dissertation

109
First, Murray thinks the term ‘Constantinian’ should perhaps be reserved for designating
situations where the political authorities favor Christianity, but refrain from imposing
it. ‘Theodosian’ or Justininian’, he suggests, might serve as terms for the emerging
Christendom system.
Second, it is problematic to use the label Christendom to cover the diverse cultures
and political arrangements in Europe between the fourth and twentieth centuries and
then to extend this to other Western and non-Western contexts. The reality is that
there are different kinds of Christendom. 113 Also, the word Christendom should not be
used as a shorthand for summarizing all that ought to be repudiated in Christian history.
Thus, distinctions and clarifications are important. Still, Murray sees the term as
meaningful and heuristic. This is particularly the case if Christendom refers to fundamental
assumptions, attitudes, theological and ecclesial commitments, and missional
priorities and expectations, that underlie the diverse institutional forms of Christendom.
114
Third, the term ‘post-Christian’ also has its problems. The most obvious disadvantage
is that it assumes that in so-called Christian times most Europeans were church-going,
God-fearing, and steeped in Christianity. 115 The reality is, however, more complex. One
might ask if Europe (or any particular European country) was ever really Christian, and
what this would have meant in practice. Furthermore, the term ‘post-Christian’ may
undervalue the persistence and quality of Christian faith in contemporary culture.
“Western culture may be post-Christendom, but it is not entirely devoid of Christians.”
116 And most importantly – particularly from a missiological perspective – the
term ‘post-Christian’ may allow unchallenged or even unrecognized assumptions to
113
Cf. Alan Kreider, “In the time of Charlemagne, things were of course very different from the way they
were in the times of Calvin or the young Karol Woytila: there have been many varieties of Christendom.”
Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom, 91. See also Douglas J. Schuurman, “Vocation,
Christendom, and Public Life: A Reformed Assessment of Yoder’s Anabaptist Critique of Christendom,”
in Journal of Reformed Theology 1 (2007), 247-271, who differentiates between state-enforced Christendom,
voluntary cultural Christendom, and Christendom conceived of as “Christian culture within the
church as minority culture of obedient witness.”
114
Historian Mary Anne Perkins agrees that, indeed, ‘Christendom’ may be conceived of as not only a historical
term, designating a realm of Christian unity, but also as “clusters and compounds of ideas and beliefs,
principles and theories, assumptions, prejudices, received opinions and cultural conditioning.” Mary
Anne Perkins, Christendom and European Identity: The Legacy of a Grand Narrative since 1789 (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2004), 4.
115
By pursuing this line of thought Murray is less convincing, because it is a fact that – for example – regular
church-going was until at least the nineteenth century both norm and practice for most people in Western
Europe. In this sense, at least, people were indeed ‘steeped in Christianity’. Perhaps many were not
‘real’ Christians according to Anabaptist criteria, but that is a theological assessment. How is this to be empirically
confirmed?
116
Stuart Murray, “Post-Christendom, Post-Constantinian, Post-Christian...,” 206. Cf. Hugh McLeod, “definitions
of the contemporary world as ‘secular’ or ‘post-Christian’ tend to homogenize societies and to gloss
over the variations in the extent to which religious or secular forces have influenced different sections of society
or areas of life.” Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, paperback ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 263.