Reaching My Province of Post-Christendom
Editor’s Note: How to Reach the West Again is Timothy Keller and City to City’s book on starting a new missionary encounter with Western culture. We invited ministers from around the world to respond to, extend, and engage that vision.
Reading Tim Keller’s How to Reach the West Again has been a fruitful and stretching exercise for me. Here are some reflections on this book, in particular the first section covering the “post-Christian” West. Please note that these ruminations apply to my specific—perhaps even provincial—context living in Italy, and therefore are not meant to represent the reality of all of Europe or Western culture.
Post-Christendom More than Post-Christian
“We live in a post-Christian age,” is the refrain often heard when discussing the condition of the church in the West today. Post-Christian culture, post-Christian society, post-Christian ethics, post-Christian values are all subjects of a more-or-less worried Christian circle trying to grapple with what is happening in our culture. However, the understanding of this religious evolution is different in my corner of the world.
Where I live, “Christian” means “Roman Catholic.” Roman Catholicism has shaped the historical and institutional embodiment of a certain kind of Christianity—one that has been shaped by Boniface VIII rather than John Wycliffe in the 14th century, by the Council of Trent rather than the Reformation in the 16th century, by papal infallibility rather than Old Princeton of the 19th century. What came out of these centuries of schism was a confused and conflated religious identity and national identity.¹ The result was Christendom rather than Christianity.
This national Christendom tended to lead the Roman Catholic Church to act as a hindrance to religious minorities of any kind and an obstacle to the flourishing of a pluralistic society. Catholicism was assumed equal to citizenship, therefore putting all non-Catholics in the awkward position of being treated as cultural strangers and second-level citizens in their own homeland. With this understanding, most “post-Christian” moves in Italy are actually welcome. After the still-modest impact of secularization on Italian society, minority churches and religious groups are no longer persecuted or harassed by the majority church supported by the state. Religious pluralism and steps toward an “open” society are therefore results of secularization, rather than being the initiative of Roman Catholic Christianity.
It may seem paradoxical, but there is an element of truth in the argument that post-Christian developments can be more Christian than what Christendom has implemented in certain contexts.
However, Evangelical Christians in my country are called to move beyond victim-hood about a past when they were persecuted and become spiritually and culturally mature minorities, taking advantage of some significant opportunities of openness in our society.² Evangelical church planting and growth is now possible, not because but in spite of the form of Christianity that has prevailed here. It may seem paradoxical, but there is an element of truth in the argument that post-Christian developments can be more Christian than what Christendom has implemented in certain contexts.³
The Courage to Be Protestant
Protestant Christianity in my context is more of an eschatological ambition than a historical realization—more of a “not yet” project, rather than something already achieved. Christendom puts an emphasis on what has already happened and been established in the Christian faith, whereas the post-Christian age we live in providentially reminds us of the not yet element of our response to the gospel—there is still much growing and learning ahead of the church. Rather than operating out of defensiveness leading to a conservative mindset, we should seek opportunities to refine and implement better practices that are more attuned with the Christian message.
The other-worldly and this-worldly dynamic is always at stake when dealing with how to relate to culture. In David Wells’ words,
By its very structure, evangelicalism finds itself both affirming and denying culture, stressing both its continuity with and discontinuity from the world. The pendulum has tended to swing from side to side, touching first one set of antitheses and then the other. The paradox should not be resolved. And it should not be resolved in favor of one set of antitheses over the other. For God’s own relationship to the world is steadily and unchangingly bipolar, in part characterized by its continuity with it and in part by his discontinuity from it…
The Word of God must be related to our own context in such a way that its identity as divine revelation is authentically preserved while its relation to contemporary life is fully worked out.⁴
Christendom has the tendency to try to resolve this juxtaposition by saturating society with forms of Christian morality and institutions. The post-Christian generation radically opposes this endeavor and compels the church to be more humble, more open to self-criticism, and quicker to rely on God’s promises rather than on human successes. These are beneficial consequences of leaning into the tricky dynamic of “both affirming and denying culture,” and this is what Protestantism signifies to our society: a more faithful Christian worldview put into practice by a more faithful community of Christians. We must discover what it means to have the courage to be Protestant whatever the cost.⁵
In practice, the courage to be protestant in a culture still saturated by Roman Catholic Christendom means that all the words of Christian faith (grace, sin, salvation, repentance, devotion, etc.) need to be redefined by the gospel. Christendom has filled these biblical words with unbiblical meanings.⁶ This leads to the sad reality of the surrounding culture thinking she knows the Christian message but knowing instead the warped message of Christendom. Therefore, when culture rejects Christianity, it actually rejects Christendom, but the Church feels the blow.
