The last millenium was indeed shaped by the church but I am very curious what the role of religion or faith will be in the current millenium.

Going to churches because that's 'just what you do' has completely faded. People are expressing more faith in relationships than old institutions.

Whole world was shaped my Christian Church, we even calculate time in accordance to Jesus' birth.

Just about anything can be explained as being shaped by the church, or the military. Or both.

Agnostic here.

It is fair to say that Western thinking has been shaped by the church a lot, given that for almost 1000 years, the only education you could get was provided by the church. Secular schools either did not exist at all, or were very small.

Also, common knowledge of Latin helped scholars from various ends of the continent communicate with one another. This is an important factor in Europe, with its Babel of mutually unintelligible languages.

> It is fair to say that Western thinking has been shaped by the church a lot, given that for almost 1000 years, the only education you could get was provided by the church.

There was a heavy emphasis on Aristotle in earlier parts of the curriculum AFAICT:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university#Course_of_...

Theology (law, medicine, etc) were further down the road.

> Secular schools either did not exist at all, or were very small.

Not accurate. Bologna was one of the very first universities created, as a type of 'union' / guild of students, and it focused on the study of law:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bologna

Also Oxford. See The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession by Brundage, which while focusing on law, covers a lot on universities because this was a big component of its development from 1000-1200AD. There were quite a few secularly-incorporated institutions:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medieval_universities

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in...

Paris was more theologically focused.

> There was a heavy emphasis on Aristotle in earlier parts of the curriculum AFAICT

True, although with two important caveats:

(1) Aristotle's thought was "baptized," so to speak, through men like Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, etc. Although they respected Aristotle (Thomas Aquinas calls him simply "The Philosopher") his thought was regarded as incomplete, and at times discarded, where not harmonious with Christianity.

(2) Closely related, Catholic theologians regarded Aristotle as possessing "natural theology" (known to Protestants as "general revelation"). That is, there are elements of truth given by God to all people but do not tell the story of Christ crucified for the sin of the world. The idea is that "all truth is God's truth" so philosophy, biology, morality, etc. point to God's existence and attributes. Aristotle was regarded as possessing especially keen insight into this natural theology, along with other greats of western antiquity (e.g., Cicero).