Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World. Second Edition

By Stuart Murray

Western societies are experiencing a series of disorientating culture shifts. Uncertain where we are heading, observers use "post" words to signal that familiar landmarks are disappearing, but we cannot yet discern the shape of what is emerging. One of the most significant shifts, "post-Christendom," raises many questions about the mission and role of the church in this strange new world.  
What does it mean to be one of many minorities in a culture that the church no longer dominates? How do followers of Jesus engage in mission from the margins? What do we bring with us as precious resources from the fading Christendom era, and what do we lay down as baggage that will weigh us down on our journey into post-Christendom?
Post-Christendom identifies the challenges and opportunities of this unsettling but exciting time. Stuart Murray presents an overview of the formation and development of the Christendom system, examines the legacies this has left, and highlights the questions that the Christian community needs to consider in this period of cultural transition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781498243100

Stuart Murray

Stuart Murray helps direct the Anabaptist Network in Great Britain, and serves the network as a trainer and consultant with particular interest in urban mission, church planting, and emerging forms of church. He has written several books on church planting, urban mission, emerging church, the challenge of post-Christendom, and the contribution of the Anabaptist tradition to contemporary missiology. He is the author of The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith, Planting Churches in the 21st Century: A Guide for Those Who Want Fresh Perspectives and New Ideas for Creating Congregations, and Church Planting: Laying Foundations.

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Post-Christendom

Church and Mission in a Strange New World

Second Edition

Stuart Murray

8767.png

POST-CHRISTENDOM

Church and Mission in a Strange New World. Second Edition

Copyright ©

2018

Stuart Murray. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1797-3

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4311-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4310-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Murray, Stuart,

1956–

.

Title: Post-Christendom : church and mission in a strange new world. Second edition / Stuart Murray.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2018

| After Christendom Series | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-5326-1797-3 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-4982-4311-7 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-4982-4310-0 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Christianity and culture | Church renewal | Church history | Missions

Classification:

BV2498 M87 2018 (

print

) | BV2498 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

January 22, 2018

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Chapter 1: The End of Christendom

Snapshots of Post-Christendom

What Post-Christendom Is Not

The Meaning of Post-Christendom

Chapter 2: The Coming of Christendom

The Achievement of Christendom

Constantine

From Pre-Christendom to Christendom

Constantine’s Successors

Converting the Empire

Some Questions

Chapter 3: The Expansion of Christendom

From the Margins to the Center

From the Center to the Margins

Strengthening the Center

Extending the Boundaries

How Christian was Christendom?

More Questions

Chapter 4: The Christendom Shift

Augustine

Summarizing the Christendom Shift

Illustrating the Christendom Shift

Objections to the Christendom Shift

Alternatives to the Christendom Shift

Chapter 5: The Heart of Christendom

The Culture of Christendom

Truth and Violence

The Bible

The Church

Mission

Marginal Voices

Chapter 6: The Disintegration of Christendom

Christendom in Turmoil

Reforming Christendom

Rejecting Christendom

Reflecting on Christendom

Chapter 7: The Christendom Legacy

The Demise of Christendom in Western Europe

Vestiges of Christendom

The Christendom Mindset

Responding to the Christendom Legacy

Chapter 8: Post-Christendom: Mission

Mission in Late Christendom

Evangelism in Post-Christendom

Mission in a Plural Society

Church and Society

Church and State

Chapter 9: Post-Christendom: Church

What Kind of Church?

Emerging Church

The Post-Christendom Lens

Inherited Church

Simple Church

Reimagining Church

Revival or Survival?

Chapter 10: Post-Christendom: Resources

Church

Bible

Theology

Imagery

Terminology

Jesus at the Center

Appendix 1: The Donatists

Appendix 2: The Waldensians

Appendix 3: The Lollards

Appendix 4: The Anabaptists

Bibliography

"With the on-going demise of Christendom, Western Christians are finding themselves in relatively uncharted territory. If this unsettling situation feels a bit like being lost in the deep woods, reading Steward Murray’s Post-Christendom feels like finding a reliable compass. He doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he certainly asks the right questions, which in turn helps us begin to head in the right direction. Unless you are among the diminishing rank of those misguided folk who are still trying to prop up Christendom—as though its death were not inevitable (and welcomed!)—you will find this well-written and compellingly-argued work to be as challenging as it is insightful, and as exciting as it is encouraging."

