America came out of World War II stronger than it ever had. Because of that, America saw themselves as the defender of the West, democracy, and civil liberties and Christianity had a huge role in that. Church membership skyrocketed during this time and the government had a huge part to do with it. American put “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and the country’s official motto became “in God we trust” in 1956. During this time “congregation-centered, non-denominational Protestantism became one of the fastest-growing sectors of Christianity in the nation” (Jacobsen, 204). While many people still identified as Catholics, many of the other popular denominations such as Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Baptist, simply started to identify as just Christian. Through the sixties and into the seventies four movements really put sought to use Christianity to push their social agenda. And those movements were, “civil rights, the “war on poverty,” opposition to the war in Vietnam, and women’s liberation” (Jacobsen 202). This tied Christianity deeply with politics. However, going into the seventies and eighties, people became increasingly interested in secularism and less interested in the church. Evangelism became a way to counteract act this. Many churches gave birth to movements whose many focus was to covert as many people as popular, particularly on the college campuses.

All of this contributed, along with the concept religious freedom, to Americans’ understanding of being spiritual rather than religious. With the de-emphasis on denomination, people began to feel that religion is more of an individual’s right to choose. Religion is something that can be experienced personally without necessarily the aid of other individuals or the organized church as a whole. People today prefer the term spiritual rather than religious because religious carries undertones of a certain group affiliation whereas spiritual, people feel, carries undertones of personal lifestyle choices.

After taking all 3 courses of History of Christianity, receiving a Bachelor’s in Ministry from a Bible College, and being in the full time ministry for 7 years and leading a church for 2 years, if I had the choice to create a “super Christianity”, I wouldn’t. As I look over the history, I see two things exploited more than anything else: church authority and the authority of the Bible. Many men have come and tried to proclaimed their interpretation of Christianity as the calling of God. Aside from the Catholic church, almost all these movements start and end the same way. It starts as a man, a message, which usually only focuses on one social problem going on in that man’s particular community, then a movement arises that tries to universalize the message into a mission, and finally at some point people began to idealize the man, the message, or the movement and because of that, the movement normally stagnates or eventually declines. Many times this produces more rejecters of Christ than adherents. I believe the church and Bible are important but over the course of time they have been elevated to a position that they should not be. If we look at Christianity in its purest form, the first and second centuries, the Bible was still in the process of being written and “the church” was still an organism rather than what it is today, an organization. Taking all that into consideration, mistakes have always been made anytime someone has tried to brand Christianity and mass produce it. Instead Christianity needs to return to its focus on devotion to Jesus’ teachings, as expressed in what we now consider the Bible. I say let Christianity be defined by the words Jesus taught and let the expression of those teachings be unique to the local communities. That may mean that Christianity in Eugene may “look” different than Christianity in Corvallis, but there’s no need to try and persuade the other group that they need to join a certain church organization or cause to be real Christians or that one group is better than the others. Some other things that can help is the complete separation of church and state. Christians should as much as possible stay out of politics because that did not seem to be what Jesus or the early church was primarily concerned with. The best thing, in my opinion, is to stay away from trying to massly conform Christianity into one big super religion but rather focus local communities on the adherence and expression of Jesus’ teachings. All things can be summed up in loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself.