.

However, many differ with the findings of the United Nations Population Fund’s report.

Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, the United States, says cities serve more as connecting points than origins.

According to Johnson, the revivals tend to be rural and in smaller cities, but the way in which these revivals are connecting with the rest of the world is through the global cities.

Johnson objects to the UN report’s use of the term “resurgence,” which he termed as a “sound byte” to describe what he calls “a more nuanced issue.”

The term “resurgence” is a way for secular people to talk about the rest of the world, Todd Johnson says. He adds: “Many reports that came out in 1960s and 1970s had argued that religion was not going to exist in the year 2000. And, that is the resurgence that everyone is talking about.”

However, he pointed to one part of the world – Eastern Europe – where the description of “resurgence” is appropriate.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, Todd Johnson admits, has caused a true resurgence of religion – there are many more Christians, Muslims and other religionists in Eastern Europe as a result of the fall of communism, and many more non-religionists and atheists in China, where communism still exists.