—

Greg Boyd

, Senior Pastor, Woodland Hills Church, Maplewood, Minnesota

What an illuminating read! Murray provides a lucid, nuanced historical overview that masterfully describes the contours of Christendom, its demise, and resources for living into a Jesus-shaped future. This well-told account, while deeply disquieting, is ultimately empowering. It’s clear-eyed analysis of how Christians got so tragically off course is a must-read for all those ready to rediscover Jesus, reimagine church, and live into hope for a more just, gentle world.

—

Sara Wenger Shenk

, President, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana

"I read the first edition of Post-Christendom when it came out fourteen years ago and have returned to it regularly since. Stuart Murray’s plea for us to disavow Christendom and rediscover Jesus-centered mission from the margins of contemporary society is no less a clarion call today than it was back then. I’m delighted to commend this second edition for a new generation of readers who are yet to be convinced that Constantine is still the emperor of their imaginations."

—

Michael Frost

, Morling College, Sydney

I used to recommend the first edition to all the leaders, pastors, church planters, and students I could. I will now require the second edition for all I work with so they can get the best grip on Christendom and now Post-Christendom. This is a crucial read and with the updated Canadian content, it has become even more helpful for the church in Canada.

—

Cam Roxburgh

, Senior Pastor of Southside Community Church, National Director of Forge Canada, and Vice President of Missional Initiatives for the North American Baptists

After Christendom Series

Christendom was a historical era, a geographical region, a political arrangement, a sacral culture, and an ideology. For many centuries Europeans have lived in a society that was nominally Christian. Church and state have been the pillars of a remarkable civilization that can be traced back to the decision of the emperor Constantine I early in the fourth century to replace paganism with Christianity as the imperial religion.

Christendom, a brilliant but brutal culture, flourished in the Middle Ages, fragmented in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but persisted despite the onslaught of modernity. While exporting its values and practices to other parts of the world, however, it has been slowly declining during the past three centuries. In the twenty-first century Christendom is unravelling.

What will emerge from the demise of Christendom is not yet clear, but we can now describe much of Western culture as post-Christendom. Post-Christendom is the culture that emerges as the Christian faith loses coherence within a society that has been definitively shaped by the Christian story and as the institutions that have been developed to express Christian convictions decline in influence.

This definition, proposed and unpacked in Post-Christendom, the first book in the After Christendom series, has gained widespread acceptance. Post-Christendom investigated the Christendom legacy and raised numerous issues that are explored in the rest of the series. The authors of this series, who write from within the Anabaptist tradition, see the current challenges facing the church not as the loss of a golden age but as opportunities to recover a more biblical and more Christian way of being God’s people in God’s world.

The series addresses a wide range of issues, including theology, social and political engagement, how we read Scripture, youth work, mission, worship, relationships, and the shape and ethos of the church after Christendom.

Eleven books were published by Paternoster between 2004 and 2016:

Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom

Stuart Murray, Church after Christendom

Jonathan Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom

Jo Pimlott and Nigel Pimlott, Youth Work after Christendom

Alan Kreider and Eleanor Kreider, Worship and Mission after Christendom

Lloyd Pietersen, Reading the Bible after Christendom

Andrew Francis, Hospitality and Community after Christendom

Fran Porter, Women and Men after Christendom

Simon Perry, Atheism after Christendom

Brian Haymes and Kyle Gingerich Hiebert, God after Christendom

Jeremy Thomson, Relationships and Emotions after Christendom

Two of these (Worship and Mission after Christendom and Reading the Bible after Christendom) were also published by Herald Press.

