The Next One Thousand Years Of Christianity

by Kevin Kelly

Look around you. In any city, even an old one, all that is visible now was not visible a century ago. Old houses get new skins, inside and out. Buildings come and go. Even in the wilderness, individual trees, bushes, and grass thrive and die, while entire ecologies shift across the landscape in a matter of a thousand years. Meadows morph into woods, woods age into mature forests. No matter where you stand, what you see is change. Our short lives blind us to this constant inconstancy.

If we accept continual change in the past we must accept continual change in the future. More so because everywhere the rate of change is increasing. This new neck-snapping acceleration is driven primarily by new technologies. As long as change happened over the span of many generations there was no sense of the future as a destination. The “future” arrived only when change sped up until it was noticeable within an individual’s lifetime. When your world was different from your parents, then you had to talk about the future. A relentless avalanche of new technology means that we now live not in the present but in the future.

The Christian church has changed significantly over time. The church in the year 1000 AD would not have been very recognizable to an ordinary Christian today. Certainly a core set of beliefs and values would remain unchanged, but much about daily life, spiritual perspective, and church-wide activity would be alien. One measurable and significant example would be the church’s attitude toward Jews. One thousand years ago official church doctrine and widespread popular sentiment declared Jews an anathema and they were treated as subhuman and worse. The fact that today a major supporter of an all Jewish state are conservative Christians would have been a laughable joke in 1000 AD. Or even two hundred years ago.¹

In many other dimensions the church has shifted its course in the last 1,000 years. Ten centuries ago very few Christians were literate, so reading the Bible did not play a large role in everyday church life. Back then one’s denominational belief was almost 100% inherited from one’s parents. The geographically largest denomination was the Nestorian church, which has, for the most part, now disappeared. Sainthood had meaning, as did the concept of purgatory. Monasticism was considered a noble calling. Heretics were executed for public entertainment. There was no sense of an archeological or historical record of Biblical events. The raging religious controversies of the time were not about abortion and homosexuality, but whether the Spirit emanated from the Father and Son, or the Father alone, and whether indulgences (spiritual pardons from priests, often tied to donations) were legitimate.

Clearly a devout medieval Christian dropped into a mid-morning service at a progressive church today would not recognize his faith. The strong sensual music, the focus on Bible-reading, the unadorned architecture, the lack of ornate ritual, the conversational tone of the sermon – all would be baffling at best. Getting into a discussion with our visitor would not ease him much either. A contemporary Christian’s familiarity with the Scriptures, their sense of history, their great emphasis on the self, the heavily mediated context of their belief, and even the degree to which fundamental assumptions of their religion have been baked into the culture at large, would confuse the 10th century Christian, who lived in a world where only 18% of the people were fellow believers, even in Europe.

Given the extreme rate of change at work in our culture today it seems reasonable and responsible to expect tremendous change in the Christian church in the next 1000 years. Yet who in the church is preparing for this great shift? Where in the church is the needed longterm perspective? What is the scenario for the next 1,000 years of Christianity? As the wisdom in Proverbs 29:18 reminds us, “Without a vision the people perish.”

ONLY 13 GENERATIONS

One thousand years may seem too distant and remote to even contemplate, particularly for busy folk who have trouble making next summer’s vacation plans. Ten centuries so exceeds our own lifetime that we want to dismiss it as extraneous and unapproachable, and not worth thinking about. On the other hand, everyone understands a generation, and how values and consequences can flow over many generations. The Bible pays attention to generations. 1 Chronicles is full of generational perspectives. A typical generational roster like the following lists 13 familial generations of father to sons:

Eleazar was the father of Phinehas, Phinehas the father of Abishua, Abishua the father of Bukki, Bukki the father of Uzzi, Uzzi the father of Zerahiah, Zerahiah the father of Meraioth, Meraioth the father of Amariah, Amariah the father of Ahitub, Ahitub the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Ahimaaz, Ahimaaz the father of Azariah, Azariah the father of Johanan²

If the average age of fatherhood is 25 years, then this span of 13 generations will reach more than three centuries. But there is another definition of generation besides father/son that might be helpful.

We might count a lifetime as a generation. A generation would go from birth to death, birth to death, and so on for a full 72 years on average. Imagine if we were trying to pass on a treasure and all that was necessary was that one person be alive – if even for a day – during the life of another to transmit it. As long as a person is born before the previous holder dies the generation chain remains unbroken.

I recently constructed such a personal generational chain back 1,000 years. I searched for a notable person who died shortly after I was born. A few minutes on Wikipedia turned up the explorer Sven Hedin. I then found a notable person who was born shortly before Hedin died. And then someone born before he died, and so on. With little effort I can arrange a chain of only 13 people that will reach back 1,000 years.

Me	1952
Sven Hedin, world explorer	1865
William Hooker, early botanist	1785
James Oglethorpe, founder of the state of Georgia	1696
Pope John the III of Poland	1629
Hieronymmous Praetorius, German composer	1560
Andrea Doria, Italian naval commander	1466
Donatello, Italian artist	1386
Peter IV of Aragon	1319
Duccio, Italian painter	1255
Tankei, Japanese sculptor	1173
Roger de Clare, Earl of Hertford	1116
Coloman of Hungary	1070
Robert 1, Duke of Burgundy	1011

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Comments

Jay Gary

Nice piece for Q-Ideas. My wish list for future pieces. How about a roadmap of the next five years, even benchmarks in terms of technological breakthroughs, economic eras, and social innovations?

Also, it would be nice to do pieces that show convergence of trend projections a 50-100 years out, rather than just list them. Maybe some force field analysis on trends, issues, leading into some uncertainty/importance charts of driving forces. The World Economic Forum has some good papers that do this for various sectors, http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/Scenarios/index.htm

Dr. Todd Johnson, a colleague of mine has done some good quantitative forecasting work, two centuries out on the future of Christianity, offering a baseline demographic-conversions scenario for 2200, along with two additional scenarios, Muslim Rennaisance and Non-Religious Resurgence (2nd Enlightenment). Of course, that is not multi-fold trend based, like Kelly's, but it raises the bar.

We also need more questions. IFTF.org has done some good work for the Endowed Episcopal Congregations, see my summary article of 15 provocations off of a workbook they did: http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/10088

Thanks again for including Kelly's piece. I gotta give a lecture on scenarios of global Christianity for 2100 next week.

David Doty

It would be helpful if the church were more engaged in future visioneering that could be articulated with a coherent biblical explication of eschatological expectations. This is an area it seems most of the church is afraid to venture into but needs sound exploration. I believe we can forecast a great deal about the future of the church and the world through interpetation of the Bible through an historic lens.

Steve Florman

It's actually the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the LDS Church. And it's hardly on the "fringes" of Christianity - it has 14 million members, of whom about 5-6 million are in the US. More than the ELCA, and the Presbyterians, and the Assemblies of God.

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