Proof That Political Privilege Is Harmful for Christianity

[Michie]

Our analysis of 166 nations suggests the biggest threat to Christian vitality is not persecution, affluence, education, or pluralism. It’s state support.


Why is Christianity growing in some countries but declining in others?

For much of the 20th century, social scientists answered this question by appealing to the so-called secularization thesis: the theory that science, technology, and education would result in Christianity’s declining social influence.

More recently, some scholars have suggested the cause is rather the accumulation of wealth. Increasing prosperity, it is believed, frees people from having to look to a higher power to provide for their daily needs. In other words, there is a direct link from affluence to atheism.

In a peer-reviewed study published this month in the journal Sociology of Religion, my coauthor and I challenge the perceived wisdom that education and affluence spell Christianity’s demise.

In our statistical analysis of a global sample of 166 countries from 2010 to 2020, we find that the most important determinant of Christian vitality is the extent to which governments give official support to Christianity through their laws and policies. However, it is not in the way devout believers might expect.

As governmental support for Christianity increases, the number of Christians declinessignificantly. This relationship holds even when accounting for other factors that might be driving Christian growth rates, such as overall demographic trends.

Continued below.
Proof That Political Privilege Is Harmful for Christianity

 

[jgarden]

One night have assumed that the early Christians would have been overjoyed when the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity and ended centuries of religious persecution - providing the Church with the recognition, respectability and stability that it had never received in the past!

Although that may have been the sentiment that was widely held, a large number of Christians found themselves appalled by the prospect that the Church would willingly allowed itself to cross that line which had distinguished it from the secular world - appearing to compromise and contradict those very Biblical teachings that had justified its existence!

While the "Imperial Church" would emerge as the "mirror image" of the secular world, reflecting its materialistic wealth and prosperity, other Christians felt obligated to consciously withdraw from society, establishing monastic orders that physically removed them from many of the world's temptations and corrupting influences on their faith!