The series is now in the hands of Wipf and Stock, who are republishing some of the existing titles, including Post-Christendom, and commissioning further titles, including:

Joshua Searle, Theology after Christendom

Andy Hardy and Dan Yarnell, Missional Discipleship after Christendom

John Heathershaw, Security after Christendom

Jeremy Thomson, Interpreting the Old Testament after Christendom

These books are not intended to be the last word on the subjects they address, but an invitation to discussion and further exploration. Additional material, including extracts from published books and information about future volumes, can be found at www.anabaptistnetwork.com/AfterChristendom.

Stuart Murray

Dedicated to friends and colleagues in the

Anabaptist Network

Preface to the First Edition

Writing Post-Christendom has been daunting. It has meant surveying 1700 years of European church history and delving into missiological, sociological, and theological studies. I am grateful to scholars whose research I have learned from, indicating in footnotes where their insights can be accessed. But I realize that complex subjects and periods have often been summarized in a single paragraph or sentence. In a survey, broad brushstrokes do not permit many nuances or discussion of disputed issues.

I hope Post-Christendom contains few factual errors or irresponsible judgments, but it engages in what Alan Kreider calls bunking. Some books engage in debunking—critical studies that examine previous research and offer new interpretations of details or challenge unreliable conclusions. These are important and helpful books, providing secure foundations for those who rely on their careful work. But bunking is valid too—describing the big picture, presenting a framework, identifying recurrent themes, and exploring implications.

Post-Christendom suggests we are experiencing cultural turbulence as the long era of Christendom comes to an end. It argues that to negotiate this we need to understand Christendom, why it is collapsing, and how we reconfigure discipleship, mission, and church for a new era. It looks at familiar issues from unfamiliar angles, using the lens of post-Christendom. It offers perspectives and resources for Christians and churches no longer at the center of society but on the margins. It invites a realistic and hopeful response to challenges and opportunities awaiting us in the twenty-first century.

The transition from modernity to post-modernity (whatever this means) has received a huge amount of attention. The shift from Christendom to post-Christendom is at least as significant for church and society, but the issues and implications have not yet been explored to anything like the same extent. This book is an introduction, a journey into the past, an interpretation of the present, and an invitation to ask what following Jesus might mean in the strange new world of post-Christendom.

Post-Christendom has benefited from the critique of friends who read various chapters and whose feedback was helpful (though I am responsible for errors and shortcomings that remain). I am grateful to Jonathan Bartley, David Norrington, Dave Nussbaum, and Rosemary Pearse for their comments and to Jared Diener for help with research. Alan Kreider read the entire manuscript and I am deeply grateful for his friendship, encouragement, and insights. The other person who read the book chapter by chapter as first drafts appeared and helped me see issues in fresh ways was my wife, Sian, whose love and affirmation continues to sustain and humble me.

Many issues and perspectives in this book were first explored in conversations with friends and colleagues in the Anabaptist Network—including Nigel Wright, from whose writings on related themes I have learned much, and who kindly agreed to write the foreword. To them this book is gratefully dedicated.

Stuart Murray

Oxford, July 2003

Preface to the Second Edition

Fourteen years have passed since the first publication of Post-Christendom . Although I have been persuaded that a revised and updated edition would be helpful, this has not been a straightforward undertaking. Should this second edition be a major reworking of the original text or an opportunity merely to tweak it here and there?

This choice is complicated by a number of factors. Post-Christendom, as intended, launched a series of books under the After Christendom rubric. Eleven books in this series have now been published, expanding on and exploring in greater depth issues discussed only briefly in the first book in the series, and more are coming. I have also continued to write on related themes, most recently A Vast Minority, in which I delve more deeply into topics raised in my earlier book and offer fresh reflections on these. But it does not seem appropriate to retrofit this material into a revised edition of Post-Christendom or to intrude into areas covered in later books in the series. Furthermore, although unsurprisingly my thinking has developed and I might now nuance some of what I wrote fourteen years ago, rereading the text has not prompted me to want to revise it substantially.

