What will replace Christianity?

[Storebought]

I take it as a postulate that mankind, as a collective, is incapable of believing in nothing at all for any length of time. Although Christianity is practically defunct, I can't imagine any of these as acceptable replacements:

Science, or Reason? Aristotle long noted that a great many aspects of human awareness are impervious to reason. Not to mention, most of the "science" advocated by these people can
be dismissed as scientism, which is just a new age fad.

The evolutionary advancement of mankind? Read through any Youtube discussion, and then try to accept this with a straight face.

Oprah style self-help? Pure self-delusion.

Asian religion? For Westerners, who have no connection with the tradition, indeed, have no patience with tradition, and just read a few badly-translated texts, just another new age fad.

Hedonism? Simple escapism, and one that thinking people garner no satisfaction in after
repeated indulgence.

"Spiritual, but not religious?" Another form of self-deception, and a particularly insidious one at that.

I am confident that some mass system will replace all of this, but I have no idea what form it would take ...

[© tweed]

dumbed down deism / semisecular theism / liberal Christianity-lite / humanism / universalism

[John Dibble]

I'd imagine there might not be one mass system - with greater access to information and freedom of movement that did not exist in times past people might just start following whatever happens to resonate with them. It'll be at least another century or two though, if not more, before this becomes noticeable.

[Joe Biden 2020]

The answer is simple...  NOTHING.

Saying Christianity is defunct is saying the God of the Universe is obsolete, which we know is not true.

Personally, as a strong Christian man, I take offense to the statement that Christianity is defunct.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Eventually, Judaism.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

The answer is simple...  NOTHING.

Saying Christianity is defunct is saying the God of the Universe is obsolete, which we know is not true.

Personally, as a strong Christian man, I take offense to the statement that Christianity is defunct.

[memphis]

In the US? In many areas of the world, Chrisitianity can't be "replaced" because it currently exists only on the fringes, just as Islam or Buddhism does here. Also, presuming you are talking about the US, it seems pretty pompous to know the answer to a question like that. Predicting the distant future and all. Still, any time-tested world religion seems as likely as any other. Could even be something new. Doubt any of us will live to find out.

[Storebought]

In the US? In many areas of the world, Chrisitianity can't be "replaced" because it currently exists only on the fringes, just as Islam or Buddhism does here. Also, presuming you are talking about the US, it seems pretty pompous to know the answer to a question like that. Predicting the distant future and all. Still, any time-tested world religion seems as likely as any other. Could even be something new. Doubt any of us will live to find out.

I assumed only the Western world, since the West is the only region undergoing a spiritual crisis that manifests itself as loss without equal replacement.

And we needn't make any predictions about the distant future, since this disintegration of Christian belief is taking place right in front of us. And, yes, I include the indifferent "weekly wafer" Catholicism and the "prosperity Gospel" nonsense of the megachurch as disintegration.

I could recognize the obvious fads that have come to supplant some aspects of the Christian religion, but I was hoping to get a deeper insight this by posting here. Seriously, this has been bugging me for months now.

[Psychic Octopus]

Islam if some of the more extreme Neocons are correct.

The Islamic States of America.

[memphis]

In the US? In many areas of the world, Chrisitianity can't be "replaced" because it currently exists only on the fringes, just as Islam or Buddhism does here. Also, presuming you are talking about the US, it seems pretty pompous to know the answer to a question like that. Predicting the distant future and all. Still, any time-tested world religion seems as likely as any other. Could even be something new. Doubt any of us will live to find out.

I assumed only the Western world, since the West is the only region undergoing a spiritual crisis that manifests itself as loss without equal replacement.

And we needn't make any predictions about the distant future, since this disintegration of Christian belief is taking place right in front of us. And, yes, I include the indifferent "weekly wafer" Catholicism and the "prosperity Gospel" nonsense of the megachurch as disintegration.

I could recognize the obvious fads that have come to supplant some aspects of the Christian religion, but I was hoping to get a deeper insight this by posting here. Seriously, this has been bugging me for months now.

People have been writing Christianity's obituary for a long time. It's a persistent theme, particularly among young, educated "men of letters." I see no reason to believe that Christianity is in any way dying in the US. Hispanics, the fastest growing group, are known for being religious Christians, albeit in their own way. I have no doubts that Christianity will eventually die out, as all religions do. However, it seems you have a substantial burden of proof if you claim that the overwhelmingly predominanat religion in America is facing catastrophic decline.

