Throughout the Western world, Christianity’s dominant cultural influence has been diminishing over the past few decades, if not centuries, and this trend has become increasingly apparent.

The remnants of Judeo-Christian moral insights endure, yet they grow weaker. Public identification with Christian mythic narratives and participation in their rituals decline, marking a clear post-Christian era.

The present religious landscape reveals declining institutions, congregations, financial support, participation, relevance, and interest, with entire denominations facing extinction within a decade or two.

Over one-third of Americans now disavow affiliation with any church or Christian organization, a trend more pronounced in Europe. (See Pew Research Center, Barna Research, or the latest Gallup poll for data.)

Church attendance and affiliation, though limited indicators, offer valuable insights. In 2016, 73.7% of Americans identified as Christian; by 2020, this number had fallen to 63.1%.

Europe’s trends are more striking. In Ireland, 85% attended weekly Mass in 1990 (at least three out of four Sundays); by 2023, only 18% attended regularly—a significant decline, not a mere drop-off. Most other European nations report even lower attendance.

Those abandoning active church membership or rejecting Christianity typically join no alternative religious group, forming the “Nones”—a demographic that cites “None” as their religious affiliation in surveys.

Studies of the Nones’ beliefs indicate a predominantly younger cohort rejecting traditional religious structures, forms, and perspectives. (See Pew Report on Religion in America or Wikipedia’s “Decline of Christianity” for details.)

Recent data suggest stabilization. The 2024 Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey notes a plateau in Christianity’s institutional decline following the COVID-19 pandemic, with many commentators highlighting a growing interest among public intellectuals. There is also a documented reengagement with certain forms of Christianity, notably Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but the climb up is steep. 

Though unlikely to disappear entirely, Christianity no longer dominates Western culture, raising the question: What drives this decline?

Mainstream culture increasingly bypasses Christianity, not due to the culture’s corruption or immorality, but because growing majorities scrutinize Christian claims, actions, and behaviors, deeming them irrelevant or worse.

Some decline stems from disillusionment with specific institutional communities or denominations, eroded by decades of overreach, unjustified theologies, arrogance, and abuse in the name of God. Religion has often justified partisan agendas and marginalized others, exacting a toll for this excess.

Recall American Evangelicalism in the 1980s or Roman Catholicism in the 1990s, where political and cultural overreach damaged both traditions. Influence requires a delicate balance, not power plays.

Moreover, many churches offer shallow spirituality, fostering magical thinking, wish fulfillment, and ego projection through shallow contemporary theology.

At the congregational level, Christianity struggles to make sense. Ideologically driven seminaries often fail to train clergy, and lay religious education remains inadequate. 

Despite its foundational message of love and dignity, Christianity has suffered from significant self-inflicted harm, resulting in a profound image crisis and public relations disaster. 

Over centuries, and particularly in recent decades, actions and attitudes contrary to the Way of Jesus have tarnished its reputation, leading to widespread confusion about what Christianity truly entails and requires. 

Hypocrisy, sex scandals, neglect, politicization, and attempts at cultural domination have alienated many, obscuring Christianity’s core values and driving people away from its message of hope.

Hypocrisy has been a persistent issue, as some Christians publicly profess values like humility and charity while privately acting in ways that contradict these principles. High-profile leaders preaching morality while engaging in deceit or greed, such as financial mismanagement in megachurches, undermine trust in the faith. 

Sex scandals, particularly within the Catholic Church, have further damaged credibility. The global revelation of clergy abuse, often coupled with institutional cover-ups, as seen in the 2002 Boston Globe investigation, has horrified the public, associating Christianity with betrayal rather than healing. 

Neglect of the marginalized, despite Jesus’s clear call to serve the poor and oppressed, has also hurt the faith’s image. Some churches prioritize wealth and power over social justice, ignoring systemic issues like poverty and homelessness.

Politicization has exacerbated this crisis, especially in the U.S., where political agendas have often co-opted Christianity. 

This politicization has fueled attempts at cultural domination, where some Christians seek to impose their values on society, often through legislation or public policy. 

Efforts to impose values that disregard pluralism, alienating those who do not share these beliefs, result in Christianity appearing as authoritarian rather than compassionate.

This has led to Christianity being associated with attitudes of domination and exclusion, particularly toward women, LGBT individuals, and those whose lives do not align with a restrictive vision of morality. 

Women have faced marginalization in some Christian circles, with Iron Age mores used to limit their roles in church life, social life, the ministry, and beyond, ignoring the egalitarian spirit of Jesus’s interactions with women. 

The alienation of LGBT people has been especially pronounced, with some denominations justifying exclusion, despite Jesus’s emphasis on love and inclusion, as seen in his outreach to societal outcasts. 

Additionally, those whose lives, through circumstances often beyond their control, such as poverty, divorce, or addiction, do not fit the narrow moral ideals of some Christians face judgment rather than support, further distancing them from the faith.

