Also, does anyone else here feel culturally connected to their religion?
Born & raised in a Catholic family, I feel zero cultural connection to Catholicism. It feels foreign to me. And that's OK. Some guy the other day told me he's Catholic and I asked him "why?" - He seemed shocked by my question, as if I asked something absolutely inappropriate. He mumbled the answer: "Well... why?! What do you mean why? That wasn't my choice, was it?" - Then I asked him if he lets his parents decide other things for him, and he got even more nervous. You can say I'm mean to ask such questions but what good does it do to be a nominal Christian, going to Church without even knowing what it's about? Just because it's tradition? I think people should go through a crisis of faith, even through atheism, nihilism, despair, and then when they're at the most desperate, then they're ready for the message of the Gospel. The people who just follow traditions would follow other traditions if the times changed. We changed tradition folks! Now the tradition is to worship this golden bull! We discovered this was the TRUE religion of your forefathers! Sorry, there was a mistake in historical records! To follow tradition is no solid foundation to build upon. It's fickle.
You really have to die before you're ready for faith. And the "death" also means the death of the tradition and habit. I'm not saying we shouldn't educate our children into Christianity. I'm saying something different, that they will never be authentically religious unless they, too, at some point, die spiritually and are reborn.
I think this worry about "the future of Christianity" is not so relevant. What is important is the future of the Kingdom of God. I think people who make Christianity into a cultural thing are killing it. In my country, Christianity is always cultural. It just means "right wing" mostly. It's political. The people who pretend to be Christian don't know much about the Bible. They just identify with the name because they don't like left wingers, socialists, communists, etc. What kind of faith is that?
When Christianity becomes an ethnic, family, tradition thing like being a Jew, it will really die, that will be the end of it. The power of Christianity is exactly that it lacks ethnic substance. Even an alien from another planet can become a Christian. It has nothing to do with ethnicity or the future of nation or race. Christianity is not nationalistic and not ethnic, never will be. "Who are my mother and my sister? These, my disciples, are my mother and my sister." No ethnic substance. Only spiritual substance.