End Of Christendom Research Articles

Evangelicals and the end of Christendom. Religion, Australia, and the crises of the 1960s. By Hugh Chilton. (Studies in Evangelicalism.) Pp. x + 256 incl. 9 ills. London–New York: Routledge, 2020. £36.99 (paper). 978 1 03 208210 3

Evangelicals and the end of Christendom. Religion, Australia, and the crises of the 1960s. By Hugh Chilton. (Studies in Evangelicalism.) Pp. x + 256 incl. 9 ills. London–New York: Routledge, 2020. £36.99 (paper). 978 1 03 208210 3 - Volume 73 Issue 2

HughChilton: Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia, and the Crises of the 1960s. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2020; pp. x + 256.

HughChilton: Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia, and the Crises of the 1960s. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2020; pp. x + 256.

Religious Royals in the New Australia: The Queen, the Pope, and the 1970 Cook Bicentenary

Two hundred years after the first Briton claimed the east coast of Australia in the name of the King, Sydney enjoyed two major “royal” tours. In April 1970, Queen Elizabeth II visited to celebrate the bicentenary of Captain James Cook’s “discovery,” even as Britain was retreating from Empire into Europe. In December, Pope Paul VI made the first papal visit to Australia in the midst of declining sectarianism and the emergence of Roman Catholicism as the nation’s largest denomination. Both tours attracted some controversy and revealed substantial shifts in the relationship between worlds old and new. Drawing particularly on the experience of Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Sir Marcus Loane, who preached in the presence of the Queen and refused to join in prayer with the Pope, this article explores the religious meaning of these two important tours within the context of the mood of “new nationalism” redefining Australia’s place in the world. It brings into view the spiritual significance of the end of empire and the cultural significance of what Hugh McLeod has termed “the end of Christendom” in the long 1960s.

Co-Creating Common Good: Diocesan Collaboration in the Mission of God

What is the role and function of the church, as an institutional ecclesial body, in addressing economic inequalities in the United States, or in the world? For those of us who identify as Episcopalians the question might be: What is the vocation of a diocese in creating common good? Here, diocese is understood not as the office of the bishop and her/his staff, but rather the common witness to and participation in God's mission by parishes and worshiping communities in a specific geographic jurisdiction. Put another way, what role do Episcopal churches working in common as a diocese have in addressing the ills and challenges of the economic order in which we all live and move and have our being? Is such worldly work an appropriate sphere of interest, action, and investment for Episcopalians when we come together as a diocese? This article will argue that Episcopalians can indeed take important steps to co-create with the triune God an economy (oikos) that is life-giving and abundant for all. It will also offer a few modest examples of how the Episcopal Church in Connecticut is seeking to participate in God's mission of restoration and reconciliation in the neighborhoods and cities of our state.Setting the ContextParishes and worshiping communities in a specific geographic jurisdiction known as a diocese are, by definition, located in a spe- cific context. A diocese is grounded in the incamational realities in which it is located. The different histories, cultures, geographies, and economies in which a diocese exists result in different expressions of diocesan life across the Episcopal Church, to say nothing of the differences across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The experience of Episcopalians living in the context of an old, established diocese in New England that is wrestling with the end of Christendom is radically different from those who know the challenges of post-earthquake reconstruction in UEglise Episcopale D'Haiti1 or the radically multicultural cities of the Diocese of Los Angeles, where worship is in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese each Sunday. Context is fundamental to how a diocese lives into the invitation to create common good.So what is the context in which the Episcopal Church in Connecticut seeks to be faithful to Gods leading in the ordering of our economic life? Our contemporary economic realities are greatly influenced by our history and geography. From colonial times through the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, families in Connecticut scratched out meager incomes on small subsistence farms in often rocky and unforgiving soil, while trade, whaling, and fishing characterized the towns and growing cities along the shoreline of Long Island Sound and the waterways of the Connecticut River. From the mid-nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century, the innovative and enterprising spirit of Connecticut Yankees resulted in new advances in manufacturing, particularly in metallurgy and machinery, as the state led the way in the production of guns, clocks, and tools.Most of the manufacturing that had characterized the towns and cities of Connecticut for over a century began to decline, however, in the mid-twentieth century, as industries moved to the southern United States or overseas in search of cheaper labor. Today drivers on Interstate Route 95 along Connecticut's shoreline with Long Island Sound will find boarded up and burned out empty factories from New London to New Haven to Bridgeport. While Connecticut's historic manufacturing economy declined, new industries in the financial sector began to grow. Hartford became known as the Insurance Capital of the World, and Fairfield County's close proximity to New York City in the southwestern comer of the state meant that bankers and brokers could easily commute to Wall Street. Historic farming communities became bedroom communities for those working in the financial sector as farms gave way to housing developments and shopping malls. …

