The Western Church & the legacy of Christendom

 

     Are we the first members of the people of the God of Abraham, revealed in Jesus, to face the challenge of living faithfully in the shadow of empire?  In a word, no.  Justice is a central concern of the Bible and the people of God has always been called to walk a fraught path between submission to and subversion of imperial power.[1]  With very few exceptions[2], throughout the entire historical period reflected in the pages of Scripture, the people of God consisted of a powerless minority, either under the hegemony of pagan empire or under direct foreign rule/oppression.  The Bible is the subversive literature of a people who refused the identity that the empire of the day would have imposed on them, but rather embraced the identity bestowed upon them by the Creator God who, they believed, was beyond all imperial power structures, whether human or divine.[3]

     The challenge for the people of God (in the West) since the 4^th century AD is that we have no “divinely-inspired script” for a situation where the people of God are either patronized by the establishment or endowed with overwhelming political power and influence (i.e. the Bible has little to say to Christendom).  A common hermeneutical strategy once Christianity had “gone imperial” was to “read” the Church as a “new Israel”, and Yahweh’s scriptural promises to the kings of Zion as being addressed to both the emperor and his bishops.

     We now find ourselves in a post-Christendom world (so we believe), just as we believe that we inhabit a post-colonial world.[4]  It remains the case that once both the imperial powers of yesteryear and the Western Church lost control of the narrative, the script was flipped and those lords of the West prior to the 20^th century were now cast as the villains of history and their sins began to be shouted from the rooftops.  In the postmodern era, a narrative of “victimizer & victim” has taken hold of the western imagination.  This outrage at the sins of history and the (perceived) injustices of the present is, according to historian Tom Holland, the Judeo-Christian instinct for justice on steroids, as it were.[5]  So, life in the West has become quite complex.  Having been long caught up in an ambiguous “marriage” with political power, the post-Christendom Church must now shoulder (at least part of) the blame for the ambiguity of the West’s colonial-imperial legacy.[6]  This is not to say that the current critiques against everything western – including Christianity – are fair, balanced, nuanced or often, even honest.[7]  Far from it; the present rage against the West’s historical legacy is just that – often incoherent and indiscriminate in its denunciation of all that smacks of classic European culture.

     It seems to me that all this leaves the Church in the West with (at least) three pressing priorities.  First of all, Christians need to know their history.  Secular historians like Tom Holland have proven helpful in recent years, as they rigorously demonstrate, not only the innumerable benefits that western civilization has brought to the world, but also the fact that the instincts of all westerners – including those which drive many to protest the “evil” colonial past – are themselves the product of the West’s Judeo-Christian heritage.  Christians need to be aware of both the achievements and the abuses of Western civilization, in order to have both a concrete defense of this Christianity-informed culture as well as the humility to acknowledge the failures, crimes and “all-too-humanness” of our historical legacy.

     Secondly, the Church – which now finds itself to be a marginalized (and in the eyes of many, irrelevant) institution devoid of political and cultural clout – must learn to read her Scriptures “from below”, i.e. as a “minority” people who must navigate their life of faith without the luxury of power or privilege.  Thirdly, Western Christians must meditate long and hard on the thorny question of forgiveness and reconciliation.[8]  It seems to me that in order to recover its credibility within western culture, the Church must be seen to both embody forgiveness vis-à-vis its detractors – including a willingness to suffer – as well as learn how to ask forgiveness from/make amends to those who have been genuinely harmed by ecclesial attitudes and policies.  The Church must rediscover her vocation to exist “for others”; she is Christ’s body on earth, the people of God called to be the Creator’s agent of reconciliation (cf. Gn. 12.1-3; Rm. 4.1-13, 2 Cor. 5.14-21, passim).

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[1] Cf. Wright, N.T. & Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024, pp. 103-21.

[2] E.g. Ancient Israel’s “Golden Age” under the reigns of David and Solomon.

[3] Cf. Horsley, Richard A., ed. In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Louisville: WJK, 2008.

[4] Except when Russia invades its neighbours; is the Cold War warming up? …or when China prepares to annex Taiwan and imposes its hegemony in the South China Sea.

[5] Cf. Holland, Tom, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, New York: Basic Books, 2019.

[6] E.g. the situation in 18^th-century Paraguay where Jesuit missionaries established “missions” among the Guarani people, only to be obliged to abandon them due to the imminent suppression of the Jesuit order in Europe accompanied by the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, which redrew the map between the Spanish and Portuguese territories in the New World.  The Guarani violently – and unsuccessfully – resisted the suppression of the Jesuit missions during the Guarani War of 1754–1756.  This was a tragic and bitterly frustrating instance of infighting between various Christian empires and ecclesial factions that resulted in the undoing of the great good that had been done for the Guarani by the Jesuits.  Cf. the 1986 film The Mission & McNaspy, SJ, C.J. Lost cities of Paraguay: Art and architecture of the Jesuit reductions, 1607-1767, Loyola University Press, 1982.

[7] Cf. Biggar, Nigel, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, London: William Collins, 2023.

[8] Cf. Tutu, Desmond, No Future without Forgiveness, New York: Image Doubleday, 1999; Wright, N.T. Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006, pp. 131-66.