Nevertheless, during the past fourteen years, pertinent research has been published and so this revised edition needs to draw on this and on several books that offer fresh perspectives on the nature of Christendom (and pre-Christendom) and reflections on contemporary expressions of post-Christendom.

There have also been developments in our cultural context and in the Christian community. The term post-Christendom is familiar now and its implications are increasingly widely acknowledged. Many have embraced the definition of post-Christendom proposed in the first edition, although some younger readers respond that this is their normal and that they have never known anything else. Are we moving into post-post-Christendom? Or is the term becoming obsolete? Perhaps this second edition will be the last.

The first edition was oriented towards Britain and Western Europe. It acknowledged that Christendom took different forms and that post-Christendom likewise will not be monochromatic. I chose not to engage with the very different transition taking place in Eastern Europe. Although I have since learned more about this, it remains largely beyond the scope of this revised edition. The first edition also accepted that the situation in America is different from other Western societies but it gave only limited attention to this. This second edition will expand that section of the book a little, noting that there are very different views among American writers, researchers, and church leaders as to whether post-Christendom is an emerging reality, an unwarranted analysis of their context, or an unhelpful notion.

As the After Christendom series moves to a new publisher, our intention is that it will become less Eurocentric and include voices from the global church, including North America. Two American authors and one Canadian have already contributed to the series and we hope that more will follow, together with authors from other places experiencing and responding to the demise of Christendom in different ways.

Stuart Murray

Canterbury, UK, March 2017

1

The End of Christendom

Snapshots of Post-Christendom

A newcomer to a church in Holland was surprised to hear someone reading from the Bible about the Alpha and Omega. She didn’t think people in Bible times had cars.

A minister in Stockholm was walking through a neighborhood wearing a clerical collar. He got into conversation with a group of Muslim teenagers, who asked him where he was from. He replied that he was from Stockholm. But where was he from originally? Stockholm. But he was a priest? Yes. But there are no Swedish priests because there are no Christians in Sweden.

An Anglican minister in England was in conversation with a neighbor who was struggling with family issues. He commented that her situation sounded rather like the parable of the prodigal son. She had no idea what he meant, so he told her the story. That’s a great story, she said. Who told that story? He explained that it was in the Bible and that Jesus told the story. She asked, Did he tell any other stories?

A visitor to a church in Denmark noticed that bread for Communion had been broken into small pieces and put on a plate. She asked whether this was meant for the birds and would be put outside after the service.

In Australia a school teacher was asking her primary school children to tell her what they associated with Christmas. Pupils suggested presents, turkey dinner, Father Christmas, etc. Then one said: It’s Jesus’ birthday. The teacher was displeased: No need to bring religion into Christmas.

Two teenage girls in England were in conversation at school one Monday morning. What did you do over the weekend? asked one. I went to church, said her friend. You did what? I thought only dead people went to church.

These are snapshots of post-Christendom from several nations in which central features of the Christian story are unknown and churches are alien institutions whose rhythms do not normally impinge on most members of society. Only a few years ago, these would not have been credible, but today there are numerous signs that the Christendom era in Western culture is fading.

In these snapshots, an unknown story and an alien institution provoke surprise, not hostility; curiosity, not indifference. The story fascinates; the institution is intriguing. Such total ignorance of church and Christianity may not yet be widespread, but it is becoming more common in many parts of Western culture. Over the coming decades, as the last generation who is familiar with the Christian story and for whom churches still have cultural significance dies, the change of epoch from Christendom to post-Christendom will be complete.

Then, for the first time in many centuries, Christians in Western culture will be able to tell the Christian story to people for whom it is entirely unknown—a challenging scenario but full of opportunities we have not had for generations. This was the early Christians’ experience as they carried the story across the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia. It has been the task of pioneer missionaries throughout the centuries as they have translated the story into diverse cultures. But it is new to us.

