Christianity

A painting of the Crucifixion, one of Christianity's most important events. The cross also serves as Christianity's commonly accepted symbol.

### Geographic Concentration

Christianity is a worldwide religion, but especially concentrated in the Americas, and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

### Interesting Fact

The Bible is the most reprinted book in the entire world, with the only close contender being the Quran.

Christianity is one of the largest religions on Earth, alongside with Islam, consistently being the 1st or 2nd largest religion during the 21st and 22nd centuries. Christianity is based off the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and the teachings passed down from him or his apostles in a series of documents known as the Gospels, which when combined with the Jewish Bible create the modern Christian Bible.

Christianity was able to maintain a stable percentage of the human population throughout the 21st century, undergoing various revivals such as the 5th Great Awakening and the advent of psychicism, and consistently remained about a third of the human population up until the beginning of the Immortal Era. The creation of anti-aging technology removed the impetus for an afterlife and led to the decline of many major religions. Despite this, Christianity currently remains the largest religion on Earth, having well over 4 billion practitioners, and pulling ahead of Islam as it faced a steeper decline its inability to adapt to psychicism and more fragmentation following the Immortal Era.

The largest populations of Christians can be found in the Americas, particularly in Latin America, with significant pockets also found in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and southern China.

## Early 21st Century (2000-2030)

Christianity entered into the 21st century at war with the forces of secular modernity. In the West, Christianity was headed on a trajectory of steep decline, declining from three-fourths to two-thirds of the population of various Western countries leading to the events of the Great Unravelling. In its place was a series of ideological beliefs, which acted in the same way as a religion might, but were less anchored by dogma and tradition. Despite this, Christianity continued to see explosive growth, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, boosted by high birthrates and an explosive population. In Latin America, the number of Christians remained stable, while Christianity was finding new markets rising in the untapped corners of China.

The net effect of this was an overall stable, consistent percentage of the world being Christians in the early half of the 21st century. That said, the Christian religion was not without its changes during these years. Mainline churches and mainline Protestantism would head into sharp decline in the United States and elsewhere, theologically liberal head churches in Europe found themselves increasingly at odds with their theologically conservative branches in Africa and the Global South. And the rise of Pentecostalism in Africa would begin to shift the balance of power between Catholics and Protestants. This period saw the takeover of American Christianity by the Evangelicals, a group of born-again Protestant Christians who put low emphasis on church tradition, and instead put very high emphasis on a personal relationship with God. The Evangelical movement would then give birth to the Non-Denominational movement, who took the ideals of the Evangelicals to an even further extreme.

The 2027 also saw the election of Pope Robert Sarah, with the death of Pope Francis. Robert Sarah had been elected from the conservative wing of the Catholics, and his election polarized the church between its Western progressive elements and its conservative elements located in the global south. The Catholic Church wrestled with the impact of Vatican II and the continued wrestling of the place of the church in a rapidly progressing world. The church's conflict with modernity had abruptly ended with the 2022 Unravelling, as modernity itself seemed to grind to a halt, and the world was left in the confused aftermath.

Religion also became entangled with the broader Western Culture Wars of the early 21st century, with religion often being at the forefront of opinions on same-sex marriage, abortion, family values, women's rights, and gender identity. The creation of a cohesive hardened core of religiously fanatical Christians in the West, alongside the promotion of pro-natalist values within a culture of nihlism and anti-natalism eventually stemmed the bleeding of the Western church around the 2030's. At a time when fertility rates were crashing, groups such as the Quiverful, the Amish, the Mennonites, Traditional Catholic, and general Evangelical populations continued to have kids at above replacement levels. Something which would be heavily advantageous in the coming days.

## De-Digitalization Movement (2030-2040)

The first shots at the counter-revolution were fired in the mid 2020's, as the De-Digitalization Movement picked up steam, as the younger generations raised their kids to intentionally restrict them from internet access. This also came with improvements in artificial intelligence that were able to bypass any captcha the social media giants attempted to put up against them, and overwhelmed the social media giants with spambots. By the 2030's, social media was rendered completely unusable, and the internet regressed back into a more undeveloped stage. Movements focused on asceticism, fasting, connections with nature, and finding meaning in an empty and meaningless world drew many people to religion, particularly those with chronic mental health issues. Despite the collapse of large scale social media, much of the internet continued to survive in a form more similar to Web 1.0. Websites that had no large scale social media aspect were mostly fine, provided they had protection against the rampant DDOS attacks being carried out.

This saw the proliferation of online churches, first popularized during the COVID pandemic charismatic preachers found new life reaching an audience of millions. Large scale comment sections had been rendered useless, but commentary continued to pour in on private forums. A new generation of preachers had perfected the art of preaching online, and soon these online preachers became some of the most influential people in the religious space. Interest in religion would spike with the outbreak of World War 3, especially in the soldiers on the front line, who used religion as a coping mechanism for the high stress environment. Talking points about the moral degradation of America, and alternative media sites would become incredibly popular among the trenches, as the military tilted further right as the pacifist left and Red Spring protests alienated the military. And increase even more as the United States began losing the war to foreign powers like Russia and China, with many preachers blaming it on American moral degradation. This reached a fever pitch when the United States actually lost the war, and all fingers were pointed towards progressive Democratic president Kevin Buchanan. As the soldiers from the 3rd World War came home, they brought with them their religion. These soldiers would end up creating the next generation of preachers.