Word from a seminarian: The end of Christendom, the rise of African Christianity, flame of hope for the West

Word from a seminarian: The end of Christendom, the rise of African Christianity, flame of hope for the West

Bioethics After Christendom Is Gone: A Methodist Evangelical Perspective

Though it is debatable whether the number of persons in the United States who ‘believe’ in something spiritual has declined, there is no doubt that the social authority of religious organizations has declined. Further, when people do hold explicit religious beliefs, they now tend to be asked to keep such to themselves, for the sake of manners or the ‘rights’ of others to ‘freedom from religion.’ Thus, at the end of Christendom, due to religious privatization and institutional marginalization, the legitimacy of Christian language and concepts in bioethical discourse is increasingly denied. Christians, therefore, must be able to explain (1) that their values are based on faith, (2) but that does not preclude the translation of those values in ways that allow cooperation with others, (3) though some beliefs will lead to conflict given the increasing denial of the intrinsic value of human life. The history of the secularization of bioethics is outlined, and the basis for cooperation between Christians and non-Christians described, even as the former maintain their distinct communities and values.

Faith and Leadership: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church by Michael P. Riccards (review)

Reviewed by: Faith and Leadership: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church by Michael P. Riccards Raymond J. Kupke Faith and Leadership: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. By Michael P. Riccards. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Little-field. 2012. Pp. xxii, 614. $110.00. ISBN 978-0-7391-7132-5.) This volume marks the third foray of Michael P. Riccards into papal history. Earlier volumes (Vicars of Christ: Popes, Power and Politics in the Modern World [New York, 1998] and The Papacy and the End of Christendom. The Leadership Crisis in the Church from 1500 to 1850 [Provo, UT, 2002]) sought to portray the role of the papacy in the modern era. With this latest work Riccards attempts the daunting [End Page 899] task of expanding that perspective to the entire gamut of papal history. In his introduction, the author explains that this is not a work of theology, nor of church history, but rather a study, “… of the papacy as a management structure resting on a large heterogeneous community of faith. How the popes exercise and have exercised leadership over the complex Roman Catholic Church are central questions of this work” (p. xi). In the introduction the author also sets out some biases—both as a Catholic and as a historian—and some generalities that provide a sense of his approach to the topic. Is he successful at this task? Yes and no. Given the author’s deeper immersion in the scholarship of the modern papacy, Faith and Leadership sometimes has the appearance of being two different works. Much more coverage is given the later papacy (the last ten of the book’s twenty-six chapters cover the papacy only since 1800), and the scholarship and nuance seem much more in-depth in the later portion of the book. For example, the 140-year sweep of the Avignon papacy, the Great Western Schism, and conciliarism (1309–1449), a time when many historians would argue there was considerable development of and stress on the management style and leadership of the popes, was given barely two pages (75–76, 102). But the four-and-one-half-year reign of Pope John XXIII (1958–63) rated its own thirty-six-page chapter. In the early chapters there also seems to be a reliance on the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia as found on The New Advent Web site, without any attempt to reference the more recent scholarship in the updated editions of that work from 1967 and 2002. One of the drawbacks of Faith and Leadership is the large number of misspellings as well as stylistic and factual errors found throughout the volume. To cite just a few examples: “Born Lothario Trasimund of Segno in 1160 at Anagi” (p. 72) should read “Born Lothario, son of Trasimund, Count of Segni in 1160 at Anagni.” The northern region of Italy is Lombardy or Lombardia, but not Lombardo (p. 278). Gregory XVI reigned from 1831 to 1846, not 1832 (p. 270). Not every papal document is an encyclical. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (p. 285) and John XXIII’s Veterum Sapientia (p. 466) were not encyclicals. “The aged dean of the sacred college” was Luigi Cardinal Oreglia di Santo Stefano, not “Luigi Oreglia di Santo Cardinal Stefano” (p. 326). The fourth-century pope, Damasus, is incorrectly referred to as “Damascus” on pages 40, 331, and in the index. Twice (on pages 342 and 477) Pope Benedict XV is listed as the archbishop of Genoa. Genoa was his birthplace, but he served as archbishop of Bologna. The Silence of Benedict X on page 352 should read The Silence of Benedict XV. Cardinal Ildebrando Antoniutti was the prefect of the Congregation for “Religious,” not “Religion” (p. 478). “This was the first time that a pope had appeared at a Church council since the Council of Trent” (p. 491) is inaccurate. No sitting pope attended Trent. An editor or reader well versed in the topic could have helped the usefulness of Faith and Leadership. Despite those faults, Faith and Leadership is a useful volume for students of the papacy and modern church history, particularly in its later chapters. The generalities that sometimes...