In Western culture, until recently, the story was known and church was a familiar institution. Evangelism meant encouraging those who already knew the story to live by it and inviting those already familiar with church to participate actively. Many were dechurched, but hardly anyone was unchurched (neither term is appropriate in a post-Christendom culture, where church is marginal and abnormal, but they help us understand the transitional phase we are experiencing). But our culture is changing.

Although in some nations formal membership of churches remains high, participation is minimal and declining. Census results may still record a majority claiming to be Christian (although this is diminishing and is unlikely to be the case much longer in many places), but this appears for many to be a cultural category, from which we can infer little about beliefs or commitments. Ignorance of Christianity is increasing and church buildings are becoming as alien as mosques, temples, or gurdwaras were once in Western societies. Some residual knowledge and belief will persist, though this will become attenuated and syncretistic, and some church buildings will continue to provide vital community space. But we will no longer be able to assume we are in a Christian society in which most are latent Christians and lapsed churchgoers.

The end of Christendom will require radical changes in our understanding of mission and church. We discovered some years ago in Britain, as we reflected on the limited achievements of the Decade of Evangelism in the 1990s, that the old exhortation and invitation approach to evangelism is becoming obsolete, and that planting churches is not a panacea, especially if these are poorly attuned to a changing and increasingly diverse culture. Nor have strategies and programs, adopted from other parts of the world but not contextualized for post-Christendom culture, proved effective. Similar lessons are being learned in other nations. This has stimulated a widespread search for more authentic and incarnational ways of being church and engaging in mission. But important attempts to reconfigure church and mission, rooted in theological reflection on contemporary cultural shifts, are often hampered by limited understanding of the significance of the shift from Christendom to post-Christendom. It is this shift that is the subject of this book.

We are not quite there yet. We are in a lengthy transitional phase. Christendom took centuries to develop, permeated Western culture, survived numerous changes and challenges, and will not collapse overnight. In this interim period, some still know the story and memories of faith may still draw some into the churches, but this era is fading. We must prepare for change. New expressions of church and mission will be needed, new ways of thinking on ethics, politics, social engagement, and evangelism. Anything proposed at this stage must be experimental, tentative, and modest, since we cannot yet see more than the outlines of the emerging culture. But post-Christendom is coming and we cannot continue as if Christendom will endure forever.

What Post-Christendom Is Not

Understanding and engaging with post-Christendom will occupy us throughout this book, but we need a working definition of post-Christendom.¹ It may be helpful first to clarify what post-Christendom is not.

Post-Christendom does not comprehensively describe the cultural shifts impacting Western societies. It is one of many post- words signaling an experience of cultural turbulence, of transition from the known to the unknown. Familiar examples include post-modern, post-industrial, post-colonial, post-secular, post-structural, and (the word of 2016, according to the Oxford English Dictionary) post-truth. The prefix means after and indicates something familiar is passing. It says nothing about what is replacing it. We know things are not how they used to be and sense change in the air, but we are unsure what is approaching. Post- words are backward facing, indicating that something is disappearing. If we could describe the new reality taking shape, we would not use post- language but would name it. Used in this way, this terminology displays humility: we do not have a full and accurate understanding of what is happening, but we know previous assumptions, structures, and responses are now inadequate. Christendom is dying: we are entering a new culture that is after Christendom and we realize that we will need time to find our bearings in this new landscape.

Post-Christendom does not necessarily mean post-Christian. Some use these concepts interchangeably or insist that the post-Christendom shift will inevitably result in a post-Christian culture. But conflating these terms causes confusion and we should be wary of prejudging this issue.

