Christian Denominations Are Dying — A New Faith Era Is Beginning

[00:00:00]The next generation of Christians is abandoning denominational labels. On a Sunday morning in 2019, a young woman sat in the pews of a church she had been attending for just three weeks. When the visitor card asked her to identify her denomination, she hesitated and then wrote something unexpected.

[00:00:17]Just Christian. She was not being evasive or unclear about her faith. She was expressing something far more significant. a fundamental shift in how an entire generation understands religious identity and belonging.

[00:00:32]That moment replicated across thousands of churches, college chapels, and living rooms throughout North America and beyond reveals a transformation so profound that it is reshaping the landscape of organized Christianity in real time. By the early 2020s, denominational allegiance had become something many young believers viewed as an artifact of their grandparents' world. something beautiful perhaps but no longer essential.

[00:00:59]Where are you watching from right now?

[00:01:02]And if you grew up in or around Christian communities, what changes have you noticed in how people talk about their faith? Have you seen churches closing? Children raised Christian but no longer practicing?

[00:01:13]Conversations shifting away from Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, or Pentecostal identity towards something vagger and more personal.

[00:01:22]The story of why this is happening is not a simple story of declining belief.

[00:01:27]Though belief is part of it, it is a story about technology, mobility, American prosperity, and the gradual dismantling of the institutions that once bound entire communities together.

[00:01:39]It is also a story about how previous generations built those institutions and why the next generation found them no longer suited to their lives. To understand where young Christians are going, we must first understand where their grandparents came from and how those older communities were built. For nearly 200 years before the year 2000, Protestant denominationalism was the dominant structure of Christian life in North America. Denominations were not merely belief systems. They were complete ecosystems.

[00:02:08]The Methodist church, for instance, was not just a Sunday service. It was your social network, your insurance company in times of crisis, your community rallying point, your matchmaking service, and the repository of family memory across generations.

[00:02:23]When someone said they were Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian, they were describing far more than theology. They were describing a way of life, a set of unspoken rules about how to behave, what to consume, how to raise children, and who to marry.

[00:02:39]This system developed in the context of geographic rootedness. Most people in the 19th and early 20th centuries did not move far from where they were born.

[00:02:47]The church building itself was often the second most important structure in any town after the school. To be Methodist in 1920 meant knowing that every town you might ever visit would likely have a Methodist church where you would find people like you with familiar hymns and similar practices.

[00:03:05]Even when you moved for work or opportunity, the denomination provided a portable identity, a franchise of familiarity in an unfamiliar place. The first cracks in this system began appearing in the middle of the 20th century, though few people noticed at the time. After World War II, North America experienced an extraordinary economic expansion. Prosperity rose, automobile ownership became standard, and suburbs began spreading across the landscape like a rash.

[00:03:33]This suburbanization fundamentally changed how churches operated. In urban neighborhoods, churches had been tightly woven into daily life.

[00:03:42]You walked to church. You knew your minister personally because he lived nearby.

[00:03:47]Everyone in the congregation came from similar economic circumstances and often similar ethnic backgrounds. But suburbs fragmented that intimacy.

[00:03:57]By the 1960s and 1970s, something else was shifting beneath the surface.

[00:04:02]The civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the counterculture challenged the moral authority that denominations had maintained for so long.

[00:04:12]Young people began questioning not just individual doctrines, but the entire apparatus of institutional Christianity.

[00:04:20]Some left the church entirely. Others stayed, but began worshiping in increasingly informal ways.

[00:04:27]Meanwhile, television arrived in living rooms, initially seeming like a threat to church attendance, but eventually becoming a vehicle for a different kind of Christianity. The televangelist movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which was explicitly non-denominational.

[00:04:43]Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagert, and Jim Ber built audiences that stretched across denominations, creating a precedent for Christianity that existed beyond institutional boundaries.

[00:04:55]By the 1990s, a new phenomenon had emerged, the megaurch.

[00:05:00]Unlike the traditional denominations anchored to a specific building that people had attended for generations, megaurches were entrepreneurial ventures, often founded by a charismatic pastor with a business acumen.

[00:05:13]They borrowed from televangelism, but added something new. [music] They were designed to be welcoming to people who felt alienated from traditional church culture. The music was contemporary. The theology was simplified. The building often resembled a concert hall rather than a sanctuary.

