New Religious-Type Groups are Starting to Crowd Christianity

Maybe it has always been true, things change as history chugs along. It just seems like things are changing faster. I refer often here to how many gray-haired people there are in churches today. This signals, of course, churches that will die off. What's surprising, however, is that in a study of counties in the U.S., the counties with older populations are less Christian than counties with younger populations. 

This might be good news for Christianity. Not the case. There are very few counties with growing populations of young people. Where these exist, they are not growing with white Protestant and Catholic populations. They are other races and various other religious traditions.

I'm sure all of us have experienced a surprise at the way some other group thinks and acts. I was not familiar with a group often called The Law of Attraction. The speakers/gurus associated with this group are named Abraham-Hicks, a married couple. Their speaking events and luxury cruises sell out. As far as I can tell their schtick is like the book, Think and Grow Rich. If you think in the correct was you will achieve whatever you want. There have been, of course, a host of authors and performers who have made a living on this notion. Perhaps much of what is called, Progressive Theology, in Christianity is not far from it. 

If it is true people under 30 o 40 years old are shopping for some kind of meaning but don't find it in Christianity, it certainly is a time when smooth talkers could become popular. That's how Christianity came along, why not some other group?

What's different today than back when Islam and Christianity were growing is that the world has access to phones and computers. Individual brains go off in their own direction and are hard to harness. I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but world when Paganism reigned seems similar to today. Back then, humans were in thousands of different groups. Each group or region had its own god or gods. Without a centralized king or dictator to round up strays and make one religion/one-god countries. The ability to corral entire nations to one god or religion has become all but impossible because everyone has access to more information.

While replacement religions are coming, I doubt any will become huge.