389 Why Christianity 2: Lay of the Land (Sean Finnegan)

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This is part 2 of the Why Christianity class.

It’s so easy to universalize our own local context.  For example, I (Sean) live in a secular, post-Catholic part of New York state.  It would be easy for me to think that most of the state or country or world is just like my area.  However, this ethnocentric perspective will not do justice to the data we have about Christians in the world today.  Sociologists have long held to the “secularization thesis”–the idea that world religions die out as societies improved education, technology, and health-care.  Is this what we see happening globally?  Join me in this episode as we explore the data from a number of sources to get a lay of the land.  How popular is Christianity today?

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—— Notes ——

Objective: to understand the local and global religious landscapes in light of Christianity’s popularity and its claims about Christ’s universal supremacy.

Secularization Thesis

“The seminal social thinkers of the nineteenth century—Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—all believed that religion would gradually fade in importance and cease to be significant with the advent of industrial society.” -Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular, p. 3.

Future Projections

Religion, especially Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, is expected to either keep pace with population growth or surpass it while non-religious ideologies are predicted to fall 3% by 2050.

Universal Claims about Christ

Scriptures that make big claims about Christ’s cosmic importance:
– Colossians 1:19​-20; 2:1-3
– Ephesians 1:9-10
– Philippians 2:9-11

Christianity’s geographic distribution testifies to its transnational, transracial, transcultural appeal.