10/40 Window

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The 10/40 Window is a term popularized by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush in 1990 to refer those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, an area having a lower percentage of Christians and a higher percentage of socioeconomic problems than Europe or the Americas. The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia (Pakistan, India), and East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan, etc.). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lives in the 10/40 Window. The term was coined by Bush to refer to a region of the world with great human suffering and the least exposure to Christianity, thus providing a window of opportunity for Christian evangelism. The 10/40 Window is populated by people who are predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, animist, Jewish or atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are formally or informally opposed to Christian proselyzation within their borders. The 10/40 Window concept is intended to highlight this lack of Christian influence, together with several other socioeconomic factors.

1 Controversy
2 Gaining widespread use
3 Analysis
- 3.1 Non-Christians in the 10/40 Window by Religion
- 3.2 Nations in the 10/40 Window
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Controversy

Some have objected to such a broad-brush term which seems to imply a unifying characteristic of the Window when in fact there are few cultural or geographic attributes common to the nations in this band. The Window does roughly bound a region where Christianity is less common than the rest of the world, but even as a map of non-Christian nations in the Eastern hemisphere it has many anomalous cases. For example, the Window includes South Korea, the Philippines and Italy, all strong Christian nations, while it fails to encompass Indonesia, Sri Lanka or Russia, all nations with large non-Christian populations. Likewise, the economic backwardness that is ascribed to countries in the Window seems inappropriate when applied to countries like Japan, which boasts the world's second largest economy.

[edit] Gaining widespread use

Over the years, the term 10/40 Window has evolved from a specialist term used by Christian missiologists to assumed vocabulary for Christians in the West [1](2001), [2](2002), [3](2003) [4](2004), [5](2006).

The 10/40 Window is emerging as a term in the secular press; [6] it can also be found in press style glossaries [7]. Non-western writers and organizations also refer to the 10/40 Window [8] [9] [10]

Those opposed to the idea of evangelism also make use of the term. [11], [12][13]

[edit] Analysis

The original 1990 GIS 10/40 Window analysis produced several insights[14], among them showing that the nations of the 10/40 Window represent

over 80% of the poorest of the world's poor (per capita GDP less than US$500 per year),
over 80% of those with lowest quality of life (life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy),
under 7% of global Christian resource investment (far less than any other region),
the hub of the world's major non-Christian religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc),
close to 100% of those who are both most-poor and have least-access to Christian resources (two-dimensional analysis)

The GIS analysis utilized country-level data from the Operation World almanac, the World Christian Encyclopedia, and the World Factbook