The 10/40 Window is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist and Partners International CEO Luis Bush in 1990 to refer to those regions of the eastern hemisphere, plus the European and African part of the western hemisphere, located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges [1] [2] and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources [lower-alpha 1] [3] [4] on the planet.
The concept behind the 10/40 Window highlights these three elements (as of data available in 1990): an area of the world with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources and unreached non-Christians. The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lived in the 10/40 Window, and it is predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, animist, or atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are officially or unofficially opposed to Christian missionary work of any kind within their borders. [1] [3] [4]
This region of the world was previously known to Christians as the "resistant belt", as noted by Luis Bush at the 1989 Lausanne II Conference in Manila. [5] In 1990, Bush's research led to a meeting with Pete Holzmann, a leader of the team developing the first PC-based geographic information system (GIS) software. [6] [7] [8] They analyzed the region using a box between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude and called it the 10/40 box. A few weeks later, Bush and his wife Doris were inspired to rename it the 10/40 Window, stating that this region ought to be seen as a "window of opportunity". [6] The analysis and concept was a generalization that focuses on a region, not a sharp boundary defining what is a priority, and what is not. For this reason, many missiologists prefer to use the phrase 10/40 Window region.[ citation needed ]
Before being called the "resistant belt", the Islamic portions of this region, as well as selected unreached Buddhist and Hindu areas, were referred to as the "unoccupied fields" by Samuel Zwemer, in his book by that same title, published in 1911. [9] [10]
The concept was first published in the AD2000 magazine in 1990. [11]
Some researchers have objected to such a broad-brush term which seems to imply a unifying characteristic of the 10/40 Window when in fact no large area of the planet is completely homogenous in cultural attributes. [12]
The 1990 research data states:
This research deals in overall population characteristics. The 10/40 Window is a term that helps people visualize the general area of the analysis, where the above characteristics are generally true, but with exceptions proving it is only a generalization. Some examples of the exceptions:
To address these concerns the list of 10/40 countries has been amended in recent years to omit Greece, Portugal and the Philippines.
Additionally, the concept has been critiqued as "[reflecting] a US Evangelical worldview" which may not be shared by other Christians. [12]
Over the years, the 10/40 Window has evolved from a specialist term used by Christian missiologists to assumed vocabulary for Christians in the West. [18] [19] [20] It is an emerging term in the secular press [7] and can be found in press style glossaries. [21] Non-western writers and organizations also refer to the 10/40 Window. [22] [23] [24] In addition, those opposed to the idea of evangelism make use of the term. [25] [26] [27]
The concept has also been a part of spiritual warfare theology. It is linked to spiritual mapping [28] [12] of territorial spirits (demons believed to control regions of the globe and prevent Christian conversion), as promoted by C. Peter Wagner, founder of the New Apostolic Reformation. [29] Ted Haggard's New Life Church was at the vanguard of the spiritual mapping movement through its close ties to and support of Wagner and Bush. It helped initiate the Prayer Through the Window events in the 1990s, which had tens of millions of participants. [30] New Life Church's spiritual warfare center, the World Prayer Center, opened in 1998 and primarily focused on the 10/40 window. [31]
The original 1990 GIS 10/40 Window analysis produced several insights, among them showing that the nations of the 10/40 Window represented (as of the research date):
The GIS analysis utilized country-level data from the Operation World [3] almanac, the World Christian Encyclopedia , [4] and The World Factbook . [1]
The first edition GIS analysis maps highlighted the three major religious blocks in the 10/40 Window, specifically the majority Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist nations. Population estimates at the time for the year 2000 (from Operation World) were given as:
Later updates have been based more on census data and other estimates rather than forward-looking population estimates. The cited reference provides the following estimate of "unreached" non-Christian populations in the 10/40 Window:
The 10/40 Window originally encompassed the following 54 countries.
These were all Old World nations (mostly in the eastern hemisphere) with at least 50 percent of their land area falling within 10 to 40 degrees latitude as of 1990. (The list also included Gibraltar and Macau, which are not independent nations.)
The terms 40/70 window , referring to Europe and Russia, and 4/14 window , referring to the ages between 4 and 14 for child evangelism, were also coined based on the 10/40 window concept. [38]
Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.
Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., doing business as Esri, is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company headquartered in Redlands, California. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With 40% market share as of 2011, Esri is one of the world's leading supplier of GIS software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications.
A cartogram is a thematic map of a set of features, in which their geographic size is altered to be directly proportional to a selected variable, such as travel time, population, or gross national income. Geographic space itself is thus warped, sometimes extremely, in order to visualize the distribution of the variable. It is one of the most abstract types of map; in fact, some forms may more properly be called diagrams. They are primarily used to display emphasis and for analysis as nomographs.
