Losing Christendom

I was asked to review a book entitled The Future of Christian Learning, which contains an essay by the well-regarded historian Mark Noll, an evangelical Christian now on the faculty at Notre Dame. Tying in to yesterday’s discussion on the post “Aliens in a Strange Land,” Noll says that Western Civilization once was termed “Christendom.” It was a culture in which the church had considerable intellectual influence, with the society deferring to its moral authority.

Christendom appeared to break up with the advent of the Reformation. But the major Protestant confessional groups–the Lutherans, the Reformed, and the Anglicans–did not completely reject the older concept of Christendom and, when established as state churches, soon presided over Christendoms of their own. But then the pietists came, reacting against these institutionalized churches in favor of individual personal experience. Noll says that the various kinds of pietists had a greater impact than the Reformation and were largely reponsible for the collapse of Christendom, as Christianity withdrew from the culture into the individual heart. Noll notes a special example of this phenomenon in America. Mainline liberal Protestantism assumed a proprietary leadership role in the United States, until it became so liberal and culture-bound that fundamentalists reacted against it and withdrew from the mainstream American culture to pursue spiritual purity. Evangelicals have emerged out of that fundamentalist tradition and are trying to re-engage the culture, with mixed success.