WILLOW Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 1 The Next 1,000 Years of Christianity by Kevin Kelly An alarming number of churched teenagers are not sticking with their faith. Here are some shifts that may turn things around. The Christian church has changed significantly over time. The church in the year 1000 A.D. 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. 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 percent 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 long-term 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 While the next millennium may be distant in culture, technology, and all things new, it is actually not far away in human terms. If we figure a future generation will last the current average lifespan of 70 years, then the next 1,000 years is only 13 generations away. Calculated this way 1,000 years doesn’t seem so distant, because this span of humans could fit around a dinner table. We could hold the list of 13 names, linking us and the year 3000 A.D., in our head. In terms of lifetimes — which are steadily increasing due to medical progress — 10 centuries is just next door. FUTURITY Where might the Christian church head in the next 13 generations? It is impossible to predict how 6 billion free-willed souls living on the planet (not to mention an expected additional3 billion at the peak) will interact with the extreme change offered by their collective ideas, interests, and inevitable new technologies such as genetic engineering, quantum computing, and cognitive sciences. The specifics of the next 1,000 years is in a real sense unfathomable. We can only work with scenarios — plausible stories — since we are certain that whatever happens must be, by definition, plausible and possible. I offer five plausible scenarios, five thought experiments, five visions of how the church will change. Consider these five scenarios, then, as boundaries which mark the outer limits of the possible, suggesting that what actually will happen will converge somewhere within these bounds. These five scenarios are in addition to the single scenario which the Christian church has used for the past 2,000 years. That scenario — the end of the world in our lifetime — has of course not occurred. The end of the world in our lifetime might still occur, and so it must be kept as a possibility, but as a history of more than 2,000 years suggests, we should consider other possible futures in the next 1,000 years. If Christians don’t seize the future, then unbelievers will. 1. The Center of Christianity Will Shift West One hundred years ago there were almost no Christians in Korea. Now 50 percent of South Koreans identify themselves as Christians. A century ago the percentage of Christians in China was unnoticeable. According to David Aikman, author of Jesus in Beijing, we can expect 30 percent of the population of China will be Christian by 2040. On the other hand everyday in Europe an old church is decommissioned. Today African churches send more missionaries to the West than the West sends to Africa. The center of gravity for the global Christian church is shifting quickly. 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 A.D. 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 A.D. the USA in particular came to see itself as the headquarters of Christian belief, now removed half way around the world from its origins. In other words, for the past 2,000 years the center of Christianity has steadily moved west. 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 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 will keep migrating westward beyond East and Central Asia. The new missionaries based in Asia in the coming century will reach out to unbelievers in the birthplace of Christianity. Eventually the center of gravity will leave Asia and slowly head west to return to the Middle East. In the next 1,000 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 U.S. 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, 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 has 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 Mormons, is experiencing fantastic rates of population growth, primarily outside the U.S. 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, or heretics by the orthodox, or at best, worrisome experiments that need to be watched carefully. An entirely safe bet would be that the largest denomination 1,000 years from now is one that does not exist at the moment. 4. The Spiritual Dimension of Technology Of all the challenges one can imagine Christianity facing in the next 1,000 years, at least 95 percent of them will be driven by new technologies. Current hot topics such as contraception, abortion, stem cell therapies, and the mainstreaming of pornography are all issues forced by new technologies. These challenges are tame compared to the ones coming. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, SMS — these are solutions, and these are problems. The next generations of Christians will speak this language as easily as we speak English. It took several centuries for Christianity to embrace capitalism and markets, to interpret them in terms of freedom of worship and work, when on the face of it, communism seems more Christ-like. The long-term trend is more technology in the Christian culture; what is missing, and what may take several generations to supply, is an understanding of the spiritual meaning of technology. 5. Relations With Other Beliefs Everything in the future of media tilts it toward questioning and doubt. If Christianity is to swim in this emerging culture and yet keep its certainty of salvation, it has to develop a cultural practice of positive questioning, of active holy doubt, and a clear articulation of what is eternal and what is in flux. This is likely to be constructed not by theologians, but by the members of the worldwide church in a distributed social media context. The wiki-church. Chief among the other beliefs to be dealt with is Islam. Islam is rising through population growth, rather than converts. In Europe a dying Christian community is being replaced by a growing Islamic community. It is easy to imagine a scenario where Europe becomes Eurabia — mostly Muslim, and only marginally Christian. In other parts of the world Islam has turned radical and militant because of tyrannical politics in the Mideast nations, and consequential miserable economies, some heavily distorted by oil, which have bankrupted the current generation of youth. Would Islam continue to be militant if these social ills were healed? We don’t know. The millions of non-militant moderate Muslim communities of the world, however, suggest an alternative scenario worth considering. On many social issues moderate Islam and conservative Christianity agree. They are both people of the book. They both honor many of the same prophets. They agree on many religious issues like prayer, sexuality, sin, and family. It is not impossible to imagine Muslims and Christians becoming allies in the inevitable culture wars of the future. It is no more impossible than imagining Christians and Jews would be allies a thousand years ago. One hundred years from now a conservative Christian-Islam alliance might be a serious global political force. HERE AND NOW Of course nothing like this may happen, or maybe something even more unimaginable will happen. The point of scenarios is to explore the present. We consider the future in order to design institutions that will do well and good over many generations. To do that we have to have a firm grasp of what is happening now. Sometimes it takes an exercise of extrapolating to a thousand years from now to see what is happening tomorrow. Only by extending a trend can we see if it might endure, or survive in the face of other trends, or if it might provoke an awareness of a trend we could not see before. If anyone takes a generational concern for the future of mankind, it should be Christians. If not the followers of Jesus, then who will contemplate that place we are headed? It is written in Joel 1:3: “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.” The future always begins right now. You have been reading an abridged version of Kevin Kelly’s Fermi Short, The Next 1000 Years of Christianity. Download the complete version of this Fermi Short for $7 at www.fermiproject.com/store JOIN THE FERMI PROJECT The Fermi Project is a broad collective of innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders experimenting with ways to advance the common good in culture. Fermi Shorts are essays released monthly through Fermi Words, a new digital magazine. Fermi Words is a hybrid of written and spoken words created to provoke conversations. To receive your free issue of Fermi Words go to www.fermiproject.com/free Q • APRIL 9-11, 2008 • NEW YORK CITY Q is a boutique event for leaders in the church to become informed and exposed to future-culture. In a three-day experience. Q introduces participants to 25 presenters on a myriad of topics selected to heighten their awareness and challenge their creativity as they consider their role in shaping culture. On April 9-11, at Gotham Hall in Manhattan, Q is gathering innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders together to explore the church’s role in positively contributing to culture. A few remarkable leaders will collaborate around the biggest questions facing the church and culture in our society over the next 10 years. www.fermiproject.com/q Top