February 2, 2025
Title: ‘The Vast Dechurching and the Paradox of Christian Decline’
Firmin DeBrabander
Professor of Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art
The rapid secularization in Europe has reached our shores in America, and people are leaving organized religion in droves. It is an overlooked and underappreciated cultural shift that promises to be very profound. And yet: while institutional Christianity looks to be on the decline in the Global North, nothing could be further from the truth in the rest of the world; indeed, overall trends suggest that Christianity will continue to grow, even while it seems quite moribund in the west. In any case, the decline of Christianity may be just what is needed; many Catholics leave the church in disgust over widespread corruption and cruelty. But as the French Jesuit Paul Valadier has written, a church that has no power—which is greatly diminished today—cannot abuse it. Thus, paradoxically, the significant marginalization of the church in the west may be what properly purifies the faith and its institution.
Firmin DeBrabander is Professor of Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He teaches courses in Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Aesthetics, Economic Theory and Greek Philosophy. He is the author of two books: Do Guns Make us Free? (Yale University Press, 2015), and Life After Privacy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He has written essays and opinion pieces in a variety of national publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, among others.