Banal music, mundane liturgies, irrelevant teaching, and excessive moralizing take their toll. Studies reveal a yearning for authentic community, relevant teachings, and traditions with spiritual depth.

When Sunday services prioritize entertainment or political messages over communal meaning, they sacrifice mystical experience, weakening lasting commitment.

Christian communities often lack credible witness. Churches investing in coffee bars while neglecting the poor, aligning with power rather than the powerless, or promoting marginalization appear corrupt.

Religion, at its best, fosters meaning, not control, aligning with truth through reason and experience. Control-based religion and supernatural fantasies disappoint, driving many to seek meaning and community outside traditional structures.

The Catholic Church experienced a significant moment of potential renewal during the papacy of John Paul II (1978–2005), particularly in the 1990s, when its intellectual and cultural influence reached a peak, offering a unique opportunity to shape public discourse. 

This era, dubbed the “Catholic moment” by thinkers like Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Robert George, gained prominence in debates on ethics, politics, and culture, bolstered by John Paul II’s charismatic leadership.

The fall of communism, attributed in part to his influence, and the global attention during World Youth Days amplified this visibility, positioning the Church as a moral and intellectual force in a post-secular world.

However, this promise was squandered through a combination of the sex abuse scandal, clericalism, and doctrinal rigidity. Clericalism further exacerbated the loss.

Membership globally has grown, with estimates suggesting a rise from 1.358 billion in 2023 to approximately 1.375 billion, primarily driven by increases in the Global South, particularly Africa and Asia. 

In the United States, however, the picture is more complex, with the Catholic population stabilizing at around 20% since 2014, down from 24% at the turn of the century.

In the U.S., weekly attendance has declined significantly, with only about 17% of Catholics attending Mass regularly—a drop from 25% in 2012, which has been exacerbated by the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to virtual services. 

Globally, attendance varies widely, while Western Europe and parts of the U.S. report figures as low as 10% or lower.

The Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, unfolding over decades with increasing visibility since the 1980s, has posed an existential threat to its credibility and authority, shaking its moral foundation to the core. 

The scandal erupted into public consciousness with the 2002 Boston Globe exposé, revealing widespread abuse by priests and a systemic cover-up by church leaders, a pattern later corroborated by investigations across the U.S. and globally. 

Reports exposed a decades-long failure to protect minors, with bishops often transferring offenders rather than reporting them, prioritizing institutional reputation over victim welfare.

This crisis nearly dismantled the Church’s authority, as trust in its leadership eroded amid evidence of complicity at the highest levels.

The financial toll—hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements—further strained the dioceses. At the same time, the perception of a patriarchal institution shielding abusers fueled disillusionment, particularly among younger generations and those in secularizing regions.

In 2025, the Catholic Church faces a growing disconnect between the theological perspectives of the laity and the teachings of the Magisterium, creating a rift that challenges its unity and relevance in the post-secular age. 

This divergence reflects a shift in the laity’s beliefs, shaped by personal experiences, cultural trends, and access to diverse information, often diverging from the Magisterium’s official doctrines on issues such as sexuality, gender roles, and moral authority in general. 

Diocesan surveys show less than 50% of lay Catholics have more than a rudimentary understanding of the Trinity, real presence, the meaning of baptism, or Church social teaching.

Studies, such as the 2024 Pew Research Center study, indicate that only 36% of U.S. Catholics accept the Church’s stance against contraception, while 61% support same-sex marriage, contrasting sharply with the Magisterium’s views. These numbers, by the way, are from practicing, Mass-going Catholics.

This tension, noted by scholars and demographers, risks alienating the faithful, with approximately 300,000 to 350,000 U.S. Catholics leaving the Church each year, dwarfing the 30,000 to 60,000 new converts annually. 

Gaudium et Spes, a core document of Vatican II, opens by asserting that the Church is called to read the signs of the times and help interpret their meaning.

Thankfully, the Church has improved its discernment since the Council. However,, it’s prior performance was sorely lacking.

In the past 300 years, the trajectory of Catholic and most other forms of Christian theology has veered off course, straying from its vocation as a participatory and meaning-centered discipline. 

While it was right to resist the reductionistic tendencies of Enlightenment thinking, which sought to confine truth to empirical reason and secular frameworks, theology’s response was marred by fear. 

This fear manifested in entrenchment, clinging to rigid manualism—codified systems of doctrine that stifled intellectual vitality—and legalistic, triumphalist assertions of infallibility. 

Such defensiveness, exemplified by the Syllabus of Errors (1864) or Humanae Generis (1950), prioritized control over dialogue, distancing theology from the lived experience of the real world.

This series of missteps rendered theology prone to category errors, where it overreached by claiming an authoritative voice in domains such as science, history, or other forms of human knowledge. 

