Old churches that were once centres of communities now lie derelict in England. In their place fundamentalist denominations have sprung up, desperately attempting to keep the faith alive. Is this just part of evolution comparable to how species survive by natural selection by having to modify themselves in order to survive the time in which they live?
I could speculate that Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism have a common ancestor. Like man and the chimpanzee, it is difficult to pinpoint just what that common ancestor was. Godfrey Higgins had a stab at it in his book Anacalypsis and defined the ancient religion as 'Pandeism', a sort of lost belief in the power of the sun, moon and stars. What we would define as paganism.
It means that those religions are indeed like cousins or second cousins to each other. What cemented Christianity to Buddhism and Zoroastianism for example is a missing link, which was the sect of the Essenes. These Jewish ascetics lived in monasteries and absorbed the ideas of the wandering Therapeuts.
They championed the idea of the Angel-Messiah (ref. Bunsen in The Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes and Christians), or incarnate avatar which was the basis of the never ending cycle of Buddhas. This would make Jesus Christ the last Buddha as avatars are born roughly every 600 years! Gautama-Buddha at 600 BCE was the preceding one. The prophet Isaiah also forecast the birth of a saviour at this time (about 670 BCE). In this religious Tree of Life Christianity has occupied the top spot, but just like the metaphorical tree it branched into new denominations. On the way there were also found extinctions some of which were ruthlessly removed. Essenism itself became extinct shortly after the death of Christ.
If religion could be described as a memeplex which is blindly programming towards its own destruction, then it is comparable to the genepool for a species which also blindly programs towards its own destruction. Therefore Christianity (and every other religion) is doomed, but when this will happen we do not know.