Pre-Modern Mortality and the Early Appeal of the Christian Gospel

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — January 25, 2026

What This Essay Examines

This Sunday essay looks at how the living conditions of the pre-modern world shaped the emotional and moral appeal of the Christian Gospel, and why those conditions no longer describe modern life for many readers. It is written as historical and sociological context, not as ridicule of belief and not as a claim that God does or does not exist.

Reporting: The World Christianity Emerged In

For most of human history, average life expectancy was far lower than it is today. This was driven heavily by high infant and child mortality, alongside frequent disease outbreaks, violence, famine, and the risks of childbirth.

In environments where early death was common, many communities developed practices that reflected that risk. Anthropologists and historians have documented cultures where children were named later than is common today, or where naming practices were structured to acknowledge high infant mortality. These practices were not about lack of care. They were about living with uncertainty and grief as normal parts of life.

In such societies, death was not a distant concept. It was personal, recurring, and close. That reality shaped how people understood meaning, obedience, and hope.

Reporting: Age, Development, and Social Vulnerability

Modern neuroscience describes cognitive development as a long process that often continues into the twenties, particularly in systems related to planning, impulse control, and long-term risk assessment. In the pre-modern world, large numbers of people died before reaching what modern research would describe as full neurological maturity.

This does not imply that earlier societies were “less human” or “less intelligent.” It means that the average life course was shorter, and the space for long, sustained theological doubt or philosophical distance from immediate survival pressures was often limited.

Reporting: Why Promises of Salvation Fit That Environment

In societies where suffering and early death were normalized, theological promises could feel practical rather than abstract. Concepts such as salvation, heaven, and divine justice carried stronger emotional force when daily experience included frequent child death, disease without reliable treatment, recurring violence, and weak or uneven legal protection.

In that context, religion often functioned as meaning-making infrastructure. It did not remove suffering, but it organized suffering into a story with moral shape. It also offered continuity in environments where many other institutions were fragile.

Analysis: Why Questioning God Was Harder Then

This essay does not treat belief as irrational. It treats belief as historically aligned with historical conditions.

Questioning God requires slack: time, safety, education, and distance from constant threat. Where survival is fragile, doubt can become psychologically expensive. When death is close, theological promises may be easier to accept because they address immediate fear and ongoing grief.

Analysis: Why Modern Conditions Change the Ground Beneath Belief

Modern life in many countries is structurally different. People live longer. Child mortality is far lower. Education is more widespread. Many deaths occur later and in medical settings rather than at home.

These changes do not disprove God. They do, however, alter the psychological environment in which belief develops. Longer life stretches suffering across decades. People may live long enough to observe unresolved injustice without visible correction, and long enough to keep asking questions.

It is also worth stating plainly that these questions are not the product of academic fashion or political identity. They arise from living in the modern world as it exists — where many people now live long enough, and safely enough, to question what earlier generations could not.

Continuity of Inquiry

For readers interested in how belief turns into inquiry, and inquiry into further questioning rather than resolution, those themes are explored in narrative form in Spiritflight. The work is not an argument and not an answer, but an examination of how such questions are formed, carried, and lived with. More information is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKXPLBXL.

Analysis: The Open Question

Christianity’s historical influence cannot be separated from the conditions in which it emerged. Recognizing that history does not weaken faith, but it does clarify why belief once felt obvious to many and feels more strained today.

The unresolved question is whether belief systems formed in a world of constant death can survive intact in a world where people now live long enough to question them.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com
This essay will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

References

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.
Casey, B. J., Jones, R. M., & Hare, T. A. (2008). The adolescent brain. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124(1), 111–126.
Oeppen, J., & Vaupel, J. W. (2002). Broken limits to life expectancy. Science, 296(5570), 1029–1031.
Riley, J. C. (2001). Rising life expectancy: A global history. Cambridge University Press.
UNICEF. (2023). Levels & trends in child mortality: Report 2023. United Nations Children’s Fund.