“The virus is accelerating a trend away from organized religion.” (“Dechurching; The Sunday Slump,” The Economist, May 23, 2020)
This article chronicles the financial problems of some churches due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like theaters and other public places, church gatherings have halted because of the risk of spreading the virus. Weekly collections, the main source of funds for many churches, have plummeted for some, creating financial crises for them. A significant number of churches, the article predicted, might close for good.
Church attendance in the United States already was declining. The article predicted that the pandemic’s effects may accelerate this trend.
Interestingly, on the same page in this issue of The Economist is a short article about the scientist Francis Collins, the man who worked on the sequencing of the human genome (“Jesus is not his vaccine.”)
Dr. Collins was born into a secular family but became a Christian at the age of 27 after reading C.S. Lewis and discovering in other writers “a rich vein of philosophical and theological thinking.”
Dr. Collins suggests science answers the “how?” questions while Christianity answers the “why?” questions.
Back in the 1800’s, the church suffered a crisis due to the new theory of evolution and other scientific discoveries. It seemed that the church, many of whose members clung to a literal seven day theory of creation, would eventually die out.
The church did not die but eventually found new life when such theories as evolution actually indicated a magnificent creator, far more complex and awesome than previously imagined.
Indeed, the church has suffered growth, decline, then rebirth over the centuries ever since the Christian missionary preacher Paul began spreading the radical belief that the religion of Jesus was something entirely new, for Gentiles, too, not just another school of Judaic thought.
Who knows what a revived and reborn Christianity might arise out of Zoom meetings and long-distance learning, no longer subject to enclosure by physical buildings?