Contemporary Christianity Research Paper

The impact of globalization on the contemporary Christian church: some critical reflections

Globalization has a well established and crucial impact on the contemporary Christian church as religion and its traditions have been a part of this global movement for many years, here the mixing of nations and the exchanging of products and ideas are witnessed. Contemporary Christianity is the modification of the old traditional beliefs to attract and be made fitting for the modern world. As Christianity is a world religion, globalization affects its authority and stance because of the threat of a loss of tradition and beliefs through the standardising of the world.

Globalization is a process of international integration arising from the interchange

With that said, the four basic aspects of globalization include trade, transactions, capital and migration; this does however, spread knowledge and understanding of the world’s major events (Beyer, 2005: 3499). Several key factors influenced the process of globalization this is improvements in transportation, freedom of trade, communication improvements and labour availability as the early 19th century saw the development of new form of transportation and telecommunications allowing for increasingly rapid rates of global interchange (Giddens, 2002: 47). The global interchange mentioned demonstrates that individuals are together in one global humanity living in the same time and space giving room for Christianity and its teachings to spread across the nations. Ronald Robertson states that ‘globalization as a whole refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness about the world as a whole’ (Eriksen, 2014: 117), from this it suggests that the compression brings us closer to each other for better and for worse and the consciousness about these connections gives a sense of both opportunities and vulnerability (Eriksen, 2014: 117)

It is known that since the 1960’s the electronic media have managed to pull together many cultures, societies and civilizations into unavoidable contact, depriving them of their isolation, this has lead the world to increasing contact as globalization has reduced distances in space and time and brought civilizations and communities into closer degrees of interaction (Kalu, 2008: 20). This ultimately has lead to the emergence of new cultures; however this can surface the problem of identity in some religions and