Never let a good pandemic go to waste. The Covid theatre has at least blessed us with new metaphors. Let me explain.
Recently, it has been reported that in 2021, more people have left the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany than ever before. For the first time since the Germanic tribes roamed the forests and annoyed the Romans, less than half of the population are official members of one of these (groups of) churches.
To which I say:
There are waves, maybe due to seasonal effects such as church scandals, but then there are also quieter times.
Incidence rates are, at best, a crude indicator. They depend a lot on the method and amount of testing, and official church membership is (in Germany) more or less measurement of tax money. What about Sunday church attendance, or amount of voluntary donations?
There are false negatives. Many cases remain undetected. People stay in the church, but only to keep access to nice wedding ceremonies, or to not disturb grandma.
There are false positives, e.g., people switching denominations.
The measures taken, e.g., the synodal path the Catholic church is on in Germany, are hardly efficacious, and might have unpleasant side effects.
Early treatment, e.g., appeals to personal responsibility, stories of role models (aka, saints), and encouragement of virtues instead of values, is hardly ever talked about.
New variants of Christianity – which might actually have developed from very old ones, omicron-style – might silently grow in the shadows of the big churches, and at one point take over the light.
And people who could see much of this fifty years ago are not being listened to.
Oooh, I love metaphors, thanks. Here you have described what happens to a population that had maintained herd immunity to Godlessness for centuries, being challenged by a new virus that can kill spiritually. We are keeping an eye on the spiritual fatality rate, the SFR.
Are the tests accurate? What is a false negative, what is a false positive? Are the powers that be looking for effective early treatments, or do they suppress treatments in favor of more deadly treatments that effect goals they do not dare tell us about?
But instead of calling variants "new variants of Christianity" I think we should see Christianity as our spiritual immune system, with innate AND adaptive responses. Which correlates very well to actual ways that we develop our faith -- first as children, then as we put away childish things (yet retain the ability to approach Jesus as little children).
I would call the new variants Suffering, or Contact with Reality, contact with real dirt to train our immune systems without killing our souls.
Things are always in flux. Like in the middle ages.