Renegotiating Christian polity after Christendom -Aug 24, 2006

“I am leaving the House of Commons to concentrate on politics.” So said the veteran MP Tony Benn upon his retirement. But his words also encapsulate well the recent journey made by many Christians. After 1700 years in, or close to, the seat of power, churches within Western Europe have been moving increasingly away from the direct business of governing.

This is not to say that church and state have been identical within Christendom. Nor is it to say that the experience of all Christians (or those on the receiving end of their alliance with power) has been the same. Sometimes the church has struggled and competed for political power. At other times it has been invited and welcomed to the table of political power. Christianity has also, not infrequently, felt controlled by political power. But exercise political power it has done, in varying ways, throughout the Christendom era.

However a seismic change has been taking place in recent years, and Christians must come to terms with a drastically altered position where political privilege increasingly gives way to a position among a plurality of pressure, interest and cause groups.

One might have expected that as they come to terms with their post-Christendom context, Christians would batten down the hatches and withdraw from the whole business of politics. But if anything, the reverse has been true. Barely a day goes by when an issue related to faith and politics isn’t in the headlines: religious opposition to the invasion of Iraq, campaigns to cancel debt in the developing world, outcry over ‘blasphemous’ media portrayals, the sacking of a European Commissioner because of his religious beliefs, abortion and euthanasia, faith schools, party leaders addressing Christians in election campaigns, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill - the list goes on and on.

Where sections of the church have disengaged, it has been comparatively short-lived, and indeed the last few decades have witnessed an explosion of Christian political activity. A survey by the Evangelical Alliance suggested that evangelical Christians are likely to be far more politically active than the average citizen, and the Catholic periodical The Tablet even suggested, based on a poll by MORI, that it was Catholics who determined the result of the last general election. Every month it seems as if new pressure groups, campaigns and even Christian political parties, are emerging.

Like Tony Benn, Christians may have left the direct business of Government behind, but this is far from the end of their political engagement. If anything, one of the salient features of the post-Christendom church is its political expression in large numbers over a wide range of issues.

How can this growing politicisation be explained? Post-Christendom is the context. It is also the cause. Indeed, post-Christendom can be seen as bringing about a new radicalisation of Christians in two distinct ways.

The first we might term a negative radicalisation. For many Christians post-Christendom is a threat. Last year, Jayne Ozanne hit the headlines of national newspapers, when her leaked note to the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that Christianity might soon be driven underground in the West. Within a few weeks, an editorial in a well known Christian magazine also suggested that it was “open season” against Christians, who were now facing attacks as never before.

The reports may have been exaggerated, but many Christians share such feelings. Some believe that they are experiencing discrimination, poor treatment when compared to other religions, ridicule, some even suggest persecution. Christian symbols are disappearing from public places. Familiar institutions which have previously been considered “Christian” appear to be under attack. Christians are fearful of what the future may hold, and they are mobilising in response – whether is be to censor theatre blasphemous productions, bolster “Christian” institutions, maintain the church’s privileges in education, the House of Lords, or church schools, or ensure continued funding for religious institutions.

The negative radicalisation has been gathering momentum for a number of decades. In 1971 a crowd of thousands gathered in Trafalgar Square and heard proclamations to the Government, the media and church leaders about the nation’s ‘moral pollution’ The Nationwide Festival of Light, later to become CARE, was born. Since then, dozens of campaigns have emerged in attempts to reverse the changes that post-Christendom is bringing, from “Keep Sunday Special” to opposing the lowering of the age of consent for homosexual activity.

But post-Christendom is also the context for a different, more positive radicalisation - often around issues of justice. Almost thirty years after the Trafalgar Square rally, tens of thousands of protestors - many of them from the churches - formed a human chain around Birmingham to call for the cancellation of debts in the developing world. As well as being the context for fear and uncertainty, post-Christendom brings with it a freedom and creativity meaning that Christians are expressing their faith in new and creative ways, which wasn’t always so easy to do within Christendom, and which some would say is more in keeping with the gospel.

Like the negative radicalisation, its more positive counterpart has been taking place for a long time, often kept alive by Christians who were persecuted within Christendom, or who dared to speak up for the voiceless.

To understand the positive radicalisation, it is helpful to understand some of the changes that Christendom brought. Within the early church, Jesus’ life, teachings, death and resurrection, were taken at face value. Many early Christians took Jesus’ commitment to powerlessness, turning the other check, love of enemies, community and forgiveness seriously. Many subverted and challenged the institutions of their day such as the family, the legal system, slavery and imperialism, which appeared at odd with the The Way they were called to travel.

But following the Constantine’s conversion, and the move of Christianity to the heart of the Empire, some nifty theological footwork was required. As Baptist theologian Nigel Wright has pointed out, next to Constantine, Jesus was embarrassing. How could Christians who took Jesus seriously align themselves with an Empire based on privilege, injustice, coercion and war, and that had put their savour and Lord to death?

There were a number of responses:
• Spiritualisation It was suggested that Jesus teachings were unrealistic for the contemporary political context, and applied only to heaven.

• Reinterpretation Key passages were given new meanings. The parable of the banquet where people were ‘compelled’ to come in or the wheat and the tares became the justification for coercion.

• Privatisation Jesus was accorded ethical authority for private behaviour but not for political or public matters. This led to some situations where Christian soldiers were urged to love and pray for the enemies that they had killed.