### The Psychedelic Christians ("Hippie Christians")

In the lead up to the 2040's Great Awakening, many people experienced religion using the medium of psychedelics such as DMT and mushrooms. Providing many with an intense religious experience, this group of "Hippie Christians" would become one of the first early movements among Christians signaling an eventual revival of the Christian religion in North America. These Hippie Christians would largely rebel against what they saw as a stifling, unspiritual secular society, and revolted against it with drugs and religion. The "Hippy Christian" movement would eventually blend into the greater Awakening, and some of its former members would become new preachers and priests.

## 5th Great Awakening (2040-2050)

The 5th Great Awakening refers to an explosion in religious fervor that began in the United States before spreading out to the rest of the world. It began with the return of soldiers home from the 3rd World War, many of which had used religion as a coping mechanism during the conflict. A longing for meaning and purpose, the return of a highly religious soldier population to their homes, the proliferation of religious talking points, as well as proliferation of Christian media and preachers would culminate in the 5th Great Awakening.

The 5th Great Awakening was marked by an extreme rise in conservative religious fervor. The Evangelicals or groups like them increased immensely in power, the Mainline churches had halted their decline and were retaken by storm by the theologically conservative soldiers coming back from the front lines. Pentecostalism spread like a blazing fire, with missionaries carrying off their fiery message to Africa and South America, and Mormonism expanded across the American interior. This was further increased by the election of Republican President Victoria Cortez, who had been elected into power by vote splitting between the Progressive and Democratic Parties. American missionaries brought their Great Awakening to all corners of the globe. One of these places was China, where a Shanghai stock broker named Father Ying would hear the gospel. And after he lost it all in the 2042 Shanghai Market crash, would start his own sect of Christianity called Taiping Christianity.

Despite further gains in America, Christianity was losing ground in Europe. Already suffering a long decline in the Christian church in that region, France became majority irreligious around this time. Germany had promoted a kind of state church and state religion, but religious fervor was down in Germany as well. Scandinavia as well lost its Christian majority, though those who were left were generally extremely devout. The general pattern of religion in Europe was that the majority of Christians lost their way, but a hardened core of Christians remained, and began growing once the Christian population bottomed out. Despite losses in Europe, due to the declining percentage of the world population Europe represented, a baby boom in the United States, and continued growth in North America, Africa, South America, and now Asia, it was more than able to offset it.

### The Great Catholic Schism

In 2044, Pope Robert Sarah passed away, and was succeeded by an even more hardline conservative cardinal; Almeida from Brazil. Christening himself Pope Pius XIII, he reversed course on what was left of the lukewarm progressive reforms under Francis, and demanded a church wide condemnation of the sins of modernity. Same-sex marriage, gender identity, female equality, secularism, halted ecumenical dialogue with the other churches, and demanded a dogmatic return to the authority of the church and the authority of God. The Progressive Catholics, outraged, formed their own church, separating away from the Catholic Church to create the Progressive Catholic Church in Argentina, electing Pope (Or Antipope) Emmanuel I of Argentina.

From this point onwards, as both churches claimed to be the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church in Rome, led by Pope Pius XIII, will be known referred to in the remainder of this article as the Church of Rome, or the Roman Catholic Church. While the Progressive Church in Argentina, led by Pope Emmanuel I.

### Rise of Taiping Christianity

Further Reading: An Empire of Tears, A Cathedral of Dirt

The rise of Taiping Christianity began with a series of house churches, and poorly broadcast local radios. At that time, there was already an abundance of Christian house radios, poorly set up and poorly broadcast using old equipment. Few had any semblance of modern equipment, of these, fewer had a device that wasn't tracked and spied on by the Chinese government. Of those, even fewer knew how to properly secure their signals in such a way to not be tracked and arrested by the Chinese government. This only left Father Ying. Having smuggled a Western computer into the country when he wished to perform illegal insider trading, and skirting the law enough to understand how to evade the Chinese censors. After a profound born again experience, he gave up his worldly wealth and dedicated his life to spreading the word of God.

In a monotonous life completely drained of meaning and happiness, his message radiated outwards like a beacon in the night. Though his operations began in Anqing, he was able to create a decentralized network to relay his sermons around the country. With no voice like his own, the Chinese listened to him, followed him as if he was their own father. When Chinese people lost hope, Ying was the net that caught them, and guided them gently to God. It was this way that the Taiping Christians, as they became known, spread rapidly across southern China. Despite the name, Father Ying's theology had little to do with the Taiping Rebellion, though the name stuck.

Ying had made a bold prediction that the 4th World War would break out one day, even including a infamous line saying "Great floods and long winters", and pointed out the microchips now embedded in the right arms and foreheads of the Chinese people were remarkably similar to the mark of the beast.