I’ve picked many fights, started a slew of discussions, asked even more questions and made my share of enemies and friends in the first year of SHLOG.COM’s existence. So much of this, I’ve just realized tonight, is my way of wrestling publicly with an uncomfortable reality: Christendom is dead.
Christendom: The arrangement of Western society from the time of Roman Emperor Constantine’s pronouncement of Christianity as his adopted religion to at least the late 1800s in Europe and the 1960s in America. Two of the most notable characteristic of Christendom were that 1)the church was perceived as central to society and culture and 2)the church operated primarily in an “attractional” mode, meaning that the church expected non-Christians to come to the church.
But Christendom is dead. This is not the order of things in the West, for the most part, any more. In large cities especially, and in rural southern cities less so, society is no longer leaning in to hear what the church has to say to her or about her. Society has lost interest.
I’ve read too many books and been in too many conversations with non-Christians and seen far too much of the American church in the last several years on the road to believe Christendom is alive and well. So I come here every day to find answers I hope you have to the one question that colors everything in life for me these days: Now what? That’s what this blog has turned out to be for me – now celebrating one year of existence – a place to ask in many different ways this same question.
Two examples:
Politics: I blog about my not voting, my disinterest in either party, Christian abdication of mercy showing and peace making to government programs and military, and my belief in Christian non-violence. I do this because I’m working out what the relationship between Church and state is in a post-Christendom West and what the consequences are to being free finally to pledge allegiance to the Kingdom of God instead of the nation-state. What can we be now that Church and state are divorced and political arguments based on faith fall flat? Christendom is dead. Now what?
Event Driven/Attractional/Spectacle Ministry: In the old Christendom world order in which national history, art history, and church history were one and the same, where else would one go but to the church? We were the financiers and power brokers behind war, art, education and politics. The source of morality and just about everything esle. The church attracted musicians, poets, Caesars and generals to her bed, not only because of her beauty but because of her influence. What are we becoming now that there are more handsome suitors with greater influence elsewhere? What do we do now that the church and anything labeled “Christian” are not attractive to non-Christians? Christendom is dead. Now what?
It’s good that Christendom is dead…I think. The support of Christendom by the church forced her to abandon so many of her distinctives and much of her mission. Christendom swelled her ego, fed her vanity. In time she grew fat, lazy, self-absorbed and dumb. She believed she would always be the center of attention and today she gets little. What now?
I think we have many options but three come up most often here at SHLOG.COM and in conversations with my friends in ministry:
1) TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY: We work hard to be the best and the brightest people in society, enter the arts and politics, dominate with our excellence until we Christians are the primary influencers of “culture” again. We vote, run for office, demand our rights, stomp our feet when we don’t get them, legislate non-Christians into Christian behavioral patterns, say often that our nation was founded on Christianity and fight to get back our seat of power beside Caesar. Build the biggest best Christian education system ever. Turn out scientists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and business men so that the authority and respect and wealth that was once the church’s will be hers again.
2) NAH NAH NAH, I’M NOT LISTENING: Stick our fingers in our ears when anyone tells us Christendom is dead and go on believing that non-Christians in physical, emotional, and spiritual need will visit LifeWay stores, listen to Christian radio, watch Christian DVDs, and come to our churches on Sunday morning in search of Jesus.
3) REMEMBER WHERE WE CAME FROM: Quit our addiction to power, influence and wealth cold turkey. Learn to live without the adoration of Caesar, Hollywood, and Johnny Q. Public. Somehow remember what the church believed and how it operated before the Emperor put his arm around her and made her his influential, powerful and wealthy bride. Contextualize this memory to the 21st century and live it out whether powerful and influential or ignored and marginalized.
I’m frozen these days by the number of career/ministry options before me now that I’m no longer contractually obligated to make “Christian” music for Christians and am able, for the first time in my life, to do virtually anything I want to do in its next chapter. I don’t think questions about my future ministry/work can be wisely answered without at least wrestling a little with how the death of Christendom affects me and you, if at all. It could make the difference for me between making music or not, preaching or not, ministering to a Christian subculture, or from one, or ignoring it all together, or doing something completely new. Roofing?
