Plus, it's not the best moment to make this point considering that Mohamed is probably going overtake Jesus on the race in the next decade. I know, conversions are cooler than births, but the reality is the same (also conversions in LATAM are just raiding the Catholics for followers).
For me, following Jesus has nothing to do with market share or population stats. If every chart in the world dropped tomorrow, He’d still be who He is. Faith isn’t about the numbers (Christianity has waxed and waned for centuries). It’s about the truth of one life, one death, and one resurrection that keeps changing hearts in every century.
The Church has made mistakes in how it presents Him, but the reality behind it, the Person Himself, doesn’t need a salesman. He just keeps finding people, quietly, the way He always has.
PS - Conversions in Latin America were deeply shaped by how God met people in their own culture and symbols. Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico and Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil are perfect examples. Moments when faith didn’t arrive through conquest like most believe, but through divine encounter.
>Moments when faith didn’t arrive through conquest like most believe, but through divine encounter.
You imply that syncretism rather than conquest was the reason LATAM became catholic, but just an hour before you said:
>You’re absolutely right that many nations were converted by force or politics. History is full of that tension. The message of Christ abused in ways completely opposite to what He taught in the Scripture.
>What’s always struck me, though, is how the faith survived despite those abuses. Every empire that tried to use Christianity as a weapon eventually crumbled, but the core message kept resurfacing through people who lived it voluntarily. Saints, reformers, monks, ordinary believers who loved instead of coerced.
So after all it was conquest, but the divine message resurfaced despite the abuses. It all sounds very Groucho Marx "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others".
Where I'm from, they're still celebrating the "national baptism" event where the ruler basically forced the entire (allegedly) population of his capital into the river for mass baptism by Greek priests invited for the occasion.
What’s always struck me, though, is how the faith survived despite those abuses. Every empire that tried to use Christianity as a weapon eventually crumbled, but the core message kept resurfacing through people who lived it voluntarily. Saints, reformers, monks, ordinary believers who loved instead of coerced.
Christianity spreads most truthfully through witness, not power. The fact that so many who first met it under pressure later kept it freely says something deeper is at work than politics or force.