[Lief 🗽]

The arc of human history leads inevitably towards global, un-organized religion, with a healthy dose of agnosticism and deism, though heavily secularized and private.

[The Mikado]

The arc of human history leads inevitably towards global, un-organized religion, with a healthy dose of agnosticism and deism, though heavily secularized and private.

You really think so?  Pluralism and syncretism were more a feature of the pre-Christian world than later.  In 100 BCE, you could easily go from worshiping Isis in Alexandria to in Rome, and even fit Isis somewhere into the Roman Pantheon as her own goddess.  Try doing that a thousand years later by inserting Vishnu into a Catholic Mass in Paris: you'd be burned at the stake.  Maybe the last two centuries have moved somewhat away from intolerance, but only slightly.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Jesus Christ himself will replace Christianity.  He is coming very soon.

[dead0man]

Christianity 2:Electric Boogaloo

[Storebought]

In the US? In many areas of the world, Chrisitianity can't be "replaced" because it currently exists only on the fringes, just as Islam or Buddhism does here. Also, presuming you are talking about the US, it seems pretty pompous to know the answer to a question like that. Predicting the distant future and all. Still, any time-tested world religion seems as likely as any other. Could even be something new. Doubt any of us will live to find out.

I assumed only the Western world, since the West is the only region undergoing a spiritual crisis that manifests itself as loss without equal replacement.

And we needn't make any predictions about the distant future, since this disintegration of Christian belief is taking place right in front of us. And, yes, I include the indifferent "weekly wafer" Catholicism and the "prosperity Gospel" nonsense of the megachurch as disintegration.

I could recognize the obvious fads that have come to supplant some aspects of the Christian religion, but I was hoping to get a deeper insight this by posting here. Seriously, this has been bugging me for months now.

People have been writing Christianity's obituary for a long time. It's a persistent theme, particularly among young, educated "men of letters." I see no reason to believe that Christianity is in any way dying in the US. Hispanics, the fastest growing group, are known for being religious Christians, albeit in their own way. I have no doubts that Christianity will eventually die out, as all religions do. However, it seems you have a substantial burden of proof if you claim that the overwhelmingly predominanat religion in America is facing catastrophic decline.

There is a website that actively produces surveys on the state of faith in the US: Barna.org. In particular, at least according to this organization, Christianity is no longer Americans' default faith. And even among those who still call themselves Christian, what they believe, and, more importantly, what they practice, can in no way be described as orthodox:

By a three to one margin (71% to 26%) adults noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church. Although born again Christians were among the segments least likely to adopt the a la carte approach to beliefs, a considerable majority even of born again adults (61%) has taken that route. Leading the charge in the move to customize one’s package of beliefs are people under the age of 25, among whom more than four out of five (82%) said they develop their own combination of beliefs rather than adopt a set proposed by a church.

Evidence of people’s willingness to part with church teaching was shown in other data from the survey regarding what people believe. Among individuals who describe themselves as Christian, for instance, close to half believe that Satan does not exist, one-third contend that Jesus sinned while He was on earth, two-fifths say they do not have a responsibility to share the Christian faith with others, and one-quarter dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches.

"Spiritual but not religious" people in the US are replacing orthodoxy (i.e., Christianity) with something else. Who knows what.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Eventually, Judaism.

I wonder if you're dumber when you're being a Moderate Hero, or not being one. Posts like this make it a tough call.

[Joe Biden 2020]

Jesus Christ himself will replace Christianity.  He is coming very soon.

Amen.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.

[Aizen]

Hopefully we go back to the Greek Gods. They were actually interesting and not boring as hell

[John Dibble]

Hopefully we go back to the Greek Gods. They were actually interesting and not boring as hell

I'm not sure if I could deal with the constant worry that Zeus might try to rape my wife.

[anvi]

Some form of Christianity is ahered to by approximately 75% of the American population and about 3 billion people (a bit less than 50%) worldwide, both figures being rather substantial majorities.  So, if anything were to "replace" Christianity anytime soon, it would involve a lot of destruction, because whatever it was would depopulate the earth.  I myself am no longer Christian, but with those numbers after 2,000 years, the religion is here to stay.

[Citizen James]

I take it as a postulate that mankind, as a collective, is incapable of believing in nothing at all for any length of time. Although Christianity is practically defunct, I can't imagine any of these as acceptable replacements:

Science, or Reason? Aristotle long noted that a great many aspects of human awareness are impervious to reason. Not to mention, most of the "science" advocated by these people can
be dismissed as scientism, which is just a new age fad.

