You asked a highly complicated question. I’ve spent a couple of hours writing an ad hoc and highly complicated answer. Please realise, it would take a book and years of research to properly substantiate this answer. I hope you read it and think about each point.
Christianity has endured for 2000 years; however since WWII it has declined significantly. In historical terms, this has literally happened overnight. Why?
Since WWII we have seen many technological innovations: television, computers, internet etc. We have also witnessed the emancipation of oppressed groups: women, gay people, ethnic minorities etc. Sexual attitudes, freedom of worship/expression, individuality have all flourished.
We have also witnessed an exponential increase in divorce, infidelity, obesity, binge drinking, anorexia, depression, mental illnesses, and a sharp decline in families, religion and other social groups– all the most communitarian aspects of life.
People offer many interpretations as to why these things have taken place. To me there is one unifying cause behind everything that has happened to the cultures of developed countries post WWII: the deep-routed entrenchment of the economy; capitalism.
I am not an anti-capitalist. Nor, however, am I in favour of its current hyperactive form. It is no surprise to me that Al Qaeda targeted the World Trade Centre. It is a symbol for everything that the developed world has come to represent and it is the greatest threat to ALL religions, not just Christianity. Average people on the street like to think that they are in control of their lives, that they don’t live in a hysterical, hyperactive capitalist state founded upon the regimentation of the people. They are wrong.
In many ways Elvis was the harbinger of destruction to all religions. Seriously. For the first time, there was a mass media. Elvis was immensely popular, he was the most eminently recognisable figure on television, he sung and had charisma: the king, if you will. This identity disseminated through the people: girls fawned over him, and the guys wanted to be like him. In many ways the first modern market was created by Elvis.
People bought his CDs, bought similar clothes, similar hair lacquer etc. because Elvis’ identity had social prestige and they thought that if they reflected his popularity, they themselves would be popular. The mass media created the first individualist, materialist identities post WWII. This is the premise of current capitalist materialism.
At the time there were very few identities to be – you DIDN’T choose them, you were born into them. You could be working class, middle class, or upper class. You could be Roman Catholic, Protestant, a man or a woman etc. as well. And that’s about it.
So then the Beatles came along, with a radically different identity. Again, people bought the records, feigned the accents, got the hairdo etc. This was a new identity for sale generating massive profits.
This fracturing of society kept occurring with each new media identity. Eventually you get to female identities. Well, what happens now? All women are stuck being housewives, they are financially dependent on their husbands. Advertising towards women is centred on clothes, the home and being a mother. Products were sold on the strength of their ability to solve your dilemma: which are the most hardwearing shoes, what will get my kitchen clean?
With the increase in affluence in Britain, people suddenly had disposable income. With greater wealth came the ability to sell non-subsistence products to women. However, women are still dependent on their husbands for cash. In order to solve this, women were slowly converted into consumerists over the next 30 years. You are told this is “feminism” (a common argument against feminism is that it didn’t celebrate women for being women, it just made them like men. Correct in a way: it made them consumerists, like men). So, this political victory meant greater educational privileges for women, more college and university places, more jobs. They became earners and they also therefore, became spenders. It was great for the economy.
The effects: many women now abandon motherhood, or put it off until later in life, in favour of a career. Children are raised by nannies and grandparents. Having both partners in a job means they see each other less and generally puts a strain on their relationship. People in general believe that their partner reflects their success, often they come to believe they have “outgrown” each other. The demise of relationships is seen as common and inevitable. Divorce is easy and there is no social stigma anymore. An entire industry is actually predicated on divorce.
Back to popular culture. Different identities continued to be sold. Eventually, as is the disturbing case with modern capitalism, all avenues of profit are exhausted and the market is saturated. By the end of the seventies this lead to the creation of more extreme alternative identities/markets: namely punk and gay.
Punk was born out of a tension between the old hegemony and the new. The old represented family values, religion, civic duty, nationalism, restraint, order, etc. the new was a violent reaction against all forms of conformity. Again, an identity was born: dyed hair, piercings, dog collars, denim, boots etc. Simply, in the terms of capitalism: another market was created.
