Post christendom and the remnant

The decline motif has been a powerful tool in the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. We observe both the insular, tribal response to globalization in the rhetoric of its leaders and the appeal to a semi-ancient state of perfection to which we must return. Fear of decline and zeal for renewal have such a grip on the imagination of Americans that most overlook the discrepancies between the movement’s rhetoric and behavior. The persuasiveness of such decline narratives depends upon assumptions about a previously Christian society, assumptions that Rodney Stark directly challenges.

Rodney Stark’s suggestion that “the United States and Western Europe were never really Christianized in the first place” (p. 17) presents a contradiction to the presupposed decline of Western Christianity. This challenges the consensus among Evangelical leaders that the American people have turned away from Christian faith; how could we turn from what we have not embraced? If Stark is correct that the West was never thoroughly Christianized, then contemporary claims of widespread apostasy may overstate the degree of change that has actually occurred.

Although I compare the decline motif with MAGA propaganda, I do not suggest a similarity to Dr. Cooper’s article. Cooper’s analysis avoids following similar decline rhetoric used by MAGA Evangelicals by divorcing authentic Christian discipleship, or what Edward Rommen refers to as the remnant, from the church-state amalgamation called Christendom. By contrasting contemporary spirituality with the transition into post-Christendom, Cooper implicitly presents Christendom as more monistic and doctrinally grounded, yet he is careful to never apply a value statement to either milieu.

I propose that post-Christendom simultaneously weakens Christendom while strengthening the remnant. Where the elevation of experience as truth has led our individualistic society to reject religious authority and doctrinal claims, it has also revived a passion among the remnant for an Augustinian transformation of one’s desires and will, in which love is rightly ordered in behavior and emotion. Likewise, pluralism has produced a tolerance-heavy environment (and tribal backlash), but among the remnant it has accentuated the remnant’s catholicity and enabled dialogue across divides previously too geographically and culturally distant to interact. Each generation’s remnant may contend for their faith against a different beast, but their struggle inevitably produces the same spiritual fruit of love and unity in the Holy Spirit.

References