The evolutionary advancement of mankind? Read through any Youtube discussion, and then try to accept this with a straight face.

Oprah style self-help? Pure self-delusion.

Asian religion? For Westerners, who have no connection with the tradition, indeed, have no patience with tradition, and just read a few badly-translated texts, just another new age fad.

Hedonism? Simple escapism, and one that thinking people garner no satisfaction in after
repeated indulgence.

"Spiritual, but not religious?" Another form of self-deception, and a particularly insidious one at that.

I am confident that some mass system will replace all of this, but I have no idea what form it would take ...

You make a whole lotta assumptions there.  I don't think I buy into all of them.

First of all, I don't think Christianity is anywhere near dead.  However, it may continue to *ahem* evolve over time, while various trends within it continue to rise and fall.  I think the authoritarian tendencies toward the faith are in decline,  while 'service' and 'responsibility' look like they may be on the uptick at the moment.

I think there will continue to be a wide variety of beliefs, with a wider array of possibilities for people to consider due to the massive availability of information.  Some will simply follow their forebears without consideration of course.

I don't consider anything where you have to follow someone else's instructions in a book to be 'self-help'.  It's like calling paint by numbers 'art'.

Meanwhile, kids who have more brains than sense well continue to offer up sophomoric pretense, fancying themselves as being better than the common hoi polloi.  Most will grow out of it.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Hopefully we go back to the Greek Gods. They were actually interesting and not boring as hell

This.

No seriously, actually I tend to agree with you, Storebought (unusual that). However I think you are making an assumption that is religion is about belief in a thing rather than action or ritual or even the understanding of one's existence. For any religion to thrive or even exist it needs ritual or ceremony, religion is after all social. That is, at least from my experiences, people can very religious (in the organized sense: as in devout catholic) yet not have a spirtual or theological inclination in their whole selves. This is why 'reason' or 'scientism' can become a religion or part of a religious experience as such - it involves too few people, it is not an experience (also it has no real interest towards our individual phenomological experiences, which should be considered different from typically human neurological ones) most people take part in. There is a reason that those strongly pushing scientism in society are scientists, as one might expect... and almost no-one else.

As for Christianity the arguments and history against it are now so strong and so well developed that it is unlikely that we ever seen a return to it anywhere, at least among a large group of people with intellectual inclininations and no Christian background/heritage... as we can see from the pitiful joke that is alot of modern contemporary 'worship' and attempts to make it more 'liberal' are bound to backfire, as to a certain extent a large part of the appeal of the religion, of any religion, is that it is same consistent faith as one's ancestors and parents, but with the anti-tradition element that features in alot of liberal/modernist/postmodernist thought and which has spread widely across society for varying and complex reasons that no longer is a strong arguement and yet would make the church look hypocritical and self-serving for them to change themselves (I'm especially thinking of catholicism here).

Yet what we might call "the religious instinct" is still there mostly certainly, yet no religion has much in the way of credibility. Except perhaps the Western intrepretation of Buddhism, but the new age phenomena and its position in Indian-Hindu tradition rather than the western one rooted in Greek Philosophy and The Hebrew Religious texts makes it a highly unlikely proposition when added to the amazing smug self-righteouness which make western Buddhist converts emit and its association (in America especially) with a certain brand of left-wing politics. "Political Theologies" like Classical Marxism are certainly dead, as is belief in any structured sort of secular change: the last century was damaging for humanism among other beliefs.

So may I speculate about what a future 'religion' look like: Assuming it forms in the 21st Century and in social conditions that aren't too different from the present. It will have to be something which will be seen to individualistic, yet like all individualists it will be highly conformist, in it's attitude - it also probably be highly romanticist (but will HAVE to be abstract from politics, or at least conventional liberal-conservative politics) in its attitudes: however anything more general would be difficult at this stage to outline (Jungian Psycharity seems a good potentially, or at least did), but whatever it is, is have to be a highly social in character among its members and will have to be somewhat unworldly or reject the world as such. Perhaps in all what I'm thinking of is perhaps more of a (post)modernist neo-monastic movement than a true religion

[k-onmmunist]

Religion will die out. Atheism will replace it, ushering in a new age of peace.

[anvi]

I'd be overjoyed to see any ideology put the world at peace.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid it won't happen.  With or without religion, we are all still human beings, and human beings, tragically, sadly, have never been at a loss when it comes to manufacturing rationale to kill one another. 

[John Dibble]

Religion will die out. Atheism will replace it, ushering in a new age of peace.

After all, religion is the only reason for violence.