In my first post on this topic, I talked a bit about what we mean by Christendom and the dismemberment of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Last post, I talked about the role played by the papacy in developing and spreading culture and unity throughout the arising kingdoms that took Rome’s place, bringing us from Pope Leo I (r. 440-461) to Pope Leo III and Charlemagne at the latters coronation in the year 800.
Most of the next 1000 years I’ll skip, okay? Suffice it to say, as mentioned in the first post, the Church as an institution along with many individual Christians was a powerful force in the intellectual, political, cultural, social, legal, artistic, military (etc, etc) life of Europe. For good or ill.
Today it is not.
What I will not talk about, which may disappoint, is the cultural fragmentation that has coincided with the decline of ecclesiastical power in the West. The two may well be linked; I’m not really a cultural analyst, more of a classical philologist/historian who plays around in theology. I would say, however, that we do live in troubling times, when the visual arts are incomprehensible blobs, blots, and belches, music is mostly either vapid pop or void ‘art’, poetry has missed the part where words mean things, modern novels have forgotten what a story is, art cinema is so dull, and so forth.
I also leave it up for others who wish to discuss any possible moral degradation. This is a story that is unequivocally linked to the fall of Christendom, but is a symptom. We cannot legislate morality. If any sort of ‘Christendom’ is worth reconstructing (a point up for debate), I think maybe we begin with disciples.
No, sorry.
With Jesus.
What, then, do I mean by the fall of Christendom?
I first heard the term ‘Christendom’ in old books about the Crusades when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. I had this vision of all of Christian Europe standing firm against the oncoming, oppressive infidels, who were apparently some people group called ‘Turks’ and by religion ‘Moslems.’
I first heard of how we are living after Christendom from my father’s preaching in the late 90s. He put it simply, that most people aren’t really Christians anymore. Charles Alexander, one of his fellow Anglican priests from the Diocese of Calgary, once put it that we are clearly living in a post-Christian age — at least 35 years ago people could tell you which church they weren’t going to!
That is to say, not only do we have fewer people who truly believe and live the Gospel, we have fewer people who even identify as nominally Christian. To be Christian is no longer to hold any power in our culture. Our churches, as I have seen in Edinburgh, are empty(ing).
Some people are living in fear as a result. They miss ‘the good ol’ days’ when Christians, and evangelical or possibly Roman Catholic Christians, had the power. When they could say, ‘Down with this sort of thing,’ and people would listen.
I don’t know if we’ll ever have ‘good ol’ days’ again.
Could that be a good thing?
New evangelization
What should actually trouble us isn’t the marginalisation of the Church. That is inevitable if no one’s going to our churches or believing the version of the gospel that is publicly pandered to the populace. We should be concerned about salvation and souls.
The Roman Church calls this the New Evangelization. Postmodern, post-Christian, un-Christian Europe and North America have turned their backs on the Church. Even in countries like Cyprus, where almost everyone turns up at a church on Sunday morning, people are not seeking to become Jesusy. They don’t go to their priests for spiritual comfort or advice — they go to the big New Age conventions for that.
When we look to those Great Popes (Leo I and Gregory I) and late antique/early mediaeval saints like St Caesarius of Arles or St Augustine of Canterbury or St Martin of Tours or St Cuthbert or St Aidan or St Columba or St Boniface we see not just people out to mould culture into their vision of what Catholic culture should look like (as the abovelinked post to St Caesarius discusses) but people who want to see their neighbours and the peoples of distant lands find Jesus and then follow him.
I also believe that simple evangelism as I was taught or imagined when younger is not enough. Tracts are not enough. I once wanted to be a door-to-door preacher (no joke) in my zeal to make sure people heard about Jesus — not enough. That guy yelling on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh — not enough. What does Christ call his Apostles to do?
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19, NKJV)
A disciple is a lifelong student of Jesus, an apprentice is his school of life and love. We are to be being conformed to the likeness of his image, and to be helping our neighbours do likewise.
Charles Alexander, in the same series of talks where he noted that 35 years ago people at least knew which church they didn’t go to, called us to be prophets to the culture around, that we need to be a radical church for a radical age.
Cultural transformation
I have a distinct feeling that more Christians = more Christian culture.
But we need, as a Church, to be willing to foster the artists in our midst. We need to let them produce fantastic art that sometimes maybe doesn’t talk about Jesus at all. The Truth will shine through, don’t worry.
We also need to help make real disciples who are in positions of power. Not power-hungry hypocrites who have all the Jesusy slogans but lack Jesusy character. Nay! Men and women of Jesusy character in places of power is a good thing.
But we’ve been saying this for decades. But the effect of Christians on public policy and our efforts to keep people in church and hooked on Jesus have been failing.
So I could be wrong.
How do you think we could transform culture into something where orthodox Christianity is at least visible and taken seriously?
Classically Christian 