Contemporary Issues in Western Religions

Contemporary: Current, modern, popular, progressive, present-day, fashionable, and up-to-date.
Can this definition apply to a religion that is more than 2000 years old? Christianity struggles within its own religious borders to be contemporary and remain relevant in today’s ever changing landscape of religions and beliefs. The question must be asked regarding when is too much. How far can the Christian faith push its borders without losing its core and traditional meanings and foundations? The appeal of the Christian religion has to compete with the social world in which it exists. The traditional Christian is viewed by many as stagnant, stiff, and out-dated. The youth today need to be challenged mentally and spiritually to stimulate their interest in a religion that can be interpreted as boring and seen as a relic of their parents and grandparents. To explore how Christianity as a religion can grow, one must first explore its past and past struggles to include those with Judaism and Islam. According to a book entitled the first Christians, attention is drawn to archaeological discoveries and modern social science scholars that have sharpened their focus on that first generation of Christians. It has shown early Christians saw themselves not as founders of a new religion but as reformers of Judaism. They did not want to abandon Judaism, but to rejuvenate it. The early Christian message was not a uniform creed; it changed in important ways, especially in its depiction of Jesus, as Christianity spread from Palestine to the Roman Empire. That there were "real and important differences" in how the founding Christians understood their faith is beyond dispute, says James D.G. Dunn, professor of divinity at the University of Durham, England. Understanding those early differences can illuminate a church that today ranges in form