The turn of the millennium was a media opportunity for an outpouring of evaluations of the past and predictions for the future. As part of this Y2K fever, the GTU was asked to respond to some sweeping questions about the history and future of Christianity. Presented below are selections from the reflections offered by GTU faculty and administrators.

How is Christianity faring?

John Dillenberger, president of the GTU: Christianity is in a complex relation to the culture in which it lives; indeed is itself a culture. So it is formed in many ways by a culture and in turn also forms it. In the US, mainline churches have declined in numbers and in some sense in influence. But there are also signs that their voice is again being found, that affirmations of faith are taking on fresh forms. The right wing of Christian groups is more vocal than ever, but is itself full of division and decreasing influence. Spirituality is the “in” phenomenon, but it is most subversive of traditional religious outlooks, both those of the right and the left. But it works well as a religious phenomenon, a kind of religiousness that can mesh easily with a secular society. In many ways the secular city has become the religious city, aware of its religiousness but less clear about what that means for its corporate life.

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What has Christianity or the church done badly, and what has it done right?

Bill McKinney, president of Pacific School of Religion: All living faith traditions struggle with the challenge of being faithful to their core beliefs while also being sensitive to their social and historical context. At its best moments Christianity has both reflected and helped to shape the cultures of which it has been a part. Its worst moments have been those in which it has uncritically reflected its social context. In the past couple of centuries some of Christianity's worst moments have also been its best. Nazi Germany reflects an extreme example of the danger of Christianity's capitulation to secular culture, but it also gave rise to the Barmen Declaration. Similarly, over the centuries Christianity has been used both to justify slavery and to bring it down.

Timothy Lull, president of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary: Would we have all these good things—printing, universities, literacy, human rights and the rest—without the church? There is no way to know. The recent tendency for both secular and Christian historians has been to exhibit all of religion's flaws in the brightest light. Some of them are painful, as in the history of Christian relationships with the Jews. But for all the killing in the name of religion throughout human history, the really bloody century has been the last one, largely at the hands of modern totalitarian states that were deeply anti-Christian. Perhaps we are too much in the middle of all this to say what has been done well. Others might say that best about us.

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Where is Christianity heading? Sectarianism? The universal? What will be the gift of our current Christian scene to the culture one thousand years from now?

Margaret Miles, GTU Dean: At the present Christianity is characterized by diversity and this will be its gift to the future—a Christianity that allows, even delights in variations of belief and practice based on the cultural indigenization of Christianity. In the US, Hispanic and African American congregations, religious leaders, and theologians are presently exploring ways to appropriate and practice Christianity based on their cultural heritages. Women are also increasing in leadership roles in (most) Christian churches. Multiculturalism and gender and sexual orientation diversity, not only in the pew but also in leadership, will increase Christianity's inclusivity. These changes will make enormous, but as yet unpredictable, differences in the face of Christianity worldwide.

Timothy Lull: There is no global answer to the first question, because circumstances vary regionally. Christianity in Europe faces some hard questions in the century to come. Is there enough vitality left to pass on the faith to more than a tiny remnant? Christianity in the Southern hemisphere is vital, changing, and increasingly providing leadership to the world Christian movement. Most of the Popes for the next thousand years will, I predict, come from that part of the world.

Christians in North America still have great energy and great resources for shaping their own future, despite some decline in the past couple of decades, especially among the old main-line Protestants. If they don't get caught in self-pity, there's a robust future. I think the central question for the next couple of decades will be whether local Christian communities can open themselves to be centers for mission in a very diverse society, or whether they will become chaplaincies to an ever smaller core of already gathered members. It's far from clear to me what the answer to that will be.

Bill McKinney: The center of gravity of the Christian movement is shifting from the Northern to the Southern hemisphere. It is conceivable to me that in a thousand years people may wonder why it once seemed so strongly tied to cultures of “the West.” Already, Christianity is having to learn what it means to co-exist alongside other faith traditions. Something intrinsic to Christianity makes it both uncomfortable with and always striving toward both particularity and universalism.

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What makes American Christians and churches unique?

Eldon Ernst, Professor of American Church History, American Baptist Seminary of the West: Unique is a strong word—even absolute. I prefer distinctive. It is hard to generalize about all the variety of American churches. But that is the clue. Most every kind of Christian tradition that exists in the world exists in the U.S., plus some indigenous to the U.S. that have been exported (i.e. Disciples of Christ, Seventh Day Adventist, Mormons). This is unprecedented and unmatched Christian pluralism, and in a sense Philip Schaff was correct to describe it in 1893 as “The Reunion of Christendom.” But the U.S. is not Christendom. Other world religions flourish here as well, and the Constitutional First Amendment precludes any establishment or even recognition of Christian privilege, despite the fact that Christians still make up the large majority of religious adherents in the nation. In the U.S. Christians are relating to persons of other world religions to an extent generally unprecedented and unmatched elsewhere.

Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, director of the Center for Women and Religion: The socio-cultural, historical, political, economic backdrop of our American tapestry and landscape of many voices, mixed with the central proximity of violence, the passion for manifest destiny, and the quest for freedom amid the cathedrals of democracy, with the import of faith in the founding of this country has left an indelible mark on American Christians.

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Would Jesus, or the church fathers, understand what has become of their faith?

Bill McKinney: I suspect that Jesus would have been as shocked by the early church that came to take his name as by anything he would see today! I'm struck less by how things are different from first century times than by the staying power of Jesus' teachings: God remains God and human beings continue to await the time when the lion will lie down with the lamb and the world will know a true sense of shalom.

Eldon Ernst: I suspect he would have been surprised, to say the least, at what has transpired over the centuries “in his name”—e.g. crusades, colonial missions, closed Eucharist and communion traditions and practices. As for the church fathers, they might not have been surprised at the unfolding varied traditions of Christianity, related to both theology and practice, and region, but they might not have made sense of Christendom—the establishment of the church in vast empires.

Margaret Miles: Identifying oneself as a Christian means that one must carry one's tradition into the present in one's warm body, using the best of insight and education to translate into the present moment the effects of belief that “God is love” (I John 4:16). This is what Jesus and the church fathers did, and present-day Christians are faithful to Christian traditions by imitating what they did, not what they looked like, or even always what they said.

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