NEWS FEATURE: Analysis: Assessing the Future Shape of Christianity

c. 2000 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Given that the world did not end in a spectacular Y2K or an apocalyptic Second Coming and that Jan. 18 marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, it may be a good time to ask: In Christianity’s third millennium, what will Christianity in America […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Given that the world did not end in a spectacular Y2K or an apocalyptic Second Coming and that Jan. 18 marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, it may be a good time to ask: In Christianity’s third millennium, what will Christianity in America look like?

The short answer is: different. Maybe very different.


For one thing, the move toward “cafeteria Christianity” appearing at the end of the 20th century _ believers picking and choosing what appeals to them in various denominations, even in other faiths _ is likely to gather steam in the 21st.

The same goes for the tendency to expand still further the boundaries of what constitutes religious belief. How else to explain the cyber-cult founded on the sacred memory of Princess Diana?

“Religion has become a bit of a dirty word. It sounds dead, old-fashioned, archaic,” said George Gallup Jr., the Princeton, N.J.-based religion pollster. “Spirituality is a safer word. If you can say you are spiritual, you don’t have to make a commitment. For a lot of people it’s a way out.”

While moral conservatives will decry this trend as further evidence of religious decline, their lamentations may miss the real novelty _ and danger _ of the coming Christianity.

In the past, religion has had a dual role of soothing the soul while doing God’s work in society. Lately, religion has become so psychologized that its aim is often purely one of inner peace. The ancient commandment to help one’s neighbor can become an afterthought. Combine that with faddism and good old American individualism, and we see a “religion” so privatized that it has little impact on society at large.

Yet religion flourishes. Surveys consistently put the level of Americans’ belief in some higher power at close to 95 percent, and attendance at weekly religious observances of one form or another has held remarkably steady throughout the years at around 40 percent. About one-third of Americans say they have had a profound religious experience, and the rest seem to be looking for one.

While leaders of the various churches have in the last few decades made great strides toward healing the divisions that fractured Christianity from the 11th century onward, the faith is at its foundations more fragmented today than ever before.

In her 1995 book, “Re-Discovering the Sacred,” author Phyllis Tickle counted up some 2,500 distinct forms of Christianity in America. Angels, crystals and books like “The Celestine Prophecy” rival Jesus in the hearts of these crossover Christians.


The widening of religious choice also seems to have brought a decline in loyalty to tradition.

In 1958, just four out of every 100 Americans had left the denomination in which they were raised. Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians were born, married and buried in the family faith. By the late 1980s, one survey showed more than a third of American Christians identified with a church other than the one they were raised in. At least 60 percent of Americans have spouses from other denominations. Since 1972, the proportion of Americans expressing no religious preference doubled, from 7 to 14 percent.

Among possible reasons for the change are the rejection of authority in the countercultural ’60s, the fraying of family ties and the mobility of Americans.

“One way to understand American religion and chart its future,” write Richard Cimino and Don Lattin in “Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium,” their 1998 survey, “is to see the world of faith like any other product or service in the U.S. economy.”

Hence, the megachurches that model themselves on shopping malls and corporate offices so as to lure “clients,” as worshippers are now called. “Servicing our customers … continues to be a core mission,” says the Dallas-based Leadership Network, a pioneer in the booming church consulting industry. “This new paradigm is not centered in theology.”

In other words, what you believe matters less than ever. This phenomenon is especially prevalent among the baby boomer generation _ the 76 million Americans who began turning 50 in 1996 and started looking for God, but on their own terms.


Beyond the fluidity of worship practices and the apparent shallowness of much contemporary spirituality, however, lies the true difference in the faith of the future _ and the danger that religious leaders should be focusing on. It is rooted in the long-standing American tension between the individual and the communal.

Ever since the Puritans, the autonomy of the individual, especially in matters of conscience, has been sacrosanct to Americans. But under the distorting strains of modern life, and influenced by the growing importance of “experiential” religion _ Marian visions, Buddhist meditations, born-again conversions at the virtual hands of televangelists _ faith began to slip the moorings that always anchored it at the heart of the community.

The end point of this evolution is already coming into focus.

According to one survey, eight in 10 Americans already say the Internet plays a role in their spiritual lives, and in another close to 20 percent say they will rely “primarily or exclusively on the Internet for religious input” by 2010.

Combine that with the Gallup poll showing that seven in 10 Americans believe you can be religious without going to church and we begin to see the outlines of a high-tech religion in which “worshippers” sit alone in front of computers or flat-screen TVs at the time of their choice and commune to the rhythms of a “faith” whose tenets they have chosen from a menu of options.

DEA END GIBSON

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