Why wrestle here? These kinds of discussions happen often of course at conventions and around conference tables when pastor types get together. And you get left out. Few people who don’t go to these meetings or read books by pastors or attend a seminary have ever heard of “Christendom” or of its demise. Now the secret is out. What your captain probably hasn’t told you, I just let slip: We sank a few miles back. What do you want to do about it? I know what pastors think; it’s you who have something new to add to this conversation.
Now what?
Kim Adam says:
Shaun,
This is Kim. I saw you at your show in Shoreview.
You got me thinking and all stive to leave a short thought.
I think Christian or what I like to think of it as Jesus Christ centered music is for Christians overall, yes.
I listen to mostly all “Christian” Christ centered music but on the sabbath day strive to make sure that is all I listen to ie. Hymns, church music…
I look at music alot like the church. Even what is going on around you as in more premartial sex, more drugs, more homosexual relationships, should not make you dumb down or talk down or change.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
By their fruits you shall know them.
Also Ephesians chapter 4 verses 4-16
vs 14 of that is : That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to decieve.
I realize Christ centered music is different but I can see how the labels want to keep groups that music is Christian as that is how they are set up or should as their are other labels and independent ways to go otherwise.
Choices are there.
We as the body of Christ need to share the christian music or our chuch or the divinity of Jesus Christ with all others.
We need to spend the time with them and help them in their walk.
I feel music is from God and is crucial and very much enhancing or relationship with Jesus Christ and learning.
As with my church we have essentials classes in the gospels focusing on what we should all know and learn.. ie baptism, faith in Christ, sabbath day, and so many others.
Just like in Christian churches we are not known unless we get the word out and share what we know is true so is it with Christian music.
Ive talked to many that were not raised in a church and just do not know what Christian music is and we are there to teach and help them be blessed.
Lastly music has changed so much since rap became more mainstream and with more acceptance of hardcore music and with internet and such.
Due to that I feel Christian or Christ centered music is more out on an island now and makes more of a difference than it ever has.
Look at what was Top 40 popular or most played music now than 10 years, 25 years 40 years.
Life and music is a changing but Jesus Christ will never change!
Remember Christ is not church on Sunday but is our life. That means all we do and choose to do.
Yes there is alot of good music out there and Christian music is just one part that we atleast need at a minumium with other music we would not be afraid to listen to with anyone we know.
KIM Adam
Minnesota
Anonymous says:
Christendom is dead. It would not be BENEFICIAL TO THE GOSPLE to pretend that it is still alive. Getting to be the best again, “cue Bono”, is almost an option, but those in power for the power itself are often easily corrupted, Christian or not. So the third option is what we are left with:
REMEMBER WHERE WE CAME FROM: Quit our addiction to power, influence, and wealth cold turkey. Learn to live without the adoration of Caesar, Hollywood, and Johnny Q. Public. Somehow remember what the church believed and how it operated before the Emperor put his arm around her and made her his influential, powerful and wealthy bride. Contextualize this memory to the 21st century and live it out whether powerful and influential or ignored and marginalized.
The fact is, if we DID live this out, live our lives like the church of Acts, we would see people flocking to us. we would be ELEVATED to power, without the intention of recieving it. Christ did not want the ‘power’ of this world, though he could have taken it easily.instead he was MEEK. He used his power graciously and generously, and always for the good of others. As Christians, we have the power of Christ. He has got our back. there are people of this world that have healed the blind and lame! not by any power of their own, but because CHRIST does the healing. they are just the tool. When we seek and follow God’s will, there is NOTHING that can hold us back!
So the ‘power’ that we seek, is the privelidge, and the blessing, that comes with being a tool of the Lord’s work. His hands. To do His will. His Feet. To go wherever He sends us. And then we will not have to worry about power, for the world will not convert to kneel to us, but convert to kneel beside us, and to The Father.
‘…but that’s just my thoughts’
~David
Anonymous says:
i think, now more than ever, we need to strengthen our community of believers. i admit, that it is often easier to build community in the blog world than in the real world. with 5 minutes time, you can read what is going on in someone else’s life, respond, and tell them about yours. amazing. I heard a quote once from graham kendrick saying something to the effect of, “if we (christians) learned how to worship properly, we wouldn’t need to formerly evangelize.” pretty profound, i thought. not that we will ever be perfect, but if we all loved God with all our heart, we would love others and live right.