"Cultural Christianity"? A Critical Appraisal

Reflections on Christendom, Post-Christendom, and the Mission of the Church

Photo from Durham Market (England), taken on one of my visits over the years

I rarely hit the “trending topic” tab on Twitter, but I did yesterday and was surprised to see “cultural Christianity” as a hot topic. As usual, social media was filled with hot takes from the usual suspects— some trying to be provocative by saying they prefer cultural Christianity, and others being reactive by showing the hypocrisy and problems of cultural Christianity. Unsurprisingly, neither conceded any points to the other side, nor did anyone try to affirm the good of what the other might have been trying to say.

In the few minutes I spent down the Twitter rabbit hole, I thought of a little book I had recently read by Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary, called, “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission”. The book was a gift from a representative of the Catholic diocese in Kansas City who had come to a Resilient Pastor City Roundtable I taught at last Fall. I filed the book away as something I knew I wanted to return to, and finally found the time to read it last month. I was struck by his ability to succinctly appraise the blessings and challenges of Christendom and Post-Christendom (which he calls, “Apostolic Mission”).

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The book begins with the premise that Western civilization has been comprised of "Christendom societies ".

But what is Christendom? Shea quickly qualifies that that does not necessarily mean that the majority of the people in those societies are seriously committed Christians. Christendom simply means there is a “general acceptance of basic Christian truths and an assumption of the Christian narrative and vision of the world around which the societies' institutions were gathered.”

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Christendom is a society where the “economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles” (Preface). What is named as “cultural Christianity” in social media discourse, Shea (and many other academic cultural observers) calls “Christendom”.

Shea is sympathetic to both the origins and the benefits of such an ordering of society:

“Christendom comes about due to the success of the Church's missionary activity in winning converts and in vivifying the wider culture. There is an obvious great good involved in a Christendom society. It can only be good that a human culture be brought into greater rather than lesser alignment with the truth and goodness of God. It can only be fitting that the Lord of heaven and earth be acknowledged as such and that signs of his presence and expressions of his rule be formative for human life. To the degree that. human society is founded on Christian truth and its members have willingly embraced that truth, and to the degree that their vision of the cosmos corresponds to the way God sees things, that society and the individuals within it have overcome ignorance and aligned themselves to reality.”

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In the course of the book, Shea names the key task in both Christendom and post-Christendom (Shea prefers the term “Apostolic Mission”, which I will discuss in a minute), and lists the benefits and the challenges of each era.

In Christendom— or “cultural Christianity”— the key task is maintenance. Christians must resist the tendency to assimilate non-Christian cultural beliefs and practices into Christianity. “Christendom is not a societal state gained once for all but rather an ideal never fully achieved, one that needs renewing, strengthening, and correcting at every turn.”

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Some advantages of Christendom societies aka “Cultural Christianity”:

1. Fosters great cultural achievements (institutions of education, law, and government)

2. Laws and moral frameworks are rooted in Christian truth (which helps with raising children)

3. Christians live with peace, worship freely, enjoy general happiness

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Some challenges of Christendom societies aka “Cultural Christianity”:

1. Lukewarm faith

2. The rise of radical attempts to differentiate from the world

3. A worldly church (who seeks influence and power and material success)

4. Passive leaders (“system managers who keep the machine well-oiled”)

5. A preoccupation with visible success (measuring only what can be measured)

6. Counterfeit gospels

7. Waning mission ("mission" is only for certain missionaries not every Christian)

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The major argument Fr. Shea makes in the book is that we are no longer living in a Christendom society. Instead, we are living in an age of Apostolic mission. Shea uses this phrase to compare our age to that of the first apostles— pre-Constantine. For our purposes, we might find it simpler to call is “Post-Christendom”. Personally, I prefer “Post-Christendom” because it may be misleading to suggest that we have simply gone back to the world of the 2nd century. There is no way to undo the influence Christianity has had on Western societies. Being post Christendom does not mean that Christianity no longer has any influence; it simply means it is no longer as prominent presence or pervasive influence (as I suggested in Chapter 1 of The Resilient Pastor).

In a Post-Christendom world, the key task is “apostolic witness”— the building of a “distinctively Christian cultural vision and way of life.”

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Christians must avoid twin pitfalls of hostility and apathy. And we must recognize that we can't count on reinforcement of our values or vision from wider society or institutions.

Some advantages of Post-Christendom societies:

1. Less hypocrisy

2. Greater purity among leaders

3. An alert church

4. A clear and necessary mission

5. Courage in the face of possible suffering

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Some challenges of Post-Christendom societies:

1. Rampant error (doctrinal and moral)

2. Pollution and comprise

3. Competing visions of success and strength

4. Opposition to family life and institution-building

5. Cowardice (not hypocrisy)

6. Tribalism (among Christian “camps”)

7. Withdrawal from the world

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What’s the point of doing this sort of appraisal of both worldviews or visions for ordering a society?

It is simply to say that no matter which way your particular community or country it tilting, the mission of the church remains. What should command more of our attention is not trying to shift us from one era or worldview to the other but rather to faithfully carry out the mission in whatever context we find ourselves.

As Shea puts it, “We receive from Christ both the times in which we are to live and the grace to engage our world as it is.”

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In fact, rather than trying to pull a Post-Christendom society back towards a Christendom one (as if that were actually possible), we ought to spend our time and energy discerning the times and learning from the apostolic witness in the early centuries of Christianity in order to faithfully carry out the mission of God by the power of the Spirit today.

To that end, Shea offers a rather stinging rebuke:

“Our problem is rather than much of the Church is still in a Christendom mode, either seriously compromised by the ruling vision of the wider culture or using outmoded strategies that were devised for a different context, and so it is unable to cope with the current culture.”

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And yet, our hope is in Christ, the head of the Church, and in the God whose mission this is. As Prof. Beverly Roberts Gaventa wrote in her beautiful commentary on the Book of Acts:

“Acts might remind the church, especially in times of malaise or crisis, that it does not belong to itself, but to the God of Israel, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and the God whose witness continues within, outside, and even in spite of the church.”

¹¹

Yes and amen.

1. Shea, p. 14

2. Shea, p. 20

3. Shea, p. 21

4. Shea, pp. 21-22

5. Shea, pp. 22-23

6. Shea, p. 26

7. Shea, p. 26

8. Shea, p. 26

9. Shea, p. 29

10. Shea, p. 33

11. Gaventa, p. 54