Will Christianity Die Out?

[Lightkeeper]

More than half of Britons think Christianity is likely to have disappeared from the country within a century, according to a survey.
Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years' time.

Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all.

Buddhism however, proved more attractive than both Islam and Judaism, and was chosen by nine per cent of those questioned.

Christianity 'could die out within a century' - Telegraph

What do you think?

[Rev. Kelly]

Over the course of history, various religions have grown, had their hayday, and then died out; either because they were replaced by something else or because the followers were forced not to observe their practices. It is reasonable to conclude that it could happen to Christianity too.

I have a hard time thinking that Christanity would complete die out. If it did, it would be sad to see that part of our diversity leave, but at the same time something old must die to make room for something new.

[shaw-n]

Religions do come and go.
Since xianity is based on false pretenses which Jesus did not teach such as have no other God before Me, yet people worship Jesus anyway, as well as his mother whom he even did not accord such respect,and so commit an offense via idol worship according to the rules of the game they play it is thus doomed to fail and be replaced with hopefully a more sensible faith.

[evangelicalhumanist]

It's an odd thing, but reading this thread reminded me of the one on Evolution.

Everything changes. We don't see it while it's happening, but one day, we look up and things are not as they once were. There are various versions of Christianity today that little resemble any particular practice in the third and fourth centuries. New understandings lead to new interpretations. More and more people are coming to understand the Bible for what it really is -- the work of many extraordinary people who, while they didn't understand much about how the universe was created or the origins of species, knew enough that they had to try and come to grips with our own divided natures and internal conflicts.

Bishop John Shelby Spong is one voice crying out for a new Christianity, one that is rational, perhaps "grown-up." As Spong says, "The deity I worship, is rather part of who I am individually and corporately. So praying can never be separated from acting. Prayer is the recognition that holiness is found in the center of life, and that it involves the deliberate decision to seek to live into that holiness by modeling it and by giving it away." (Spong: Why Christianity Must Change or Die). For Spong, then (and he is just one example) God is an integral part of who we are, the love force that binds us to each other. That's how he sees salvation.

Now, the fact is that in Europe, there is a great deal of religious turmoil, in particular because of a large influx of Muslims bringing a somewhat more fundamentalist brand of faith than the typical European has been accustomed to for some decades. This, too, is likely to a have a profound effect on both Christianity and Islam (no, Islam would not be immune from change, either). But those changes will take time. Living members of a particular faith don't change all that much. Over generations, however, the change can be profound enough that a worshipper just 2 or 3 generations ago might not recognize the religion in today's churches as authentic Christianity.

So why should we, if we were privileged to look ahead 2 or 3 generations, expect any different?

[arthra]

Prophecying that a religion will die out is a risky business.. so I wouldn't really go there.. When George Sale translated his "Koran" it was believed Islam would eventually disappear because the Ottoman Empire was weakening.. We know today that the fall of the Sultanate has apparently not impeded the growth of Islam.. I'm sure some Soviet thinkers also believed or hoped that religion would disappear in Russia.

Sometimes the attractiveness of a given religion is it's remoteness from the every day life and this also may be based on assumptions from a few books on the subject that people have read...

- Art

[metis]

I second EH's motion. Christianity is not at all likely to die out, but it will change as it has changed in the past. Sometimes one may wonder whether Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was right when he proposed that there would eventually evolve sort of a cosmic religion that would encompass beliefs and approaches from a multitude of faith traditions mixed in with some new ideas as well.

[Lightkeeper]

Great posts! It makes me wonder if any religion has ever died out. Maybe the so called dead religions have evolved into other religions.

There seems to be a movement toward religions merging. Examples of that would be Unity, UU, Bahai, the Koran discusses Jesus, etc.

[metis]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Great posts! It makes me wonder if any religion has ever died out.

Religions transforming rather than dying out seems to be more common if we look at it from an anthropological perspective. For example, with the Amerindian religions found especially in Latin America, we see so often a mixture of Catholicism and the indigenous beliefs and practices (some call it "spiritualism", although most of us as anthropologists refer to it as "animism" as well).

And here in North America, Indians often tended to "convert" to Christianity while at the same time holding on to their traditional beliefs and rituals. For example, even though the indigenous religions of Indians were polytheistic, with the influence of Christianity many of them began to emphasize one deity (like the "Great Father") over the others, and the others were often demoted to become "spirits", thus losing their independence from that supreme deity. IOW, they went from polytheism to monotheism.

[Jewelie]

This is a very interesting thread.

Although I have to say I think any survey taken always depends on who it was that answered the questions. Maybe more non Christians took the survey thus leading people to believe that Christianity would die out.

[Astreja]

I think that Christianity will continue to change, spawning new denominations and losing others. It may eventually die out, but probabaly not in the next 500 years.