Modern Christianity

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Christianity, the largest of the world’s religions, was born into the Greco-Roman world. At the outset, it appeared to be a sect of Judaism, but it took its distinctive character from the fact that it centered in Jesus Christ. It seemed to have a scant likelihood of winning a continuing role in history. The public career of Jesus lasted at most three years, and he met the implacable opposition of his people’s religious leaders. One of his inner circles of chosen friends betrayed him to his enemies. He died on a Roman cross, presumably frustrated and a failure. However, his disciples were convinced that he had been raised from the dead. They proclaimed him as Savior and Lord and declared that those who acknowledged him as such would enter upon the kind of triumphant, radiant, eternal life which they saw in him.

The post 1914 decades again brought new challenges to Christianity. From lands and people which had traditionally been Christian came forces, which worked at a vast revolution- political, economic, and cultural- in the entire human race. Two world wars fought with weapons devised in what had been called Christendom embroiled the entire globe. Beginning in 1945 atomic energies, first released in the United States, threatened mankind with extinction. In Europe and Asia old forms of government toppled. In wide areas, notably Russia and China, they were replaced by frankly and at times militantly atheistic Communism. Land after land was industrialized, with attendant challenges to religion. In both Western and Eastern Europe church attendance declined. Outside the Occident, the colonialism which flourished in the nineteenth century was being shaken off. The Christianity which had been associated with Western imperialism was challenged as a cultural phase of that imperialism. Here and there, were resurgence of non-Christian religions- chiefly Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. However, the general trend throughout the world was toward a religion-denying secularism.

In striking contrast to these challenges, there was mounting vitality in Christianity. This was seen in at least seven ways.

1. Christianity was continuing its geographic spread. This was chiefly through Roman Catholic and Protestant missions and to a lesser extent by the Eastern churches. In spite of the increases in population during the half-century which followed 1914, Christians, though, still minorities, increased their portion of the populations in India, Indonesia, and Africa south of the Sahara.
2. Christianity became deeply rooted among more people that it, or any other religion had ever been. The reaction against Western imperialism might have led to a recession in the Christian tide because of the association of missionaries with colonial powers; but instead it hastened the development of indigenous initiative and leadership.
3. Christianity persisted in lands controlled by Communism. In Russia, after a period when the anti-Christian measures of the Communists greatly reduced the number of church members, Christianity revived and grew, even though not to the same numerical dimension as before.
4. New movements were emerging and old ones were being strengthened. In the Roman Catholic Church the Liturgical Movement, Catholic Action, Eucharistic congresses, Christian Democratic parties, the Legion of Mary, many youth organizations and new translations of the Bible into the vernaculars gave evidence of a larger participation of the laity.
5. Efforts to take account of the intellectual currents of the age were made. In the Roman Catholic Church on the Eve of World War I, Rome had taken empathetic measures to eradicate the “modernism” which threatened to corrode the faith of many of the clergies. That action did not, however, eliminate scholarly activity.
6. Christians were coming together as never before. They were still far from being united in one ecclesiastical body, but rapid progress was being made toward presenting a common front to the world. The trend was especially marked in Protestantism, by its very nature the most divided wing of Christianity.
7. Christianity was having a wider moral influence on mankind outside the churches than ever before. For example, it contributed greatly to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, the most influential Indian of the century, and through him influenced many of his fellow countrymen. Clearly, Christianity was not dominant in the world of the twentieth century but, while vigorously challenged, it was widely influential in the affairs of men.

Christianity has spread in the world big time. Through the efforts of many of our ancestors, it has flourished and later developed us into a valued person making us holistically competent beings. Are you proud you’re a Christian?