The Evangelical movement’s center has shifted

The question of who qualifies as an Evangelical and how many Evangelicals exist worldwide continues to puzzle scholars, church leaders and mission researchers alike.

That was the central theme of a Sept. 2 webinar hosted by the World Evangelical Alliance and released publicly Sept. 5, featuring two leading voices in global religious demography.

Dr. Gina A. Zurlo, editor of the World Christian Database and a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, and Jason Mandryk, longtime editor of Operation World, outlined both the difficulties and the necessity of measuring a movement that is increasingly diverse and shifting rapidly toward the Global South.

Both experts agreed that unlike Catholicism, Orthodoxy or even Pentecostalism, evangelicalism has no universally agreed-upon definition. This makes the task of counting adherents unusually complex. Yet, they stressed, reliable figures are crucial for understanding how Christianity is changing worldwide.

Mandryk opened with a blunt assessment: “There is no such thing as the Evangelical.”

The word, he said, carries multiple meanings depending on context. Within churches, it may indicate theological commitments to the authority of Scripture, personal conversion and evangelistic activism. In secular contexts, particularly in Western media and politics, it is often used pejoratively — conjuring images of anti-science attitudes, stubbornness or partisan identity.

“Virtually nobody is using it exactly the same way,” Mandryk said. “And most people aren’t bothering to try to understand how others are using it.”

Zurlo echoed the problem, noting that while “you know what a Catholic is, or a Presbyterian, or a Pentecostal,” the term Evangelical remains “squishy.” For her, this ambiguity is not necessarily a weakness but a sociological reality that demands more descriptive approaches rather than rigid definitions.

Why numbers matter

Both speakers emphasized that counting Evangelicals is not about making eternal judgments on salvation. “We are not God,” Zurlo said. Instead, the aim is to track demographic shifts that profoundly influence the shape of global Christianity.

“Christianity and evangelicalism look fundamentally different than they did a generation ago,” she said. “And each generation it changes — especially with the shift of Christianity to the Global South.”

Mandryk added that evangelicalism has been among the most significant forces shaping Christianity in the modern era — for good and for ill. Its global reach has unified Christians in mission and prayer, but also divided them through disputes over doctrine, politics and culture. Quantifying the movement, he said, is one way to understand its impact.

Operation World’s method: the Bebbington Quadrilateral

For Operation World, the starting point is historian David Bebbington’s influential description of evangelicalism, often referred to as the Bebbington Quadrilateral. This framework highlights four central traits.

The first is biblicism, a conviction that the Bible holds supreme authority in matters of faith and practice. The second is crucicentrism, a focus on the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross as the heart of the gospel message. The third is conversionism, the belief that every individual must personally experience new birth and transformation through faith in Christ. Finally, the fourth is activism, which stresses that genuine faith should be lived out in action, particularly through evangelism and engagement in social causes.

Mandryk said his team applies these criteria to denominations in every country, examining statements of faith, practices and affiliations. They also consult national leaders and researchers to ensure local realities are reflected.

This approach yields an estimate of more than 700 million Evangelicals worldwide. Importantly, it acknowledges overlap with Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, which in some contexts are virtually indistinguishable from evangelicalism and in others only partially aligned.

World Christian Database’s threefold model

Zurlo presented a different framework, developed over nearly two decades of research. Rather than lean on theological definitions, the World Christian Database applies social-scientific categories to what she calls “wider evangelicalism.” This model has three layers:

Type 1: Denominational affiliation — Churches formally affiliated with Evangelical councils or organizations, yielding about 393 million adherents. Already, nearly half are in Africa.

Type 2: Pentecostals and charismatics — Added to Type 1, this expands the total to 635 million. Scholars broadly agree that Pentecostals share Evangelical emphases on personal piety, conversion and Scripture, even if they differ on certain doctrines.

Type 3: Majority world Protestants — Encompassing mainline Protestants in the Global South, black Protestant churches in the U.S., and movements like Chinese house churches that cannot affiliate formally but display Evangelical traits. This adds 302 million.

Taken together, these three categories produce a striking figure: 937 million Evangelicals worldwide — nearly one in eight people on the planet.

The challenge of contested boundaries

Zurlo illustrated how contested the category can be with examples from around the world.

In Brazil, she noted, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God is one of the largest neo-Pentecostal movements, claiming millions of members across more than 200 countries. It emphasizes salvation, piety and Scripture but is also associated with prosperity teaching and controversial financial practices. When Zurlo and her colleagues asked Brazilian pastors how Evangelical the Church was, answers ranged from 0% to 100%.

Similarly, African-American Protestant churches in the U.S. often align closely with Evangelical belief and practice but avoid the label due to its political and racial connotations. And in China, where both registered and underground churches cannot formally join Evangelical alliances, scholars estimate that anywhere from 50% to nearly 100% of congregations could reasonably be described as Evangelical.

“Who gets to decide?” Zurlo asked. For her, such examples highlight the need to move away from strict definitions and toward “family resemblances” that describe overlapping traits across diverse contexts.

Converging conclusions despite different methods

While Operation World and the World Christian Database use different approaches, both lead to the same overarching conclusion: evangelicalism is no longer centered in the West.

Mandryk noted that by around 1980, Evangelicals had already become a Global South majority. Today, 70% of the world’s population has been born into a reality where evangelicalism is primarily African, Asian and Latin American.

“The stereotypes that dominate headlines — white, Western, English-speaking, politically conservative — are not what evangelicalism looks like globally,” he said. “Evangelicals are Zulu, Chinese, Brazilian, Filipino. And that diversity is something to celebrate.”

Zurlo’s figures underscore the same point. In her widest definition, 47% of Evangelicals are in Africa, 26% in Asia and only 11% in North America. The country with the largest Evangelical population, she said, is no longer the United States but China.

For both scholars, the demographic transition calls for humility and attentiveness. Western Christians, long accustomed to defining the contours of Evangelical identity, must now recognize that the demographic majority lies elsewhere.

“It’s not people who look like me who should be defining the identity markers of Evangelical belief and practice,” Zurlo said. “It’s Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, and islanders who now represent the demographic center of the movement.”

Mandryk echoed this perspective, emphasizing that the Evangelical movement’s diversity mirrors the diversity of the global Church itself. “The body of Christ is incredibly diverse,” he said. “Evangelicalism is equally diverse in geography, theology and practice. That is something to embrace.”

Between 393 million and 937 million

So, how many evangelicals are there? The answer, according to Zurlo, falls somewhere between 393 million and 937 million, depending on how the term is defined. That wide range may be unsatisfying, she admitted, but it reflects the reality of a movement that defies neat categorization.

For Mandryk, the exact figure is less important than what the diversity represents. “All of these numbers are just attempts by researchers to describe what God is actually doing on the ground,” he said.

Both agreed that evangelicalism should be understood less as a bounded category and more as a dynamic global family, united by shared resemblances rather than rigid definitions.

“Global evangelicalism is more diverse than you think,” Zurlo concluded. “And yet we can all find our place in it. That’s its strength, not its weakness.”

This article was originally published by Christian Daily International.