The tricky thing about present trends is that they never continue. Things change ”” law, politics, medicine, transportation, all of it. Even religions must change. As soon as a religion fails to meet human needs ”” or even to connect with its audience ”” it begins to die. History is strewn with the wreckage of once vibrant faiths that became irrelevant.
So what of today’s religious landscape? And what of America’s dominant faiths? Seismic shifts are already underway that will affect the future of faith in general and of Christianity in particular. The number of nonbelievers, for example, is upwards of 15% in the USA. In Europe, they are the majority. And, here at home, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals have both outgrown their mainline Protestant counterparts.
So what does the future of faith look like? And can parsing the past help us divine the future?
Oh for goodness’ sake! With a pilot like Harvey Cox to navigate the deep waters, how can we possibly go wrong? Maybe we could talk Dan Brown into coming out of seclusion as long as we’re at it. Romanticized, self-serving slipshod “history” of the sort on display in this column can never be a guide to the future. My experience in the last several years with both youth and young adults is that there is simply no substitute for content, integrity and tradition, both in teaching and liturgy.