RyansWorld: Waning of Christianity
From Future
Through a viewing-the-past only form of time travel, sometime in the mid 21st century, historians and field researchers find that Jesus Christ was a carpenter with a wife (Mary Madgalene) and a son (Judah Christ). Jesus Christ being a lifelong bachelor, childless, and the son of God are found to be exaggerations, lies, and half-truths spread by superstitious officials of the Church during the Middle Ages. Indeed even the myth of 'the virgin birth' is found to have arisen through a mistranslation of 'young woman' as 'virgin'. A prominent businessman and political leader in Europe now proclaims that he is the direct descendant of Jesus Christ, and that "not everyone is God's child." Whilst he can justify his claim of direct descent, his message is wildly unpopular, and helps to hasten the downfall of Christianity.
This, and the fact that churches are losing attendance annually for other reasons - a trend that was already well evident at the turn of the millennium - finally spell the downfall of the 2000-year old Christian faith. Few churches remain, many have been converted to apartments, tourist centres and pubs, wine cellars and 'themed' Casinos. With a terminal fall in Christianity, Easter and Christmas lose their trappings of religious significance - though in North America a holiday season still occurs, at Christmas, with present giving days on each of the twelve days of Christmas, each day sponsored by a different industry, and a two week try-a-new-diet season over the Easter holiday period gains in popularity.
Some people will cite the movie The DaVinci Code, as a turning point in public opinion about Christianity. However historians with access to modern research tools will be able to show other factors, including scandals of clerical child abuse, and increasing secularisation through advertising were more powerful forces in that direction. While Christianity is waning towards extinction, they first try to collaborate with the nanny states of the future. This would be instrumental in re-focusing the fashions of the day back into emphasizing modesty instead of sex appeal.
Intriguingly a computer generated graphical presentation of forces showing how Christianity tends to hide things and keep people happy and ignorant is shown to have an almost identical structure to a graphical presentation of forces showing how movies and advertising affects people.
By the 22nd century, very few people will believe in God. Instead, many people will choose to be either Buddhist or atheist. People in the country and in smaller towns will replace Christianity with Buddhism while people in the cities and metropolitan regions will adopt atheism as their 'religion'. Why a regional divide? Spiritualism will become a faux pas as people become more rational and less religious in their daily lives.