[00:05:29]Lakewood Church in Houston, founded by John Austin in 1959, but reaching massive scale under his son Joel Austin's leadership beginning in 1999, became an empire. The International Church of the Fourquare Gospel, the Assemblies of God, and other Pentecostal and Charismatic movements also grew dramatically by deemphasizing denominational hierarchy and emphasizing personal experience with the divine.

[00:05:56]Yet, if you look at the actual attendance numbers during this period, they tell a story that surprised most observers.

[00:06:03]While megaurches were growing visibly in the 1990s and early 2000s, the total percentage of Americans attending church on any given Sunday was actually declining.

[00:06:13]A 1970s Gallup survey showed that nearly 42% of Americans attended church regularly. By 2000, that figure had dropped to 37%. By 2020, it had fallen to 30%.

[00:06:27]What was happening was not a mass conversion to evangelical Christianity, but a slow motion departure of millions from organized religion altogether.

[00:06:36]However, a more dramatic shift was occurring within the young people who remained religious.

[00:06:41]The Pew Research Center and the General Social Survey began documenting this trend in the 2000s.

[00:06:48]Young Christians, even those raised in strict denominational households, were increasingly identifying as non-denominational when asked about their religious affiliation.

[00:06:58]The shift was particularly pronounced among millennials, those born roughly between 1981 and 1996, and even more so among generation Z, born after 1997.

[00:07:10]By 2019, according to Pew data, about 40% of Christian adults under age 40 identified as non-denominational, compared to just 14% in 1995.

[00:07:23]This was not merely a statistical quirk.

[00:07:25]It represented a fundamental reimagining of what it meant to be Christian.

[00:07:30]What happened was that the internet arrived and it quietly destroyed the geographic monopoly that denominations had maintained for centuries.

[00:07:38]Suddenly, a curious teenager in Kentucky could watch sermons from pastors in California. She could join online communities of young Christians who had never met in person, but who shared her questions about theology and faith. She could research the history of her denomination and discover inconvenient facts her local pastor had [music] never mentioned.

[00:07:57]She could compare the teachings at her Methodist church with the Pentecostal church across town without ever leaving her house.

[00:08:04]The internet did not create skepticism, but it dramatically accelerated it by making comparison frictionless.

[00:08:12]The second force that undermined denominational loyalty was the sheer mobility of American and Canadian life.

[00:08:18]Unlike their grandparents, young adults in the 21st century were no longer expected to stay in their hometown.

[00:08:24]Education often required moving across the country. Career advancement meant being willing to relocate. The average young professional in 2010 expected to live in multiple cities during her working years. This migration made it extremely difficult to maintain the deeply rooted identity that denominations had provided. If you grew up Methodist in Iowa, moved for college to Vermont, transferred jobs to Arizona, and then accepted a promotion in Toronto, your Methodist identity, which might have felt foundational at age 15, became increasingly abstract by age 30.

[00:08:59]Simultaneously, another force was weakening denominational authority, the democratic disruption of religious information.

[00:09:07]In 1985, if you had a theological question, your options were limited. You could ask your pastor, read a book from the church library, or perhaps attend a Bible study. Your pastor held enormous interpretive authority because he was the primary information broker. By 2005, a curious young Christian with a smartphone could access thousands of biblical commentaries, watch debates between scholars of different traditions, listen to progressive Christian podcasts, encounter atheist critiques, and wrestle with historical scholarship that problematized traditional readings of scripture. This democratization of religious knowledge fundamentally undermined the gatekeeping power that denominational institutions had enjoyed.

[00:09:50]If you have gone through these changes yourself, if you were raised in a tradition and found yourself either leaving it or reimagining it in ways your family did not recognize, we would genuinely like to hear your story.

[00:10:00]Please share in the comments what your experience has been. And if you are finding this exploration of religious change interesting, would you consider hitting like and subscribing to Professor Maple? These changes we are documenting matter for understanding contemporary society and your support helps us continue this work. Now understanding the mechanisms of change is important but understanding what young Christians replaced denominationalism with is equally crucial.

[00:10:30]The answer is not simple because there is no single replacement. Instead there are multiple competing models and young Christians navigate them in ways that are highly individualistic and fragmented.