• Clericalisation A clergy-laity split was developed. For Eusebius, Christian pacifism was for clergy, monks and nuns; other Christians, by contrast, were obligated to defend the empire with force.

• Separation An idea particularly prevalent at the time of the Reformation was that faith could be separated from works. It was the motivation behind actions that was considered important, not the actions themselves.

• Marginalisation Sometimes the sayings of Jesus were ignored completely.


Ever since Christendom began its decline - around the time of the Reformation and the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment that sought to end the bloody conflict often seen as being caused by religious motivations - the church has been increasingly radicalised by a new awareness that the teachings, life, death and resurrection of Jesus can apply to the political as well as the personal. During the last few centuries of course, much of the vestiges and culture of Christendom has remained, but as it has weakened, so movements such as that which led to the abolition of the transatlantic Slave Trade have periodically emerged.

Within Christendom of course the church did mediate the more negative effects of social institutions, working to improve the lot of slaves, prisoners and the poor. But less often was it prepared to fundamentally subvert or reform them. Whereas before Christendom, Christianity had often posed a challenge to the social order, within Christendom the Christian religion became the glue which held the social order together.

But as Christendom has broken down, so again the church has felt a diminishing need to be the defender of social institutions, and has been prepared to be their radical reformer.

What, then, does the political future hold for the church? It seems likely that the church will continue in its rediscovery of mission to, rather than maintenance of, the social order. A great deal will have to do with the increasing identification of Christians with those on the margins of society, as Christianity also moves to a similar position. It has also to do with the diminishing association of Christianity with the nation state, as Christians rediscover their identity as part of a global church, whose primary citizenship is derived from the Kingdom of God.

Although the negative radicalisation is likely to continue in the short-term, it is likely that the positive radicalisation will become increasingly prevalent if the church is able more fully to accept that Christendom has passed and a new era is upon us.

Indeed, its new position at the margins means that the nature of the church’s political expression will need to change – for example expressing itself increasingly in terms of witness rather than control. The authority of the church can no longer come from its privileged or advantaged position within society, but must increasingly come from the fact that it practices what it preaches.

It is likely that in the next few decades tax exemptions for the promotion of religion and around evangelistic activities will be cut, as will funding for social action projects which involve proselytism. Discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation or religious faith will become increasingly hard. Bishops in the House of Lords will be scaled down, and the blasphemy law will go. But this will mean that churches also have a golden opportunity to carve for itself a new identity based instead on the authenticity of its witness, rather than social privilege.

This will mean risk-taking. Those who do not understand or appreciate the new context, and remain wedded to Christendom models of working will criticise their brothers and sisters for being foolish, in the same way that the cross of Christ appears foolish to those enmeshed in an ideology of naked power.

This scorn has already been seen, for example, in the attitude of some to Christian Peacemakers in Iraq. Although able to help unite Sunni and Shia and to establish Muslim Peacemaker Teams, Christian peacemakers were accused of being reckless because of their refusal to carry weapons or travel with armed escorts. It was, however, precisely this radical stand that gave them authority in the Iraq context, and opened doors, demonstrating that they, as Christians, were not aligned with the invasion of the country. It was the authenticity, and indeed the vulnerability of their witness that was their Christian distinctive – not pious resolutions or privilege.

It may be that within Post-Christendom, the church is increasingly marked by such bold stands. Faithful political witness, though apparently foolhardy in a security-conscious environment, can also assist substantial change. Working in the House of Commons in the early 1990s, I remember a letter coming across my desk proposing the cancellation of debts in the developing world. It certainly seemed foolish, and unthinkable as a practical proposition to both myself and many others. How wrong we were. Ten years later the question political leaders from around the world was discussing was not “could it ever be possible to cancel debt in the developing world”, but “how can we best do it?” There is, of course, a very long way to go. But the landscape of ‘the possible’ has shifted dramatically.

Tony Benn’s conviction is that you don’t have to compete or hold power to be political. Indeed, it is his conviction that in the final analysis it is movements that change things, not politicians unaided. For politicians must operate within the confines of public acceptability and parameters set by campaigners, lobbyists, the media, thinktanks and many others alongside whom the churches now find themselves. Chancellor Gordon Brown has made it abundantly clear to the churches, that if cancellation of debt was ever to be a reality, a movement to make it political feasible had to take place to change the political agenda.

But, as both Jubilee 2000 and MakePovertyHistory showed, as a small minority, the church will need to work with others and form alliances with those outside her doors. She can not do it alone. She may continue her appeals to the 72% of the population at the last census who identified themselves as in some sense Christian, but increasingly there will be realisation that no Christian organisation can even come close to representing the 5-10% of the population who actually attend churches on a regular basis, in any meaningful sense.

Post-Christendom is a transitional phase. No one quite knows where it is leading. But those who simply continue to operate from a Christendom mindset, who hanker after a mythical golden age, who try to reverse the changes that frighten them, are going to be frustrated and disappointed. Christians will have to decide which of the baggage from the Christendom era to hold onto, and which to bravely discard. It will take great discernment. But it is those who perform that task successfully who will have something meaningful to say to the surrounding culture after Christendom.

This is an edited version of an article which appeared recently in The Church of England Newspaper (CEN) based on the book, Faith and Politics After Christendom: The Church as a Movement for Anarchy (Paternoster, 2006).