Church must embrace post-christendom -10/3/04
Rather than defend "Christendom" ideas such as prayers in Parliament, the place of Christianity in the EU constitution and Christianity in religious education, the church needs to rethink the way that it relates to the world around it. That is the message of a new and radical book by Stuart Murray.

The book entitled "Post-Christendom: Church and mission in a strange new world" looks at the context within which the church in western culture now operates.

For most of its history, since the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century, the church in Europe has been a central, powerful and dominant institution. This position has profoundly affected how the church has interpreted the Bible, engaged in mission and understood itself.

But the gradual demise of Christendom resulted in the decline of the church and its marginalisation in western culture. In the secular and religiously plural world of the twenty-first century, Christians can no longer operate with Christendom values, assumptions, methods or attitudes. A church on the margins, if it is to flourish or even survive, must learn to read the Bible, engage in mission and understand itself in fresh ways.

Post-Christendom explores this strange new world and urges creative and courageous engagement with the challenges of post-Christendom. Drawing on insights from the early Christians, dissident movements and the world church, it analyses the Christendom era and its troublesome legacy, challenges conventional ways of thinking and offers resources for Christians who will dare to imagine new ways of following Jesus on the margins and telling his story in a world they can no longer control.

“The understandable reaction of the church to a secular and religiously plural culture is to try and protect and recover elements of Christendom” said Stuart Murray, the book's author.

“Christians devote a lot of time, energy and money into working and campaigning to recover or defend Christendom. But in a Post-Christendom context the church has opportunities to engage in new and radical ways with the world around it, that it hasn’t had for hundreds of years. Rather than seeking to recover Christendom, the church should seize these opportunities with both hands and rethink the way it undertakes its mission.”

A course and 90 page study guide entitled “After Christendom: Following Jesus on the Margins” has also been produced by the Anabaptist Network, and an online discussion forum has been set up on the Anabaptist Network web site to explore the issues that the book raises.

Stuart Murray spent 12 years as an urban church planter in Tower Hamlets (East London) and has continued to be involved in church planting since then as a trainer, mentor, writer, strategist and consultant. For 9 years he was Oasis Director of Church Planting and Evangelism at Spurgeon’s College, London and he remains an Associate Lecturer of the college. He is chair of the UK Anabaptist Network and the editor of Anabaptism Today.

He has written several books on church planting, urban mission, the challenge of post-Christendom and the contribution of the Anabaptist tradition to contemporary missiology.

Since September 2001, he has been working under the auspices of the Anabaptist Network as a trainer and consultant, with particular interest in emerging forms of church. He is also overseeing Urban Expression, a pioneering urban church planting agency, and working part time as Tutor in Community Learning at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, from where he directs the DELTA training programme that is run by three Baptist colleges.

The book “Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World" is published on 19th March 2004 by Paternoster in paperback ISBN: 1842272616 208 pages