The demise of Christendom does mean the Christian story is becoming unfamiliar. In Britain, the proportion of the population with any church connection (measured by the usage of rites of passage, occasional attendance, regular participation, or membership) has declined steadily over the past half-century. And the influence of Christianity on public debate and personal belief and behavior has diminished. As Callum Brown concludes in The Death of Christian Britain, what emerges is a story not merely of church decline, but of the end of Christianity as a means by which men and women, as individuals, construct their identities and their sense of ‘self.’² He catalogues the changes in the late twentieth century:

In unprecedented numbers, the British people since the 1960s have stopped going to church, have allowed their church membership to lapse, have stopped marrying in church and have neglected to baptise their children. Meanwhile, their children, the two generations who grew to maturity in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, stopped going to Sunday school, stopped entering confirmation or communicant classes, and rarely, if ever, stepped inside a church to worship in their entire lives. The cycle of inter-generational renewal of Christian affiliation, a cycle which had for so many centuries tied the people however closely or loosely to the churches, and to Christian moral benchmarks, was permanently disrupted in the swinging sixties.³

Some dispute Brown’s explanation of the causes of this collapse, but this sustained decline in almost all aspects of Christian affiliation since 1960 is unprecedented. To take just one measure, between 1980 and 2015 church attendance more than halved from 6,484,300 to 3,081,500 (from 11.8 percent to 5.0 percent of the population).⁴ An apocalyptic article in The Spectator in mid-2015 carried the provocative headline 2067: The End of British Christianity. Reflecting on the rates of decline revealed in various surveys, the article concludes: the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067. That is the year in which the Christians who have inherited the faith of their British ancestors will become statistically invisible. Parish churches everywhere will have been adapted for secular use, demolished or abandoned.⁵

Could the demise of Christendom mean the virtual extinction of the church in Britain? Various trends and statistical projections point in this direction. Some denominations are, according to researchers and their own projections, facing not just the continuing attrition of declining numbers but the possibility of meltdown. Updating information provided in the first edition of this book thirteen years ago offers little encouragement to those hoping that the scenarios envisaged then were unduly pessimistic:

• In 2004 it was suggested that, if the current rate of decline was not arrested, the Methodist Church would have zero membership by 2037.⁶ Recent figures indicate a 3.5 percent annual decline, although research officer Alan Piggot says that there are no extrapolated predictions of when the last Methodist will turn off the lights.⁷

• In 2004 it was reported that, if it continued to shrink at the present rate, the Church of Scotland would close its last congregation in 2033.⁸ Membership of the Church of Scotland plummeted from 607,714 in 2000 to 415,705 in 2013 and continues to decline. Research findings to be released this year will reveal a catastrophic decline in the churches in Scotland (not just in the Church of Scotland).⁹

• In 2004 a researcher suggested that, unless something happened to reverse the decline it was experiencing, the Church in Wales would be unsustainable by 2020.¹⁰ Recent figures indicate that attendance dropped from 56,800 in 2005 to 42,000 in 2015.¹¹

• In 2004 no detailed information on the state of the United Reformed Church was available, but awareness of sustained decline was widespread. Recent figures indicate that attendance is decreasing annually by about 4.5 percent.¹²

• Membership in the Salvation Army (including soldiers, recruits, and adherents) has reduced from 47,263 in 2004 to 35,052 in 2016. Attendance has decreased from just over 1.5 million to just over 1 million, a drop of roughly a third in 12 years.¹³

Projections should be treated with caution. As the Spectator article acknowledges, a projection is not the same thing as a prediction. So feel free to take any apocalyptic vision of religion in Britain in 2067 with a pinch of salt. There are some indications that the rate of decline might be slowing or even bottoming out in some contexts. This is unsurprising as denominations are reduced to their hard-core members, although the average age of these members suggests that further decline is inevitable without an influx of younger members. Even though total wipeout is unlikely in the near future, denominational nonviability is looking increasingly probable for some groups of churches.

Larger denominations have suffered drastic decline in recent decades, although there has been some stabilization since the turn of the century. Attendance at Mass in Catholic churches fell from nearly 2 million in 1980 to just over 600,000 in 2015. In the same period Church of England Sunday attendance figures fell from nearly 1.4 million to 660,000.¹⁴ However, relatively few churches are closing (though many are abandoning weekly services), suggesting desperate efforts to maintain the national coverage many Anglicans regard as crucial to their self-identity.¹⁵ Chronic shortages of Catholic and Anglican ordinands exacerbate the problem, and many priests are now responsible for several parishes. It unlikely the present parish system