[00:10:41]One significant model is what might be called loose network Christianity. Young Christians in this category maintain faith and religious practice, but do so through a constantly evolving network of influences and communities. They might attend a non-denominational megaurch on Sunday, listen to a Pentecostal pastor's podcast on their commute, read theology books from a Catholic priest who has published widely, and participate in an online prayer community with people from 12 different countries. Their Christianity is not rooted in place or institution but in personal choice and individual curation. The strength of this model is flexibility and personal autonomy. The weakness is vulnerability to consumerism and the tendency to gravitate toward messages that confirm existing beliefs while avoiding challenge or critique. Another model is what we might call progressive Christianity, which is particularly prevalent among educated left-leaning young adults.

[00:11:35]Progressive Christians emphasize social justice, inclusion of LGBTQ individuals, environmentalism, and a sometimes skeptical approach to traditional theological claims. They are likely to critique what they see as the complicity of institutional churches with racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

[00:11:54]Many progressive Christians have formerly left the church, but maintain a Christian identity through online spaces, reading groups, and informal communities.

[00:12:03]Some attend churches that explicitly identify as progressive, though these tend to be smaller and less geographically distributed than traditional denominations.

[00:12:13]A third model could be described as spiritual eclecticism.

[00:12:17]Some young people raised Christian have adopted a worldview that blends Christian elements with practices and beliefs from Buddhism, Hinduism, indigenous spiritualities, and therapeutic frameworks like yoga and mindfulness. They might claim a Christian identity while also consulting astrology, practicing Reiki, or meditating on Buddhist concepts.

[00:12:38]Older generations often view this as incoherent or inauthentic. But for many young people, it represents an honest reflection of how faith actually works in a pluralistic, information-rich society where multiple truth claims compete for attention.

[00:12:54]A fourth and growing model is what we might call Christian by heritage, secular by practice. These are people who identify as Christian when asked by a survey but who do not attend church, pray or practice any religious discipline. They are Christian in the way previous generations might have identified as Protestant or American. It is part of their cultural and perhaps family identity but not a lived reality that shapes their choices or worldview.

[00:13:20]This group is the fastest growing which is why overall Christian identification is declining even as many of the people who are leaving would still claim Christian heritage.

[00:13:29]The economic implications of this shift deserve careful attention. For over a century, churches functioned as social insurance systems in a way that is difficult to overstate.

[00:13:40]Before the government provided unemployment benefits, social security, disaster relief, or many forms of healthare, churches provided these functions.

[00:13:49]The Methodist Aid Society, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services. These organizations emerged not as charity but as necessity.

[00:13:59]When your home burned down or you lost your job or your spouse died, your church community was your safety net.

[00:14:06]In return for this insurance function, people tithed faithfully and committed deeply to church participation.

[00:14:12]The rise of the welfare state in Canada starting with unemployment insurance in 1940 and accelerating with the Canada Pension Plan in 1965 along with similar expansions in the United States and other wealthy democracies fundamentally changed the economic relationship between individuals and churches.

[00:14:31]As government programs replaced church charity, the economic incentive to maintain church membership weakened. You still might attend church for community or spiritual reasons, but the practical necessity that bound generations to the institution had dissolved.

[00:14:47]This is not to say that churches became unimportant. Many maintained strong social programs, but the fundamental mutual dependence had changed.

[00:14:56]Furthermore, the professionalization of social work in the 20th century meant that people increasingly sought help from credentialed professionals rather than clergy. A marriage in trouble was no longer automatically brought to the pastor, but to a marriage counselor, often a secular one. A child struggling with behavior was brought to a psychologist. Grief counseling became a specialty of trained therapists. The pastor's role as the primary source of wisdom and guidance for life crisis had been substantially displaced by professional expertise.

[00:15:26]This created an unusual situation.

[00:15:29]Churches that had been essential services became optional experiences.

[00:15:33]you could choose to attend or not based purely on preference rather than necessity for many people raised in that tradition. That choice was no longer compelling.

[00:15:43]The contemporary church had to justify itself not on the basis of tradition or necessity but on the basis of what it offered in terms of meaning, community and spiritual experience.

[00:15:54]For an increasing number of young people, it could not make that case persuasively.

[00:15:59]The decline of denominationalism has had profound consequences for specific communities.

[00:16:05]Consider the decline of mainline Protestant churches in small towns across North America. These denominations, United Church, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, were most firmly rooted in small town life where a single church building was central to community identity. But as young people left small towns for cities in pursuit of education and employment, these churches withered.