A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
Protestants in Myanmar make up 5% of that nation's population in 2023. Most Christians are from the minority ethnic groups such as Karen, Lisu, Kachin, Chin, and Lahu. An estimated 0.1% of the Bamar population is Christian.
Geovisualization or geovisualisation, also known as cartographic visualization, refers to a set of tools and techniques supporting the analysis of geospatial data through the use of interactive visualization.
Luis Bush is an Argentina-born Christian missionary and the president of the Transform World Connections.
New Life Church is a charismatic evangelical non-denominational multi-site megachurch based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States.
Christianity is, according to the 2021 census, the fifth most practiced religion in Nepal, with 512,313 adherents or 1.8%, up from 2011 when there were 375,699 adherents or 1.4% of the population. Many informed observers have estimated that there are at least 1 million Nepali Christians. According to some Christian groups, there may be as many as 3 million Christians in Nepal, constituting up to 10% of the country's population. A report by Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary identified the Nepali church the fastest growing in the world. The vast majority of Nepali Christians are evangelical Protestants ; there is also a small Catholic population of roughly 10,000.
Lunglei district is one of the eleven districts of Mizoram state in India. As of 2011 it is the second most populous district in the state, after Aizawl.
Geography is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."
Spiritual mapping refers to the belief among some Christians that specific demons, known as territorial spirits, are associated with specific locations and can be conquered through strategic spiritual warfare by plotting out geographical areas and their perceived problems in order to pray on-site. Spiritual mapping is part of the first of three steps in spiritual warfare, defined by sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory as research, prophecy, and intercession. Religious studies scholar Sean McCloud has referred to spiritual mapping as a "Third Wave [Charismatic] version of geomancy that discerns where and why demons control spaces and places, ranging from houses and neighborhoods to entire countries."
The Joshua Project is an evangelical Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, United States, which seeks to coordinate the work of missionary organizations to track the ethnic groups of the world with the fewest followers of evangelical Christianity. To do so, it maintains ethnologic data to support Christian missions. It also tracks the evangelism efforts among 17,446 people groups worldwide—a people group being "the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement," according to the project's website—to identify people groups as of yet unreached by Christian evangelism.
Anglican Frontier Missions is an American-based Christian mission organization that "To plant biblically-based, indigenous churches where the church is not, among the 2 billion people and 6,000+ unreached people groups still waiting to hear the Gospel for the very first time."
John Robb is the former chairman for the International Prayer Council, and formerly led the prayer ministries of World Vision. The IPC is a network of regional and national prayer ministries and networks around the world. He and the IPC provided leadership for the World Prayer Assembly that was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 14–18, 2012.
Earth has a human population of over 8 billion as of 2024, with an overall population density of 50 people per km2. Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, with more than 2.8 billion in the countries of India and China combined. The percentage shares of China, India and rest of South Asia of the world population have remained at similar levels for the last few thousand years of recorded history. The world's literacy rate has increased dramatically in the last 40 years, from 66.7% in 1979 to 86.3% today. Lower literacy levels are mostly attributable to poverty. Lower literacy rates are found mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Counter-mapping is creating maps that challenge "dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". Counter-mapping is used in multiple disciplines to reclaim colonized territory. Counter-maps are prolific in indigenous cultures, "counter-mapping may reify, reinforce, and extend settler boundaries even as it seeks to challenge dominant mapping practices; and still, counter-mapping may simultaneously create conditions of possibility for decolonial ways of representing space and place." The term came into use in the United States when Nancy Peluso used it in 1995 to describe the commissioning of maps by forest users in Kalimantan, Indonesia, to contest government maps of forest areas that undermined indigenous interests. The resultant counter-hegemonic maps strengthen forest users' resource claims. There are numerous expressions closely related to counter-mapping: ethnocartography, alternative cartography, mapping-back, counter-hegemonic mapping, deep mapping and public participatory mapping. Moreover, the terms critical cartography, subversive cartography, bio-regional mapping, and remapping are sometimes used interchangeably with counter-mapping, but in practice encompass much more.
Technical geography is the branch of geography that involves using, studying, and creating tools to obtain, analyze, interpret, understand, and communicate spatial information.
Internet GIS, or Internet geographic information system (GIS), is a term that refers to a broad set of technologies and applications that employ the Internet to access, analyze, visualize, and distribute spatial data. Internet GIS is an outgrowth of traditional GIS, and represents a shift from conducting GIS on an individual computer to working with remotely distributed data and functions. Two major issues in GIS are accessing and distributing spatial data and GIS outputs. Internet GIS helps to solve that problem by allowing users to access vast databases impossible to store on a single desktop computer, and by allowing rapid dissemination of both maps and raw data to others. These methods include both file sharing and email. This has enabled the general public to participate in map creation and make use of GIS technology.