Can Jesus Survive the New Millenium?

Many Americans will find this unlikely -- it will surely come as a shock to George W. Bush -- but there are a number of religious thinkers in this world who maintain that That Old Time Religion is seriously showing its age. From the pews to the pulpit, the faith is weakening. There is evidence, in fact, to support the notion that Christianity, as we all know and love-or-hate it, is (to state it in the proper historical parlance) pretty much doomed.

Church attendance within most denominations is at an all-time low. Among Catholics, so few novitiates are stepping up to take the vows that the church is suffering a severe shortage of priests and nuns. The calm logic of Science has cast clear doubt on the fairy-tale myths of 7-day creation and virgin births. Many active practitioners openly admit they no longer believe half the stuff they read in their scriptures or recited in their liturgies. There are even a growing number of Christian priests and ministers who preach that Jesus, while still ranking as an undeniably good soul and a damn fine speaker, may not technically have been God after all.

Oops. Sorry about that.

Now sure, sure. The trumpet could sound an hour from now and Jesus could descend in a puff of clouds to snatch up his followers and dump tribulation on the rest of us mortals, an event that would render this discussion embarrassingly moot. Certainly, that's what John Ashcroft and his fellow Fundamentalists are praying for. But if we assume (as the vast majority of practicing Christians these days do), that the Bible's scary apocalyptic proclamations are mainly metaphorical, then we must face the fact that this world of ours may go on for some time. Unless of course, we destroy it ourselves out of sheer human incompetence.

The question then, assuming the world does continue, is this: Can Christianity possibly continue along with it? Will anyone still be practicing Christianity a thousand years from now, or even a hundred? And if anyone does, will it look anything like the Christianity being practiced today?

These, brothers and sisters, are the questions that Dr. Robert W. Funk has been asking himself for decades. Now he is preparing to go out and find the answers.

Starting this year, a group of nearly 200 religious scholars from around the world will be joining Funk in an epic, soul-rattling research project that is as potentially soul-shattering as it is bold and brazen. In February, they gathered in Northern California for the first of several conferences; titled "The Once and Future Faith," the gathering included such world-class thinkers as English author/theologian Karen Armstrong (The Battle for God), Cambridge professor Don Cupitt (Taking Leave of God, The Sea of Faith), New Zealand's Lloyd Geering (Tomorrow's God), and former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism). The entire group convened for five days of open-minded hard work. Their goal: to determine through debate and discussion whether or not Jesus can be saved, and to develop an agenda for a full-scale, back-to-the-blueprints reinvention of Christianity.

Though the event produced no Earth-shaking manifestations of that "re-invention," no galvanizing manifestos to lead the faith into a brave new future -- the deliberations were, in fact, surprisingly abstract and metaphysical, often tengentializing into arguments about the "meaning of meaning" and "reality vs. non-reality" -- the full Jesus Seminar is determined to meet twice a year for as long as it takes.

"I expect progress will be glacial," says Funk. "Things will move slowly at first, as we find our footing. It certainly isn't an easy task we've set ourselves. It will be very difficult, if it can be done at all. But that's what makes it so exciting." Funk, the author of Honest to Jesus and other books, is the founder of the Westar Institute, the international non-profit research foundation best known as the sponsor of the controversial Jesus Seminar. A long-term project involving religious historians from around the planet, the Seminar has recently concluded its 16-year-long, historical examination of the Gospels, those four books of the New Testament that describe the life and teachings of Jesus. According to the scholars, less than ten percent of the words and actions attributed to Jesus can be certified as fully authentic. This means that the rest of it -- the manger, the miracles, the resurrection, the stuff about his being the literal Son of God -- is entirely fictional.