[00:16:29]A church that had served 500 people in 1960 found itself with 80 in 2010.

[00:16:35]The pastors serving these congregations faced an impossible situation. The economic model that had supported pastoral ministry, a community wealthy enough to support a trained minister and maintain a building, was no longer viable when the community had shrunk by 80%.

[00:16:51]In some cases, these churches simply closed. In others, they merged with neighboring congregations. And in the process, the sense of denominational identity often dissolved.

[00:17:03]If the Methodist and Presbyterian churches in a town of 8,000 people merged to create a single community church, the denomination that had defined the building and the identity for 100 years was suddenly not present in any institutional sense. This had ripple effects that extended far beyond Sunday worship. These church buildings had been hosting not just religious services, but civic life. Town council meetings were held there. Community dinners happened in the basement. The pastor was often a community leader.

[00:17:33]Social clubs met in the fellowship hall.

[00:17:36]Political campaigns held rallies there.

[00:17:38]When the church closed or declined, it left a vacuum in the social infrastructure of small towns that was rarely filled by anything else.

[00:17:46]This is partly why many small North American towns have experienced a sense of cultural collapse even before other economic disruptions arrived.

[00:17:55]They lost their gathering place at the precise moment when other forces were also fragmenting community life. The economic impact on pastors and their families has been substantial.

[00:18:06]In the 1950s, being a minister was a respected middle class profession. A pastor could expect to support a family, own a home, and retire with dignity on denominational pension plans that had been established decades earlier.

[00:18:20]By the early 2000s, this had changed dramatically. Many pastors, particularly those serving smaller congregations, [music] earned less than school teachers. Some served multiple churches to cobble together a livable income.

[00:18:34]Denominational pension plans which depended on contributions from a broad base of healthy congregations became financially stressed. Ministers who had served faithfully for 30 years found themselves with inadequate retirements because the system that was supposed to support them had collapsed along with the denominations that sustained it.

[00:18:53]This had a direct effect on religious vocations. As pastoral ministry became less financially viable and less respected, fewer young people pursued it as a career.

[00:19:04]In mainline Protestantism particularly, the shortage of ordained ministers became acute. Denominations that once had waiting lists of ambitious young clergy to fill open pulpit found themselves struggling to fill positions.

[00:19:16]The pool of available talent dried up partly because smart, educated young people could pursue more lucrative careers and partly because the institutional church was no longer offering the same cultural status it once had.

[00:19:29]The weakening of denominational structures also created vulnerability to doctrinal instability and internal conflict.

[00:19:36]When a denomination is strong and clearly defined, it has institutional authority to referee theological disputes and maintain doctrinal boundaries. But when its authority is already weakening, internal conflicts can become fatal. The Episcopal Church in the United States experienced precisely this dynamic. As its membership declined and the denomination's claims to authority weakened, disputes over sexuality and LGBTQ inclusion became not merely theological debates, but existential threats to the institution.

[00:20:09]Progressive congregations wanted to affirm LGBTQ people. Conservative congregations opposed this. The denomination lacked the institutional strength to mediate this conflict, resulting in a slow motion schism that further weakened the institution.

[00:20:25]Interestingly, this dynamic played out differently in evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which experienced less formal organizational crisis, partly because they had never developed the institutional complexity of mainline denominations.

[00:20:38]An independent Pentecostal church could change positions on doctrine or practice without having to navigate denominational bureaucracy. This adaptability has been an advantage for some evangelical and charismatic traditions, allowing them to retain younger members longer than mainline churches retained theirs. However, it has come with a cost. Without denominational accountability structures, evangelical churches have sometimes enabled or hidden abuse, theological corruption, and financial malfeasants. The megaurch model, while successful at attracting young people initially, has also created situations where individual pastors wield enormous unaccountable power. The rise of prosperity gospel theology, the claim that financial wealth is a sign of God's favor, illustrates how the erosion of denominational oversight can lead to theology that previous generations would have recognized as heretical being preached openly in the largest churches in North America.

[00:21:32]Subscribe to Professor Maple if you want to continue exploring these structural changes that are reshaping everyday life and community institutions.

[00:21:40]Your subscription helps us continue this documentary work. The retreat from denominationalism has also had significant cultural and political consequences.

