It’s fairly common knowledge that mainstream Christianity is in decline, at least in western civilisation. Now, by mainstream I mean churches that aren’t the simplistic, backward, literalistic, entertainment oriented, fundamentalist churches which engage in a heavy handed proselytising form of evangelism; rather, mainstream churches take the lessons from the Old & New Testaments and try to have them make sense in our world: that the precepts in the Bible are metaphorically applicable (as opposed to literally) to today’s exigencies, is one of the distinguishing features from its more gratuitously superficial, excessively emotional, reptilian, counterpart.  It’s not unlike comparing the literary talents of Snooki (remember her?) to Iris Murdoch.

Similarly, the more cerebral, spiritual and metaphysically challenging mainstream church can’t compete with the superfluous emotionalism of the  fundamentalists.  Those institutions/enterprises which appeal to the baser aspects of human beings will always have a certain cache among the largely ignorant and emotionally…