Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream

“So, yes—my friend has a point: To someone who has never given a moment’s thought to whether Jesus was a real person or not, he does seem like an entirely fictional character.”

The consensus is that Jesus was a real person. Maybe he was not the Son of God born of a virgin, but he was, at the very least, a person who lived in the Middle East at some point in the early first century. Skeptics of this view are called Jesus mythicists. To date, they have not only been outnumbered among scholars and historians but also widely ignored by the general public. I believe this is about to change.

There are a number of reasons why Jesus mythicism is about to go mainstream—or, at the very least, become gradually more widely-held. The first reason simply has to do with a demographic shift: Most Western countries are becoming less Christian every year. Meanwhile, by all accounts, less religious Christian countries are less inclined to believe in the historicity of Jesus. For example, 93% of Americans believe Jesus was a real person while, according to a Church of England poll, only 60% of the English hold that view.

It stands to reason that as the United States becomes less Christian, it will become less tied to the historicity of Jesus. And the United States is becoming less Christian—fast. According to Pew, between 2009 and 2019, American adults who identified as Protestants dropped from 51% to 43%, while Catholics dropped from 23% to 20%. And even for those who still identify as Christian, fewer and fewer of them are attending church. In 2020, a Gallup poll found that only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. In the eight decades Gallup has conducted this poll, 2020 was the first year the number dipped below 50%.