Death Throes of American Christendom

My friend, Diana Butler Bass, writes today about the decline of America's Christendom in a God's Politics piece. She does so in connection with the announcement of James Kennedy's death -- something I've already spoken to on this blog.

She notes here in the piece the nostalgic nature of Kennedy's vision -- a vision that looked back to the "good old days" when Protestantism stood at the center of American culture, a time when school children prayed and read the Protestant faith in public school. It was a time when public life shut down on Sunday's and all went to church -- because there really wasn't anything else to do.

But that era has passed and a new emerging group of leaders is arising, many influenced by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, who mourn not the passing of Christendom but see it as a blessing.

She writes:

The contrast between Kennedy and Hauerwas and Willimon is dramatic. Kennedy believed in Christendom, an American Christian nation divinely designed as the leader of a global spiritual empire, and in creating a Christian politics toward that end. Hauerwas and Willimon believe that Christendom, the ideal of a Christian nation, was historically wrongheaded from the start. “The church,” they argue, “doesn’t have a social strategy; the church is a social strategy.”

The contrast defines the generational shift regarding attitudes toward Christendom. Older evangelical leaders, for the most part, want Christendom back. Emerging leaders, influenced by theologians such as Hauerwas and Willimon, are less interested in “reclaiming” Christendom and more interested in strengthening a confessing church based on the model of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s alternative community in Hitler’s Germany. For younger Christians—evangelicals and progressives alike—Kennedy’s nostalgic world bears no resemblance to their own. The vision of a post-Christendom church, a community of pilgrims joined together in practices of faith and justice, energizes their hope for the future. As the Christendom generation passes away, a post-Christendom faith will, most probably, take its place. That may take some time, but it will eventually recreate Christian political theology in America.

Whatever place Christians take in the political stream must now be done with humility and a recognition that we are not the only voice in town. We mustn't cede the public square, but we must enter it recognizing its very pluralistic nature.

So, thanks Diana for sharing your thoughts!