Post Post-Christendom…

For the last few decades churches in the Western world have noted, usually with a sense of lament, that we live in a post-Christendom world – in other words, in a world where Christianity has lost its privileged status and is no longer assumed to be true, moral or the default religion of society. We can no longer presume that the major stories of the Bible are known by the majority, and biblical allusions are usually met with blank incomprehension (“what do you mean when you say she’s a Good Samaritan?”) As to the church setting the agenda for society, that is long past in a society which bows the knee to secularism and worships it more fervently than the average religious believer.

While we might tut tut at the losses of post-Christendom, it is important to remember that it was POST- Christendom. It was never PRE-Christendom. The many gifts bequeathed during the Christendom era did not disappear, and their presence continued to bless and nurture a society which was rapidly forgetting where they originally came from. There was no special concern for the rights of each individual until Christianity loudly affirmed the dignity of all as having been made in the image of God. Indeed, the very concept of a charitable concern for your neighbor, or for the poor and vulnerable, was never an entrenched value until Christianity started to shape the world.

In the early stages of post- Christendom we continued to be shaped by a conviction that we should work for the common good, that we ultimately needed to answer for how we lived our lives, and that our horizon should be wider than our self interest. It is not that people never cheated on their tax returns – but they used to feel a little guilty for doing so, aware that they were defrauding the poor and vulnerable. Nor did people never get drunk – but when they did they wondered if they should value their bodies a little more, as a gift given to them, and one not to be abused. If they tracked down some pornography, it left them a tad ashamed that they would view the bodies of others merely as objects of desire – rather than as belonging to real people… people who were almost always being exploited and abused, people who had been made in the image of God. In short, the convictions of Christendom continued to be felt in the early stages of a post-Christendom era.

But we are no longer in the early stages of post-Christendom. Indeed, while the term is terribly cumbersome, I would argue that we are entering a post post-Christendom era. The vestiges of Christendom are now almost gone. Love for others has been replaced with an almost obsessive love for self. Narcissism is the new normal, and me, myself and I are the horizons of our dramatically shrunken concern. Some now have marriage ceremonies where they are their own marriage partner – a ceremony for one, where they promise to put their own self first, forsaking all others…

Perhaps this all sounds a little despairing and critical. Actually, it leaves me quietly optimistic. We are made for more, and deep within we know it. St Augustine was right when he said “You, O Lord, have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” That rest will never be found at the lonely altar of self –  and so perhaps the God who “writes straight with crooked lines” will use the current shift in society to create an even deeper hunger for God. For those who are hungry seek… and those who seek find.

As always, nice chatting…