[00:21:50]For much of the 20th century, Protestant denominations provided a stabilizing institutional structure in American and Canadian life. They were not apolitical, but they operated within fairly clear ethical frameworks. A Methodist bishop in 1945 was likely to make pronouncements about race, class, and justice that were more progressive than the broader political landscape.

[00:22:13]Presbyterian pastors in the 1960s often supported civil rights. The Catholic Church, despite its conservatism on sexuality, often advocated for workers rights and against militarism through organizations like the US Bishop's Conference on Peace and Justice. But the decline of denominational authority meant the decline of institutional Christian voices that [music] could speak with moral authority to the broader culture.

[00:22:37]In their place emerged evangelical megaurch pastors who were often personally wealthy, shaped by business models and free market theology and unconstrained by denominational structures that might have moderated their political stances.

[00:22:51]The result has been a growing identification between evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics particularly in the United States which was not nearly as pronounced in previous decades when denominational structures provided some counter pressure.

[00:23:06]This shift has had profound consequences for how Christianity is perceived culturally. Younger people who are not religious or who are religious but not evangelical increasingly see Christianity as politically conservative, complicit with racism and economic injustice, hostile to LGBTQ people, and aligned with authoritarian politics.

[00:23:27]Whether or not this perception is fair, it is now the dominant cultural narrative, particularly in urban areas and among educated younger adults. This perception becomes self-reinforcing.

[00:23:38]Young people who might have been attracted to Christian faith based on its social justice dimensions instead see a tradition that seems complicit with injustice. So they move away from it, which leaves the remaining institutions even more conservative, which reinforces the perception.

[00:23:54]The international picture is more complex, though the direction is broadly similar. In the United Kingdom, Anglican identity has been declining for decades, though more gradually than in North America. In Australia, Christianity remains slightly more prevalent than in Canada, but the trend is clearly downward, and non-denominational Christianity is also growing. In Europe, the process is further advanced. France, Germany, and Scandinavia have seen Christianity decline much more dramatically. And these places are already living in a post-Christian cultural landscape that North America is just beginning to enter. So, what comes next? What does a post-dominational Christianity look like? And what replaces the social functions that denominations once served? The most visible answer has been the rise of what might be called entrepreneurial spirituality.

[00:24:43]Without the constraints of denominational oversight, charismatic individuals have created religious communities built around their personal vision and authority. Some of these are relatively benign. A pastor who is a gifted preacher building a community of people who appreciate his teaching.

[00:24:59]Others are more problematic. Leaders who use religious language to build personality cults, accumulate wealth, and evade accountability for misconduct.

[00:25:08]The lack of denominational structure means there are fewer institutional checks on abuse and corruption.

[00:25:15]Another answer has been the increasing role of technology in spiritual life.

[00:25:19]Apps like Pray, Abide, and Uver Bible app have become how many young Christians access scripture. Online prayer communities, Christian Tik Tok, and podcast theology have become how spiritual formation happens for millions of people. This has democratized access to religious resources in remarkable ways. A young Christian in a rural area who might once have been trapped with only the local church's theology now has access to the entire world's Christian thought. But it has also made spiritual life transactional and individualistic in ways that are fundamentally different from denominational Christianity which was built on communal practice and shared institutions.

[00:25:58]The decline of denominational Christianity has also created a peculiar opening for other religious traditions.

[00:26:05]in previous decades to be anything other than Christian was genuinely countercultural in North America.

[00:26:12]Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam were exotic.

[00:26:16]But as Christianity's cultural dominance has faded, other traditions have become more visible and plausible. A young person today is more likely to explore Buddhism or Taoism or indigenous spiritualities because the Christian default has dissolved. This has not led to mass conversion to other religions, but it has created a more genuinely pluralistic religious landscape than existed before.

[00:26:40]Perhaps the most significant consequence of the decline of denominationalism is the loss of social coherence that these institutions provided, particularly for young people. A denominational church provided not just theology, but a complete socialization structure. It taught you how to be a good person, how to navigate romance and marriage, how to think about money and work, how to relate to the poor and suffering. It embedded you in a community of people across ages who shared a common framework for understanding life. When that structure is [music] absent, young people are left to construct meaning individually, drawing on fragments from multiple sources, therapy, social media, self-help books, influencers, and whatever spiritual resources they encounter. This is not inherently catastrophic, but it has costs. Some young people craft coherent and meaningful lives from these fragments.

