Is Christianity dying?

On the face of it, this might seem to many to be a ridiculous question, but there have been a couple of reports in the last week which beg the question.

Firstly, there was a report that in a secularised Europe, with the numbers of the Catholic faithful shrinking dramatically and a worsening economic situation, the whispered question from some governments is: is it still worthwhile, politically and economically, keeping an embassy to the Holy See? Here, in western Europe, the heart of Christianity, the crisis of Catholicism is an impressive one. Even in Germany, the pontiff's heartland, in 2010 for the first time the number of Catholics who left the church was higher than that of baptisms: 181,193 left Catholicism, 170,000 were baptised.

Secondly, there was the question of whether the United States was still a Christian country. It's obviously full of people who call themselves Christians; and certainly full of religious believers in a way difficult for many Europeans to understand or to accept. But is what modern Americans believe actually Christianity at all?

It has been suggested that what modern Americans worship is actually the embodiment of America itself which purports to be fundamentally Christian.

Crossing the two stories over reminds me that when Clinton was President, the Vatican pressed very hard for a non-Democrat ambassador - one who did not support the pro-life movement.

To make things worse, in the US, Christianity has been absorbed into a mishmash of self-help programmes and therapies, new age products and scraps of eastern religions. There are cults for every taste and circumstance. It seems incoherent and lacking a common direction.

So will Christianity as we know it survive? In some form almost undoubtedly, but perhaps not as we currently know it.

And whether this is for the better or worse only time will tell...