One of the Most Enlightening Pieces I have Read on the Subject

When I was born, almost thirty years ago, my country was almost 99.9% Catholic. Since then there has been an explosive development of Evangelical Christianity among both the popular classes and some of the comercial elite and the emerging upper middle class. I think that around 80% of the urban population of Colombia is now Catholic, whilst the rest is some shade of Protestant. My friends in the intelligentsia, all of them raised as upper middle class Catholics, have gone in more exotic directions: everything ranging from Mahayana Buddhism to "bright" agnosticism to American Indian naturalist-paganism, and, of course, Judaism. This just shows the incredible disatisfaction with traditional religion in even a relatively conservative country like Colombia and the great mobility of ideas that bring people to new ideological and spiritual landscapes. Very much like our physical realities are becoming increasingly mobile and more and more people are moving away from the places of their birth, more and more people are moving away from the religion of their parents. We are at the dawn of a new age of conversions. Quite like the Roman Empire in its transit from a Republic to the Caesarate, people are greatly disappointed with their lives and are looking for meaning in a society were many cultures and religions come together in the great Market of Ideas. It was in the early Roman empire where centurions born in Italy worshipped the Aryan deity Mithras, where Turkish matrons converted to Judaism, and the philosophers of the age were fascinated with the arcane knowledge of the Egyptian sages. Against the backdrop of this world could a Jewish cult like Christianity prosper and conquer Europe. Today, in the new Rome, there are Chinese Jews, Anglosaxon Muslims, Black Buddhists, Latino Mormons, etc., etc., etc. Here is a wonderful article to understand this Brave New world which such people in it.

"Religion in a Globalizing World" by Peter Berger

[M]y major thesis this morning is that what is happening with the globalization of religion is a globalization of pluralism. Pluralism, which was a much more geographically, much more limited phenomenon 150 or 200 years ago, has become a global phenomenon, and that has enormous implications.