In order to heal these hurts and misunderstandings, we need to re-communicate what the words of the gospel truly mean by using the gospel itself. We need to celebrate biblical concepts such as the “Five Solas” (Christ Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone, to God Alone the glory), but in order to reach the world with these truths, we must translate them into relevant language and community practices. At the same time, we must have the courage to be honest, transparent, and faithful to the truth of the gospel in a skeptical and confused culture.
Faithful and Creative Minorities
In a post-Christendom situation, the majority church (which, in Italy, is the Roman Catholic Church) no longer lives under the protection of the state or the general approval of the public. Now, she is part of the “free market” of religion, so to speak—just one of many competitors relying on the same pool of resources and attracting members from the same reluctant populace. Christians in this category have the unique opportunity to learn (or re-learn) to be creative and faithful minorities in a situation where they have previously reigned as the majority.⁷ The transition may be uncomfortable and even painful, but the status quo of a Christendom somewhat marked by Christianity will not serve the cause of the gospel.
Christians in this category have the unique opportunity to learn (or re-learn) to be creative and faithful minorities in a situation where they have previously reigned as the majority.
From this point in history, the Church in the West will need to adapt to (and remain faithful in) life on the fringes of popular culture and politics; Christianity of any kind is no longer a stakeholder in the sacred alliance between the altar (or pulpit) and the throne (or power). This will require a spiritual paradigm-shift to transition from an era in which Christian institutions set the stage for mainstream culture to a missional, adventurous, and vulnerable age where we will likely feel like alien intruders in an increasingly inhospitable world.
This is the challenge we already face in post-Christendom situations like the country where I live. As historical Protestant minorities, we are perhaps more acquainted with what it means to remain steady in adverse circumstances, thriving spiritually, culturally, and evangelistically despite persecution or ridicule. For this reason, Tim Keller’s How to Reach the West Again presents an inspiring and insightful challenge to the church in my corner of the world.
NOTES
1. See S. Murray, Post-Christendom. Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004). I don’t buy his Anabaptist package, but Murray has several good points in critiquing the “Christendom” settlement and urging the church to move beyond it, not out of external pressures only, but out of a desire to be penetrated by more biblical standards.
2. As it was well argued for by Samuel Escobar in a recent interview (April 21st, 2015), http://evangelicalfocus.com/europe/542/Samuel_Escobar_Lets_avoid_victimhood_we_should_learn_to_live_as_a_mature_minority
3. While advocating for Christian values in society, the Roman Catholic Church is, generally speaking, prone to maintaining its privileged status in majority situations. See John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa (2003) where he defends freedom but is not prepared to overcome established unfair systems where the Roman Catholic Church has a favored status over other religious groups. See my paper La doctrine sociale de l’Église catholique romaine, “Théologie Évangélique” 6/1 (2007) pp. 51-66.
4. D.F. Wells, An American Evangelical Theology: the Painful Transition from Theoria to Praxis in G. Marsden (ed.), Evangelicalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984) pp. 92-3.
5. Borrowing the title by D.F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant. Truth-lovers, Marketers and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Nottingham: IVP, 2008).
6. See my Same Words, Different Worlds. What Makes Roman Catholicism Different from the Gospel (Darlington: Evangelical Press, forthcoming).
7. On the opportunities and challenges to be reformed minorities, see the stimulating reflections by P. Wells, The Missional Minority in Post-Christian Europe in P.A. Lillback, H. Stoker, P. Wells (edd.), A Covenantal Vision for Global Missions (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2020).
About the Author
Leonardo De Chirico is the pastor of the Breccia di Roma church in Rome, Italy and Director of the Reformanda Initiative, which aims to equip evangelical leaders to better understand and engage with Roman Catholicism.
He is married to Valeria and they have two sons, Filippo and Akille.