If we look back over the last 1500 years, we have seen many internal battles within Christianity. This has driven progress within the Church.
- Saint Paul who started Christianity, preached love to end the cruelty of the Roman culture and importantly bridged cultures by opening his new religion to the gentiles (beyond the Jews).
- The Investiture battle in the 12th century saw a start of the separation between ecclesiastic and secular power.
- Protestantism ended superstition and successfully challenged the power and wealth of the Catholic Church.
- The Quakers were instrumental in ending slavery, the battles around guy marriage and abortion and so on.
These are some highlights nut there are many changes that occurred through the dynamic within Christianity. The broad range of people within Christianity have been able to create progress and this process will continue.
As we see with many vested political, social, religious, and economic interests, it is very rare that structural changes are coming from the leadership. Such changes require to destruct the old while at the same time embrace the new and this is extremely difficult to implement. However, over the longer term it works in all elements of society. In the end progress will win it from conservatism, but we need them both to move forward in a balanced way.
It will be interesting to see what happens. Will the traditional religions slowly disappear in obscurity and become irrelevant or will they harden and retreat further into their dogmas or will it be possible to continue the changes and move forwards? In the end we do need to see the religions to come together to address the complex issues that humanity is facing.