[00:27:30]Others feel lost and anxious, lacking the clear framework that inherited tradition provided.

[00:27:36]The epidemic of anxiety and depression among young adults is almost certainly connected to this loss of coherent meaning-making structures. Though the relationship is complex and not purely causal, what we are witnessing is not the death of Christianity itself, but rather the loss of Christianity's role as the organizing institution of North American life and culture.

[00:27:59]This is not entirely unprecedented. In previous centuries, Christianity lost institutional dominance in various societies. But the process tends to be disorienting and destabilizing while it is happening. We are in that period now.

[00:28:14]The future is not predetermined. It is entirely possible that Christianity could revive and regain cultural authority in North America.

[00:28:22]History suggests that religious renewal movements often emerge in response to spiritual hunger and cultural emptiness.

[00:28:29]It is also possible that Christianity will become increasingly minoritarian.

[00:28:33]That is a tradition maintained by committed believers in a secular majority culture much like it is in modern Europe. Or we could see a proliferation of smaller Christian communities that abandon the megaurch model entirely and return to something closer to the house church or intentional community model of early Christianity.

[00:28:52]Some progressive theologians believe that the loss of institutional power might actually be liberating for Christianity, allowing it to pursue justice and love without the compromises required by political establishment.

[00:29:05]What is nearly certain is that the denominational Christianity that structured North American life for two centuries is not returning. The young woman who wrote just Christian on that visitor card was not making an unusual claim. She was expressing the common sense of her generation. The institutions and social conditions that made denominational identity salient are not coming back. the geographic rootedness, the necessity of institutional belonging, the absence of competing information sources, the cultural dominance of Christianity.

[00:29:36]These have all dissolved into conditions that cannot be artificially recreated for those communities, families, and individuals who built their lives around denominational identity. This is profoundly disorienting.

[00:29:48]A Methodist family that worshiped in the same building for four generations is experiencing something like grief. The institutions that shaped their values and provided their security are plainly in decline. For those younger people leaving denominational Christianity, the experience is often different. They have never known a world in which denominational Christianity was culturally dominant. So its decline is simply the normal condition of their religious life.

[00:30:15]What do you think is happening in your own community? Have you witnessed the closing of church buildings? Seen congregations shrink or split?

[00:30:23]experienced yourself or through your family the shift from denominational identity to something else. These are not abstract historical processes. They are happening in your town in institutions that matter to real people.

[00:30:36]Please share in the comments what you have observed.

[00:30:40]The next chapter of Christian history in North America will be written not by denominational leaders but by millions of individual decisions by young people about whether and how they will engage with Christian faith and community.

[00:30:51]Those decisions are being made in a context of unprecedented religious freedom. There is no governmental coercion to believe, no social pressure to conform, no institutional necessity to belong.

[00:31:04]This is revolutionary when understood in historical context. For most of history and in most places today, religion is not a matter of individual choice but of inherited obligation and social pressure. The fact that young North Americans can freely choose to remain Christian, to leave, to blend traditions, or to create new forms of faith is extraordinary.

[00:31:26]But freedom, as many have observed, can be harder to navigate than necessity.

[00:31:30]The challenge facing Christianity in the 21st century is not how to maintain institutional power. That battle is largely lost, but how to articulate a compelling vision of human flourishing that is credible in a secular age. It must engage honestly with the legitimate critiques that pushed many people away.

[00:31:49]It must offer genuine community in an age of isolation. It must speak to meaning and purpose in ways that feel authentic rather than imposed. And it must do so without the scaffolding of institutional power and cultural dominance that previous generations could take for granted.

[00:32:05]The story of Christianity in North America is far from over. It is in many ways just beginning. beginning a new chapter in which faith will have to sustain itself not through institutional power or cultural default but through the genuine conviction and commitment of believers who choose it freely. Whether that is a strength or a catastrophe remains to be seen. What you think? Let us know in the comments. If you found this exploration of religious change and institutional decline thought-provoking, we would genuinely appreciate it if you would like this video and subscribe to Professor Maple.

[00:32:41]We create documentaries about the structural changes shaping contemporary life and we cannot do this work without support from viewers like you. You can also support the channel through superthanks which appears in the video details.

[00:32:55]Thank you for watching and we hope you will join us again as we explore the forces reshaping our world.