Why Christianity works: an emotions-focused phenomenological account.
Sociology of Religion › Vol. 68 Nbr. 2, June 2007
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Why Christianity works: an emotions-focused phenomenological account.
It has been three centuries since Voltaire launched his attacks on the Christian Church, 160 years since Marx reduced religion to a narcotic of the oppressed, 125 years since Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, and nearly 80 years since Freud exposed the illusion of faith as erroneous wish fulfillment in projecting a father figure. The Enlightenment and modernity brought with them profoundly anti-Christian voices and forces, and generations of these same intellectuals have debunked Christianity, deconstructed the church, and foretold the demise of the Christian faith. Today, more than a few heirs of this secular and secularizing tradition carry on this skeptical cause, inhabiting, in particular, knowledge class enclaves in higher education, the media, and various highly credentialed professions.
Remarkably, however, Christianity has survived and in places thrived, despite these challenges and sometimes onslaughts (Casanova 1994; Smith 1998; Jenkins 2002). For instance, the majority of most Western Europeans appear to have become secularized, but a committed Christian minority still survives and sometimes flourishes in many parts of Europe. Meanwhile, Christian churches, both Orthodox and otherwise, are reviving and growing in many nations of the former Soviet Union. Further south, in many African and Asian countries, Christianity is growing faster than the populations of their countries. In Latin America, the vast majority of people adhere to their traditional Roman Catholic faith, the primary religious challenge to which turns out to be not secularism but an animated Pentecostal Christianity. In the United States, about one-third of Americans regularly attend religious services, mostly in Christian churches. Committed secularists in the U.S. look out from their enclaves over a vast nation that seems, astonishingly, to be awash in a sea of popular faith--including a great deal of evangelical Christianity, which represents about one in every four Americans. The curren...See the full content of this document
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