From the time of Christ to the year 300 the center of Christianity moved from its epicenter in Jerusalem to Armenia, which is the oldest Christian country. By 500 AD the center of the faith had moved west to Greece and Rome. In the next 500 years the center of gravity of the church continued to move further west into Europe, where it became synonymous with culture and art. In the next 1,000 years the center of the Christian church moved even further west into North and South America. While the Pope remained in Europe, all the cultural action, innovation, change, and life in the church was focused in the Americas. By 2000 AD the USA in particular came to see itself as the headquarters of Christian belief, now removed half way around the world from its origins.

But the center of the church continues to move west. As the numbers above suggest, Asia and Africa are experiencing phenomenal rates of Christian church growth. Most of the new Christians in the world born in the next centuries will live in Asia and parts of Africa. The fastest growing churches seem to be in Asia (China and the Asian Tigers³), and so the cultural center (newest ideas, most money, largest congregations) of the global body will tend to move west again. Given the speed of church growth in Korea and China, and extending that another 500 years, by the year 2500 the world might identify Christianity as primarily an Asian thing.

If the move west continues as it has for the last 2,000 years, Christianity’s center of gravity may keep migrating westward. The new missionaries based in Asia will reach out to unbelievers in the birthplace of Christianity. Eventually the center of gravity leaves Asia and slowly returns to the Mid East. In the next 1000 years the epicenter of Christianity might complete its circumnavigation of the globe and arrive back where it began. As one Chinese missionary said, “We have the view that Chinese missionaries will be part of the mainstream on the highway back to Jerusalem.”

These huge demographic swings already in motion suggest several things. One is that unless Christianity in the US becomes less parochial and more global, what happens in North American Christianity in the next 500 years may simply be the side-show. The main event will happen elsewhere around the globe.

2. THE VARIETIES OF CHRISTIANITY WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE.
From the very first century, Christian discipleship has emphasized personal experience and salvation and therefore a certain freedom of interpretation in belief. Thus the number of creeds, denominations, and varieties of faith have increased steadily from the first days of the church. By 1800 there were 500 self-identifying Christian denominations. In 2007 those who track such things list 40,000 active denominations.



At current rates of increase, there should be 260,000 denominations in the next century. Subtle distinctions, endless permutations and combinations of creeds are bound to increase in a world of abundant choices. When you can get 72 varieties of mustard in the supermarket, choice is accepted. There is no known counter force visible in our culture which would work against increased varieties in Christian approaches.

3. THE MARGINS OF THE CHURCH GROW FASTEST
Some of the fastest growing churches are those at the margins of Christian denominations. The Church of the Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, is experiencing fantastic rates of population growth, primarily outside the US. If they continue at present speed, the total population of Mormons will exceed the population of Earth in a thousand years. The Amish and other denominations out of the mainstream are also rising faster than the general Christian population. Growth at the margins has been the rule all along anyway. The Methodists, Pentecostals, and the original Protestants themselves were all marginal churches that experienced rapid initial growth. We should expect the greatest growth in the future to occur from church groups that are either at the margin or outside of the mainstream. Some of these will be considered cults by insiders, heretics by the orthodox, or at best, worrisome experiments that need to be watched carefully.

4. THE SPHERE OF EMPATHY CONTINUES TO EXPAND
Over time, societies have regulated who should be treated well. The family clan has always been inside the circle of our empathy; we treat our brother and sister as we’d treat ourselves. In some societies the circle of empathy was expanded to the tribe as a whole; everyone in the greater tribe was treated like a brother or sister. Jesus revolutionized the boundaries of our sphere of empathy. Under his teachings, we should think of any person – neighbor, stranger, even our enemy – as one of us, to be treated as we’d like ourselves to be treated. It took a long time but eventually Christianity recognized that “anyone” included slaves, and anyone of any race, color, ethnicity. Through the teachings of Jesus, our collective sphere of empathy kept expanding to include all humans of any form, including the imperfect, handicapped, crippled, terminally ill, and even unborn.

This trend is likely to continue. Currently our sphere of empathy is expanding to embrace all other living creatures. The animal rights movement and the environmental stewardship movements are part of this enlarging empathy. While we may not treat an owl like we would treat a brother, we might treat it the way we would if we were an owl. Identifying with the suffering and well-being of animals, both domestic and wild, is likely to get a Christian hearing in the coming centuries. Even the grass, which cannot be confused with our family, can be included in a wider definition of “ourselves.” The natural world is seen to be our home, and our responsibility. It is ours. For this and other reasons, environmental, ecological, and natural issues will continue to grow in importance in Christian culture.

This enlargement probably won’t stop there. At some point in the next thousand years, perhaps even in the next hundred years, humans will invent some kind of artificial thinking machine. Whether that thinking machine has a conscience, consciousness, free will, or soul remains to be seen. What is certain is that no other event in the history of our culture will have such theological ramifications (except contact with an ET). The debate over what moral standing such a mind would have has already started before it has been invented. How will we know if an AI is conscious? If it is conscious, what does that mean to us as humans? Will we remain special as children of God? What about a soul? The only way these dilemmas will be satisfactorily resolved is if a robot one day stands up in some future church and proclaims, “I too am a child of God!” At that point will the Christian sphere of empathy expand to include them?

There are other puzzles. Forget about robots. What about reengineering the human body, or even human genes? The Christian church is manifestly unprepared for the theological challenges arising from re-making humanity. We already have low-level genetic screening. We have artificially conceived babies, a practice embraced by infertile Christian couples. There are hundreds of identified gene sequences – for dreadful, crippling diseases, as well as for controversial behavior such as alcoholism, addiction, and homosexuality – which many Christians would be happy to eliminate from the genes of their children if they could. And there may be other genes – like the supposed “God gene” which benefits belief – that they would like to add to their lineage. Imagine the temptation for trans-human engineering if there was a prayer gene! Our current understanding of genes and actual human life is rudimentary and probably wrong in many details, but the desire to deliberately mold ourselves and our children will remain a large factor in Christian circles, and so the move towards a transhumanism is likely. But despite the near arrival of these technologies, there is little spiritual guidance for such practices.

Comments

Comments are now closed