And Then What?

A friend of mine from my college days sent me a YouTube video which graphically recorded the declining fertility rate in all Western European nations and the dramatic increase in the population of all Western European countries of Muslims. By some figure like by 2025 more than half of the population of most Western European countries will be Muslims. My friend was very pessimistic about the future of the world. It was a video dramatic enough to get one to thinking.

My college courses in World History never really covered the world. Those courses only dealt with the history from the Fertile crescent westward. They never talked about the Far East and India. But there was one very obvious fact in the history we did read. That fact was that empires rise and fall. A civilization comes together and dominates the whole Western European land mass for a couple of hundred years and then fades away. Nobody has stayed on top forever.

There is also the fact in American History that a very large part of our population has believed that we were a special instrument of God's providence. We were a special creation by God to bless the world. We had a "manifest destiny" to cover the continent. We have a statue that says we are the haven for all the world's oppressed. Many of us see ourselves as a Christian nation with a divine duty to redeem the world. God shed his grace on us and we have been blessed by God for the good of the world.

Are there theologians and Christian scholars who are pondering the theological implications of the demise of the United States? Are there Christian thinkers who are exploring our role in the world as a "has been" power? Is that the time we call upon the great Exile tradition and see ourselves as being forsaken by God because we were not faithful or is that when we see the providence of God working in the world a new thing through the powers of the Far East and the powers of the Muslims? Of course, the fall of America could coincide with Armageddon and the beginning of the rapture. I suspect the last idea may be the shape that current preaching in many places takes. Does the providence of God's love and grace have a next chapter in the world after the fall of the United States? How would that demise of the United States be explained in our present theological climate?