Jung recognized that, for some people, Christianity mediates a sustained and energy-giving contact with the unconscious. However, the capacity of Christianity to perform this mediation has been in decline, largely due to a long series of missteps and betrayals by Christian theologians and other church leaders. For Christianity to survive and evolve, Jung felt it needed to seek wholeness by evoking three long-repressed aspects of the godhead: the feminine, matter, and shadow. In the sixty years since Jung made these observations, there is some evidence that Christianity is rising to this challenge, particularly through the voices of Feminist and Queer theologians, but resistance has been fierce. It remains to be seen if this movement will be sufficient to keep Christianity alive and relevant in the 21st century and beyond.

By Bob Bongiovanni