Similar to women, gay people were oppressed. They underwent a similar, less politically overt emancipation. Already consumerists, it was simply a matter of creating the identity to be sold. As soon as the gay identity surfaced, it became profitable as a niche market at first. This was the “acceptance” by the heterosexual masses of gay people. Today, gay identities sell to both gay men and heterosexual women, as part of a particular urban identity.
It’s a slightly more complex story for ethnic minorities. Many, like blacks in America, were heavily discriminated against. They worked but were not true consumerists. If a developed country is to continue its economic expansion, it must use other country’s resources. This means an exchange of peoples, of cultures, of good will. Trade routes were already established with Africa/India due to slavery and the British Empire. The home populations of the UK and America were used to getting their imports from Africa and India (foods, clothing), so it no longer became tenable to treat these people as slaves. If you risk insurgency, you risk your supplies, you risk your profits, you risk your livelihood. It made far more sense to employ these people, to at least have the pretence of them being on your side.
Along with fairer trading (and enduring slavery) both Britain and America came to have large numbers of native ethnic minorities. Over decades ethnic identities proved to be profitable to sell through mass media. They were converted to consumerists, hence they achieved “equality”.
The fracturing of identities in popular culture continued to occur until you get to this very moment. Over the past 10 years there have been very few “movements” in music or culture like in the past. The market is saturated again. I will return to this thread later.
Ask yourself why the only remaining elements of Christianity to many are Christmas and Easter. Why do all the shops go insane at Christmas, why does the TV start jabbering, foaming at the mouth over the mere mention of the “festive period”? Christmas and Easter are literally the only features of Christianity that proved to be profitable. But why has Christianity become so marginalised?
Just like all religions, Christianity is predicated on the teachings of communitarianism, self-discipline and subsistence. Accepting what I have said above, you should now easily be able to see why these three components are at odds with the current order of individualist, capitalist, materialism in the developed world.
Compare: a woman in New York has bought 50 pairs of expensive high-heel shoes.
A Muslim woman in Pakistan has 2 or 3 headscarves. Why?
Aside from the differences in affluence of the two respective women and the countries they inhabit, it makes absolutely no sense for a Muslim woman to own 50 headscarves. It does not make her a better Muslim: she has no materialist identity, nor is she conscious of it. Her primary concern is survival. She achieves this through subsistence living. She needs self-discipline in order to survive: she cannot make outlandish purchases. She also requires the emotional fabric of communitarian ideals: family – a basic human biological need fulfilled, religion – a purpose and hope to her existence.
Compare this to the conclusions you can draw about the materialist woman’s identity solely from her “shoe fetish”: she has a lot of money, perhaps she is a connoisseur of some externally and distantly informed sense of “style”, she is making a statement about her social status, and she is articulating her individuality through a material possession in order to gain wider social acceptance. She is essentially articulating this aspect of her character to relative strangers, not her family nor her friends. These products are far removed from what a person actually is: we are not summed up by a collection of shoes, an expensive car, or a profound love of interior designing. This truth highlights the developed world’ neglect of humanistic pursuits.
The Muslim woman will undoubtedly endure times of massive hardship. She does so however, with a family around her, and with salvation through her religion. She is emotionally satisfied. The same cannot be said of the majority of people in the developed world. Astronomic numbers of people suffer from depression, mental and emotional problems, weak identity. It just isn’t the same in the developing world.
Communitarianism = short term good economics, long term bad economics. If people define themselves as a group, that limits their individual spending power. They are more likely to stop spending and be content at belonging part of the group. If the group exhorts the lack of spending as a virtue, the group will be marginalised.
