Great job capturing key historical moments in a balanced way. It's funny how many people struggle to recognize that nation states are a modern phenomenon, largely downstream of the printing press. But print is obsolete! And that's one reason why the nation state as a form of polity is in crisis.
Christianity, meanwhile, has outlived its own putative irrelevance. There was a time, not that long ago, when it would kind of make sense, and capture a lot of people's feelings, to say: "Christian, Jew, secular, even Hindu or Muslim; it doesn't matter that much, the main thing is that we're all Americans." Wave some flags and watch the same TV shows and to go to the same conformist patriotic schools, and it really could start to seem like nationality was the essence and religion was the etcetera, No matter how thin the content of Americanism was compared to Christianity.
That's fading. Of the explanations you list in the post, I think media technology is more important than the others in explaining the shattering of Christendom. Now, for 30 years, the internet has been kaleidoscoping the discourse, at once globalizing it and nichefying it but decentralizing any kind of national conversation from people's consciousness. Expect AI to accelerate that. By contrast, Christianity isn't really losing market share globally, and it's definitely not losing relevance. I think there is a pattern whereby Christianity is gaining importance as a source of identity for a lot of very marginal believers, or outright unbelievers. What kind of future Christendom does that point to? All answers are speculative, but speculation is worthwhile on such an important topic.
I don't know the future of the nation state, exactly. I plan to get into it more on this Substack over time but I'm not promising some amazing reveal because I don't pretend to know. I don't root for upheaval and civic unrest, but I think it's clear that nation states have some bad problems they don't know how to fix, and also that people are again drawing on them as an identity source in ways that go well beyond what is healthy or right. Patriotism doesn't have to be a form of national idolatry, but it can be and today often is, and part of the reason that happens of course is because so many people are socially and culturally impoverished, lacking other (healthier!) sources of meaning and identity. So they need other sources. Family, yes. Community, absolutely. Also faith.
As you say, Christianity isn't losing global market share. Its capacity for explanation, synthesis, and organization is presently under leveraged, not "being pushed to its very limits and beyond" as in the case of nation states. Even if you don't believe in Jesus it's an obvious, natural candidate for filling some of these opening voids.
Great job capturing key historical moments in a balanced way. It's funny how many people struggle to recognize that nation states are a modern phenomenon, largely downstream of the printing press. But print is obsolete! And that's one reason why the nation state as a form of polity is in crisis.
Christianity, meanwhile, has outlived its own putative irrelevance. There was a time, not that long ago, when it would kind of make sense, and capture a lot of people's feelings, to say: "Christian, Jew, secular, even Hindu or Muslim; it doesn't matter that much, the main thing is that we're all Americans." Wave some flags and watch the same TV shows and to go to the same conformist patriotic schools, and it really could start to seem like nationality was the essence and religion was the etcetera, No matter how thin the content of Americanism was compared to Christianity.
That's fading. Of the explanations you list in the post, I think media technology is more important than the others in explaining the shattering of Christendom. Now, for 30 years, the internet has been kaleidoscoping the discourse, at once globalizing it and nichefying it but decentralizing any kind of national conversation from people's consciousness. Expect AI to accelerate that. By contrast, Christianity isn't really losing market share globally, and it's definitely not losing relevance. I think there is a pattern whereby Christianity is gaining importance as a source of identity for a lot of very marginal believers, or outright unbelievers. What kind of future Christendom does that point to? All answers are speculative, but speculation is worthwhile on such an important topic.
I don't know the future of the nation state, exactly. I plan to get into it more on this Substack over time but I'm not promising some amazing reveal because I don't pretend to know. I don't root for upheaval and civic unrest, but I think it's clear that nation states have some bad problems they don't know how to fix, and also that people are again drawing on them as an identity source in ways that go well beyond what is healthy or right. Patriotism doesn't have to be a form of national idolatry, but it can be and today often is, and part of the reason that happens of course is because so many people are socially and culturally impoverished, lacking other (healthier!) sources of meaning and identity. So they need other sources. Family, yes. Community, absolutely. Also faith.
As you say, Christianity isn't losing global market share. Its capacity for explanation, synthesis, and organization is presently under leveraged, not "being pushed to its very limits and beyond" as in the case of nation states. Even if you don't believe in Jesus it's an obvious, natural candidate for filling some of these opening voids.