Calamitous Centuries Past and Present

I am listening to the Throughline episode that explores Omar El Akkad's novel, American War.  I read the book in 2017, and I remember it as a searing experience, searing in a good way.  It begins with a discussion about the past and the future, about sci-fi and futuristic fiction (will it be hover cars or will it stay rooted in the conflicts of past ages?).  It's a great conversation.  When I finished it for the first time, I listened again.

As I drove to Williamsburg, I listened to an episode of On the Media about the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence, followed by news of devastating weather crashing into California.  I thought about the century we're in, the 21st century, and I thought about the decades that will unfold.  I think that if humanity survives, we will use the word "calamitous" to describe the 21st century, much the way we use it with the 14th century (see Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror) or the collapse of the Bronze Age.  

Yes, I think there will be spots where we marvel at how humanity solved one problem or another.  Maybe it will be the vast fields of solar panels (and we will wonder why humans didn't attempt this sooner, maybe staving off the climate catastrophes that cascaded through the 21st century) or the ways we've learned to vanquish some diseases.  Some of us won't perceive the century through a lens of disaster and catastrophe.  Many of us won't survive long enough to think about the 21st century at all.

My mom and I spent a lot of time over the week-end returning to the issue of the future of church, both The Church (the institution) and the Sunday service itself.  My thoughts have continued to circle around the various developments I learned about in Church History I, the times when the Church could have become something else, could have championed a different set of values and beliefs.

I find myself thinking about the emphasis on personal salvation vs. the salvation of societies.  When we face threats that are more existential, does the Church abandon the personal salvation/substitutionary atonement theories?  Or does society give up on church altogether, thinking that if there's a hope for salvation, it won't be coming from The Church?

The coming decades may illuminate these questions, if any of us have leisure time to reflect on them.