Self-discipline = partially bad economics. People have become obese in the developed world because they are prevailed upon to spend, to give in, to have freebies etc. It is the culture to articulate your identity through your purchase power. This means, conversely, it is equally valid for someone to spend masses of money on getting fit by joining a gym. It means that Jaimie Oliver’s “healthy foods” have a market because of people’s current reaction to “unhealthy foods”. Regardless of whether the “healthier foods” are actually any better for them, they believe the marketing, and articulate their new, healthier identity by buying it.
Subsistence = universally bad economics. Once upon a time adverts just sold products on the strength of what they were. No longer. If you want a teenager to spend his disposable on a pair of trainers, what do you tell him? That they’ll keep him warm in winter? No, how naïve! You try to persuade him of its social exclusivity, of its social worth, of its expensive elite status. He no longer buys what he needs, he buys what he wants. He doesn’t have to survive, his main goal is social success and status.
In the developed world society has become “plural, atheistic and enlightened. Freedom of worship, of identity, of expression is encouraged.” That is the hype talking. The mass media network is the conduit between capitalism and its people. It is not only a moral hegemony, but an economic one, a social one, a cultural one and an all-pervasive one. It is therefore the height of hypocrisy for a materialist person in the developed world to decry religion as backward brainwashing: materialist people have merely exchanged one set of rules for another. This precipitates my next comment.
Humanity is weak: regardless of whether people are born into Christianity, Islam, or capitalism, the overwhelming majority play the system before them.
Futility: emotional problems because of no humanistic life-goals: the accruement of wealth, the treadmill of a career, the regimentation of working life, the strain of bringing up a family. Emotional problems because of the disintegration of close, communitarian networks: of families, friends, religion. Emotional problems are manifest through obesity, binge drinking, self-harm, shopaholia, workaholia and other compulsive behaviours.
Democracy doesn’t exist: you have never heard of democracy existing by itself. Capitalism has the façade of democracy because you are free to articulate yourself (that’s what makes the money). However, you cannot vote out capitalism. It is the sole definition: either you play the game, die or leave.
Capitalism knows no restraint: the economy always has to grow. All markets eventually saturate, pending their revolution. Similarly, all resources are used, whether they be coal, oil, the Amazon rainforest etc. The cheapest option is almost always taken: sweatshops in Taiwan, petrol/diesel vehicles.
Capitalism has given us:
Contraceptives. Without the potential of children; casual sex, greater infidelity, cheapening of life, abortion.
Technology. Individualisation, unhealthy, impatience, reclusion.
Competition. Where once we evolved complex systems of communication, the average person is now in direct competition with peers. Fractured social network, isolation, lack of meaning.
Political homogenisation. Traditional left/right wing politics now only exist as markets for media outlets like the Press. Politically the aspect of most primacy is the economy, everything else is secondary. Take New Labour. The left is considerably disillusioned with them, yet, so is the right. How can a universally unpopular party remain in power for three terms, even in spite of Iraq? Economic competency is the answer. Under New Labour the economy has continued to slowly grow. Elections since Thatcher have not come down to traditional politics, but economic policies. The huge middle classes of England will not rock the monetary boat with a new party, unless they prove to be economically incompetent.
Cultural homogenisation. We are told that society is more diverse. A logical fallacy. Just because we know of more social groups, it does not mean we’re more diverse. Great diversity used to exist from street to street in Britain (regardless of labels of sexuality, race, class), let alone region to region. The overarching media and “global village” has significantly eroded cultural variety since everybody’s definition is informed and shaped by the media. The decline in accent and dialect is a good example of this.
Political correctness is really economic correctness. The right wing like to blame the left for political correctness, but it has not originated from them and its prevalence suggests a far more powerful doctrine at work. Swings are made safer because people sue (“compensation culture” is born of the industry, the potential to make money from injury), the word Christmas is often banned because it excludes other faiths: this means a company’s product might not attract all the business it can if it seems faith-specific. In the workplace the faith-specific language is minimised because potential employees of other faiths might be offended – potential to sue, again.
Essentially, capitalism keeps people materially sustained. It does not keep you emotionally sustained as a human being: that is where faith and family lie.