According to one academic study, religious practice in the world appears to be declining:

“From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied—43 out of 49—became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.” (Ronald F. Inglehart, University of Michigan, “Giving up on God; the Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

A previous study analyzing 49 countries from 1981-2007 had found that 33 of the 49 countries had become more religious. The 33 countries included most former communist countries, most developing countries, and even a few high income countries.

The more recent study, however, showed that religion was practiced less even in many lower income countries.

Inglehart concluded: “Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.”

What is interesting for me, however, in a personal look into Christianity’s place in the world today, is how it is, this moment, continuing its tradition of breaking new barriers.

In times past, religion in western societies usually revolved around families and communities. Schools, politics, and other forms of civic life tended to uphold norms held by the majority. Religion included a kind of civil religion, generally Christian or Jewish.

Mass migration of young people away from birth communities as well as modern inventions like social media have played havoc with community norms. The multi-generational family long ago gave way to the nuclear family which gave way to young people setting up single person households or with a significant other. Religion as encouraged by family suffered greatly.

Now, however, a next generation Christianity is proving that Christianity is not dead but evolving, perhaps closer to the model lived by Jesus.

A minority, but a significant minority, are espousing issues like racial reconciliation and care for the struggling—the homeless, the mentally ill, and the migrant, to name a few.

From the time the disciple Peter struggled to accept Gentiles into the Jewish Christian community, Christians have broken bounds, sometimes willingly, sometimes after fallow periods—but the conquest first named in a letter from the missionary preacher Paul continues today: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you all one in Christ Jesus.”