Where in the World is God?

The Shape of Faith in a Post-Christendom Context

Session 2 Lesson Plan:

Reflect in buzz groups on the following question:

a)What do you imagine faith to be?

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Input - Pre-Christendom, Christendom to Post-Christendom: The Transition

Group Work

a)If we are now living in a Post-Christendom era what are the implications for the Church?

b)What shape does faith now take in the Post-Christendom Western world? And what lessons can be learned from the Pre-Christendom era?

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Input - From Belief to Faith

Group Work

a)Does the Post-Christendom collapse of faith as assent mean the end of faith?

b)In a Post-Christendom world is there an opportunity to recover more positive experiences of faith? What shape does faith now take?

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Plenary Discussion:

a)What key insights on God and Faith in the 21st Century have fired our imaginations today?

b)What questions remain?

Pre- Christendom,Christendom to Post-Christendom:

The Transition

1)Pre-Christendom

  • Pre- Christendom is the era of the first three centuries when Christians were a minority group.
  • The first churches were very small communities and might even be better described as the Jesus Movement. They were small house churches, a room in a tenement building or shop, or a house owned by a wealthy Christian sponsor.
  • Originally a Jewish, Jesus Movement, these small communities were characterised by internal relational tensions rooted in ethnicity, gender and class.
  • For the first three centuries the Christian faith was strongly pacifist, characterised by active non-violence and refusal to be involved in the military.
  • The context for the Pre-Christendom community was the dominating presence of the Roman Empire, with faith being over-against empire and a subversive and alternative witness to God’s alternative empire or kingdom.
  • Christians in the first three centuries were a minority, had a de-privileged status and a critical alternative role in the imperial world.

2)Christendom

  • By the early 4th Century the Roman Empire was in crisis and insecure. At the Battle of Milvian Bridge, outside Rome, Constantine prayed and claimed to see a cross of light with the inscription: ‘by this sign conquer’.
  • Constantine won the battle, entered Rome in triumph as the sole emperor, and offered prayers to the Christian God. The Edict of Milan in 313 CE ended the persecution of Christians and gave them freedom and privilege.
  • State funding built large churches, paid clergy their salaries and decided that the bishop of Rome should have a large palace and an imperial styled basilica, St. John’s Lateran Cathedral. God and the empire were now one and the shape of theology changed.
  • Constantine presided over councils that developed creedal statements in which faith was now belief and orthodoxy. He closed the canon of scripture and imposed the only authorised interpretation of it.
  • In 391 CE the emperor Theodosius legalised the Christian faith, making it the only legal religion in the empire, i.e. State religion, and declared all other religions, including Judaism, illegal.
  • Orthodox Christianity became the enforced norm. Error had no rights and Christian society was dominated by Christian symbols, rituals and holidays.
  • The Church / State relationship was inseparable. The Church legitimised the State, blessed its armies and wars, and provided the rituals on state and military occasions. The State gave the Church protection and privilege and the Church had a role at the centre of society.

3)Post-Christendom

  • The Christendom model remained in the West for over 1700 years but it was shattered, especially, by the events of the 20th Century, which have been described as the end of Christendom. The death throes of Christendom had actually begun in the 18th Century.
  • The French Revolution blasted a gaping hole in the ship of Christendom. The God of absolute power and monarchy was fatally wounded. The 20th Century accelerated the growth of secularism, pluralism and the cultural disestablishment or de-privileging of institutional Christianity.
  • Secularisation for the institutional Church means a radical shift in its relationship to power. From being at the centre of political power the Western Church now finds itself de-centred, marginalised and on the periphery. It no longer has the monopoly on goodness, spirituality, or the truth about God.

From Belief to Faith

  • Faith is at the heart of Christianity. Its centrality goes back to the Christian Testament. All but 2 of its 27 books use the noun “faith” or the verb “believe.” But what do we mean by the word faith? In Christian history it has had 4 main meanings.

Faith as assent – This means faith as intellectual assent to a set of propositions, theological formulations, doctrines or right beliefs i.e. orthodoxy. Right beliefs imply there are also wrong beliefs.

Faith as trust – This does not mean trust in a set of statements about God or doctrines; it is radical trust in God. The opposite of trust is not doubt or disbelief but mistrust, or anxiety, or worry. Trust in God’s love has transforming power.

Faith as faithfulness – This is faithfulness to our relationship with God. It is loyalty, allegiance and the commitment of our deepest selves. It is not faithfulness to statements about God, whether biblical, creedal or doctrinal. It means being radically centred in God, loving God and neighbour. Living faithfully is the practice of the ethics of love, justice and peace.

Faith as vision – This means seeing the whole, seeing what is as life-giving and nourishing. It is also seeing things as they should be, therefore making possible a different response to life, which is the ability to love, to be present to the moment and to give ourselves to a vision that goes beyond ourselves i.e. the reign of God.

  • In the Christendom model faith was interpreted almost exclusively as intellectual assent. This derived from Constantine’s imposition of correct beliefs and anything which differed as error and heresy. Constantine was really trying to impose order on his insecure and pluralistic empire.
  • The medieval Church and the churches of the Classical Reformation all developed models of faith as assent to a set of statements, propositions, doctrines and dogmas. This created a history of anathemas, inquisitions, persecutions, silencing, excommunication and categories of “us and them”, “insiders and outsiders”.
  • In the Post-Christendom era this model of faith has run into serious difficulty and is being rejected by increasing numbers of people in the Western world. The Christendom world of belief is being replaced by faith as openness to the mystery of God and to God’s future. Spirituality is replacing formal religion and there is a universal trend away from hierarchical, regional, patriarchal and institutional religion.
  • Faith is also being seen as living faithfully or living ethically in God’s world. Post-Christendom people are more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrines, dogmas or systems of belief.