The earlier Galileo affair and debates over biblical chronology illustrate this, as theology ventured into empirical territory, undermining its credibility and misaligning with its proper focus on meaning and interpretation. Rather than engaging these fields as partners, it sought to dominate, reflecting a loss of humility.

Ultimately, Catholic theology succumbed to the corrupting influences of Evangelicalism, adopting elements of literalism, fundamentalism, and legalism. 

Vatican II returned it to a more fruitful path. But much remains to be done and damage to be repaired.

The Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation, crystallized at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), aimed to reaffirm orthodoxy and counter Reformation challenges, but it inadvertently set theology on a restrictive path. 

A significant outcome of the response was an over-emphasis on Thomas Aquinas as the primary theological authority, intended to provide a unified intellectual bulwark. 

This focus, however, evolved into a reduction of theology to catechetical manuals, whose methods resemble geometry, which begins with the assertion of propositional axioms and derives doctrines through a logical yet arid process. 

Such an approach prioritized systematic coherence over vitality, sidelining the rich insights of early Christianity, the Patristic tradition, and even Scripture itself in favor of a neo-Thomist framework.

The result was a stultification of theological development, locking it into a rigid, manual-based system for over 300 years. This period, extending into the 19th and early 20th centuries, stifled creativity and adaptability, leaving theology ill-equipped to address modern questions.

Many who confront our current situation think that if we adopt the correct beliefs or return to past forms of theology and practice, we will reconnect with the sacred and begin to gain cultural ground.

Unfortunately, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of our current dilemma. 

The Enlightenment transformed how we reason and understand the world. Our understanding and manner of knowing have changed.

Our intellectual culture has undergone a threefold reductionism (initiated by the Enlightenment): 

First, we’ve reduced ontology (our understanding of being itself) to a single level—reality was flattened; its many levels of depth were dissolved into the material.

Second, our culture reduced knowing to a single form: the knowledge that something is the case, meaning an evidential and propositional manner of thinking and reasoning. 

Third, we’ve reduced intelligibility itself (what it means for something to be understood) to generalizability. That is, only what can be abstracted, formalized, and universally applied is deemed worthy of understanding.

These reductions obscure the pathways that allow us to comprehend meaning and purpose in the world, thereby eroding the fundamental functions of religion.

Religion is an experiential connectedness to being, in which the world discloses itself as meaningful.

Religion serves as a vehicle for encountering meaning, rooted in narrative wisdom traditions that speak mythopoetically and are enlivened by ritual. This wisdom must be experienced, not just analyzed and reduced to propositional form. 

Simply giving personal assent to a list of propositional beliefs or convictions does not reintegrate us into the living streams of tradition, community, and transformation.

The Enlightenment has led to the engagement of religion as a reasoned justification of propositional belief, when what we truly need is a set of spiritual practices—a living, interlocking system of disciplines, virtues, rituals, and liturgies in communal contexts that enact wisdom across multiple forms of knowing and being.

This is what the ancient traditions cultivated through rituals, contemplation, storytelling, and shared moral formation. These practices shaped consciousness, oriented attention, and transformed the self's relationship with the world.

So you can’t think yourself back into meaning. You have to live your way back into it. Yes, the path is defined by propositions, but they must be engaged through religious practices to have effect. 

To help us locate and define the path, we must stop doing theology according to Enlightenment principles and develop a holistic theology of meaning that operates mythopoetically and through illiative reasoning, insight, and experiential immersion. 

At this point in our overall conversation, a critical question emerges: Can Christianity, and Catholicism, reclaim significant cultural influence? A related question is whether Catholicism can recover from its mistakes.

If this hinges on reviving Christendom or formally Christian nations, the answer is likely no, as envisioning Christianity as a dominant, unifying narrative seems improbable and unwise.

More pertinent questions arise: What elements of the Christian tradition can be preserved and sustained? Can a refined and coherent Christianity endure and have a positive influence on the broader culture?

Hopes of a spiritual revival requiring the Holy Spirit to renew the earth and turn hearts to Jesus reflect magical thinking that hastens Christianity’s decline. Instead, a practical approach, free from supernatural fantasies, offers the only viable path forward.

The time of wishful thinking is over. 

Christian theology requires revisioning with lasting, coherent foundations, embracing new methodologies despite discomfort. 

This revision, rooted in the best of human learning, transforms the crisis into an opportunity for a public theology engaging the post-Christian square.

We must return theology to its primary task - meaning making. And it must return to this task with humility.

Too many Catholic theologians seem content to quibble about Mary’s hymen while the world burns around us.

Yes, the finer points of theology matter, but our first responsibility to elaborate the meaning of human life.

There are reasons to be hopeful. In the past 150 years, we’ve been blessed with remarkable pontificates, the Ressourcement movement, the development of Nouvelle Theologie, and the Second Vatican Council.

The above resources can serve a Church ready again to take up it’s proper role in the world.

Come Holy Spirit and renew. your Church.