TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/101592/10159921.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.7 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                SPECIAL ISSUE: MILLENNIUM -- BEYOND THE YEAR 2000 

THE CENTURY AHEAD, Page 61

Kingdoms to Come


Faith will thrive, but what shape will religions take? A look
at 2092:

BY RICHARD N. OSTLING


    As the year 2092 dawns, Catholicism remains the largest
component within Christianity, the world's biggest and most
widespread faith. In the preceding century, the papacy has been
making the multicultural rounds. A safe Italian followed the
sharp-edged Pole, John Paul II, but then came South American,
African and Asian Popes (one African American nearly made it).
Finally, the Italians reinstituted their monopoly over the
throne of Peter. The incumbent Italian, Pope Pius XIV, is
slowly reacquiring some of the art masterpieces sold off to
cover Vatican debts.

    At the formal level, nothing much came of the moral
rearrangements that some Catholics used to advocate back in the
late 20th century, such as the right to divorce, tolerance for
gay sex and, above all, birth control. Rome's insistence on
adhering to church tradition has required the hierarchy to hold
the line, but in practice most local priests wink at widespread
violations of these tenets. Parishes have become considerably
more democratic, and lay people (most of them women) perform
most tasks, including administration of everything but the
sacraments. The ban on women priests, however, remains in
force. Priests and bishops are still appointed from on high, but
one major organizational change has been in place for decades:
many married men serve as Catholic priests to ease the clergy
shortage.

    Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, with their emphasis on
ritual, are well suited to a world in which few people bother to
read. Theology is a dying art. Schoolchildren are ignorant of
the Bible and hence bereft of their spiritual heritage. The
postliterate era has been especially difficult for
Protestantism, which depended so heavily upon rationalism and
reading. Although old-style Protestants are shrinking in
numbers, they retain outsize influence because so many of them
remain book readers and are thus inevitably leaders of the
economic ruling class on all continents.

    The papacy is ecumenically friendly and has helped
establish an innocuous organization, the World Christian
Conference. But decades ago, Rome's intransigence about its
powers killed off hopes for a grand reunion with Eastern
Orthodoxy. Nor do the Protestants show much interest in
mergers; unruliness characterizes the Evangelicals, Charismatics
and independent African churches. The Protestant liberals, only
vaguely Christian any longer, harbor anger about Rome's
decisive moves in the 2040s to restrict Bible criticism and halt
efforts to blur the lines between Christianity and other
religions.

    Yet cooperative activity thrives in other ways. Virtually
all Christians have united in a cultural movement to eradicate
the last vestiges of anti-Jewish sentiment. But less concord is
in evidence with Islam, the world's second-ranking religion.
The Prophet's faith, while huge, is circumscribed in its
cultural impact because its brightest youths are totally
secularized in outlook, even though they maintain the outward
forms of devotion. The many Islamic revival regimes have failed
to manage their economies or to foster political democracy.
Leaders allow almost no free intellectual discussion in religion
or in anything else. Women are not encouraged to contribute
anything to Islamic thought. A few scattered intellectuals are
again starting to question this whole stultifying state of
affairs.

    No important sect or cult has been born for decades. The
colorful creeds from olden times are tiny or extinct, among
them Baha'i, One-Faith, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses
and the Hemlockite death cult. Of the assorted new revelations
that were announced toward the end of the second millennium,
only Mormonism maintains global reach, but it remains
relatively small. On the other hand, the ancient forms of
Hinduism and Buddhism, once considered near-cults in the U.S.,
have become sizable and respectable there.

    The affluent classes of developed countries have rejected
high-demand sects and cults in favor of no-demand faiths.
Groups loosely lumped together as the World Soul Movement
originated with the synthetic pantheist, neopagan, nature-love
and New Age groups that were the rage early in the 21st century.
The triumph of feminist religion caused many Christians and Jews
to shun references to God in personal terms (no more Lord or
Heavenly Father). This in turn strengthened the groups that
worship a mysterious nature-force or seek to deify the self.
Today's variegated religious revival is partly the result of a
need for effective moral commitment to protecting the
environment.

    It seems amazing now that there was a time when science was
supposedly the "enemy" of faith, and religion was deemed hostile
to technological investigation. The end of atheism and
agnosticism became inevitable as soon as computer calculations
made improbable the odds that random natural selection could be
the sole explanation for the ever increasing intricacies found
in biology. Equally influential was the discovery of multiple
universes, which astronomers found at the macrocosmic level and
physicists detected in the microcosmic. Science thus
established the current Age of Faith, re-creating the Creator.
Nowadays, only the fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
The question now becomes which God: the amorphous Soul of
fashionable cults, the antiseptic First Principle of science,
or the personal God who still inspires awe and commands
commitment?