The Implosion of Christianity

Christianity, a two-thousand-year-old religion consciously designed to convert semi-literate town dwellers on the margins of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterrean, has lost both credibility and some exemplary ethical value for those living in today’s radically changed times. In spite of biblical precedent, once established none of the mainline bible-based churches would tolerate annoying prophets criticising the high priests and recommending reform of the embedded dogma. This fossilised ecclesiastical refusal to reform drove many people into the arms of materialistic politicians promising them paradise on earth. Thus was Salvation replaced by Economic Progress.

Politicians trapped their people in nationalist and socialist welfare-state prisons of the spirit based on massive compulsory income tax which enabled governments to control secular education, physical health and material welfare for almost everyone. These were administered by unimaginative bureaucrats motivated mainly by desire for a regular income and a guaranteed pension. Christian love and charity shrivelled and died except amongst voluntary associations and the fundamentalist denominations and sects who in many ways had reverted back to the mythic-archaic stage of religion. In the past Islam had occasionally developed beyond this stage but was everywhere reverting back to fundamentalist withdrawal from the reflective, ethical-universal advances of the Axial Age.