“The Times They Are A-Changing”: Modern and Non-Modern Dynamics in the Emergence of a Secular Italy

Many sociologists and historians have foreseen the secularization of Europe and have pointed to the close relation between this religious trend and ongoing modernization. Among them, Hugh McLeod stands out as a prominent author who has refined that thesis, talking of the ‘end of Christendom.’ By this term he means the end of a society that defines itself as Christian, in the aftermath of the religious crisis of the 1960s. This article uses the religious situation in Italy as a testing ground for that thesis, and argues that the most significant emergent facts for religious change are currently taking place outside the symbolic range of the conservative-progressive distinction. Building on recent empirical research as well as on the insight of such anti-evolutionistic views of the modernization process as Joas’ theory of the creativity of action and Archer’s approach to social morphogenesis, I sketch a new, provisional picture of religious change in Italy. I thus try to capture the mixing strategies and dynamics through which religious actors are making their way out of ‘Christendom’ and towards some new form of a ‘secular,’ yet not de-Christianized, country.

What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the End of Christendom. By David F. Wright

What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the End of Christendom. By David F. Wright

Preface

Preface Michael C. Jordan Political, social, and cultural developments in recent years have imparted a new sense of urgency to reflections on the changing relationship between faith and culture throughout the world. Those reflections at one stage focused on speculations concerning how culture would be reshaped when its religious foundations had been repudiated and eradicated. But in recent years we find terms such as "the death of the death of God" used in a book title by Jacob Neusner and "desecularization" in a book title by Peter Berger, and the questions in the foreground now pertain to the proper relationship between faith and cultural-political life in the face of the persistence of religious belief. The current state of such questions is anticipated aptly in a pair of lectures given by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1978: "The End of Christendom," and "But Not of Christ."1 Muggeridge offers a personal witness to the efforts in the twentieth century to destroy Christianity especially in the Soviet Union and presciently reports that those efforts in the Soviet Union had failed—and this before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the success of Solidarity in Poland, and the implosion of the Soviet regime and empire. It is not coincidental to the account given in these lectures that Muggeridge himself converted to Christianity and just a few years after delivering these lectures became a Catholic. [End Page 5] The end of Christendom in Muggeridge's terms indicates the collapse of a civilization in which Christianity is deeply entwined in the political, social, and cultural structures of power. He sees in the twentieth century a parallel to what St. Augustine encountered when faced with the collapse of Rome: the inevitable transience of historical civilizations in contrast to which the eternity that comes to light through Christianity shines out all the more clearly, as he envisions anew Augustine's distinction between the ephemeral City of Man and the everlasting City of God. Muggeridge in these essays offers witness to what he understands to be a great historical period of transition, and his reminder in the lectures that he speaks as a journalist and not as a scholar seems apt. His account imparts a personal character to the movement of history especially as he reports what he has witnessed of the failed effort in the Soviet Union to destroy Christianity and of the resurgence of Christian truth through the great figure of Solzhenitsyn as well as through his sense of moral and cultural decline in the West. To his credit, Muggeridge in the second essay, "But Not [the End] of Christ," recognizes the danger of egoism involved in crafting denunciations of the culture around him and applies self-restraint as he falls back upon the hope that flows from his own deeply held Christian faith. Muggeridge can be viewed in these lectures as establishing the ground for a new set of challenges that he himself does not fully address—at one moment he movingly speaks of himself as living in the vicinity of death (although he lived for another twelve years after delivering these lectures), and while he knows that Christ and Christianity will live on beyond what he sees as the end of Christendom, he does not ask what new relationships between Christianity and political and cultural life might emerge in a new historical period. Perhaps Muggeridge was not well prepared for such questions because in these lectures he focuses on Christ and on great Christian thinkers and artists such as Newman and Dostoevsky but does not bring into focus Christ's presence in the world through the Christian church. In any case, one measure of historical development [End Page 6] in the three decades since Muggeridge delivered these lectures is that new questions about how Christianity should participate in contemporary public and cultural affairs are being thoughtfully and energetically pursued. Among the many important initiatives in this area—and of course the Institute on Religion and Public Life and its journal, First Things, must be lauded in this context—is a new organization called "Theos: A Public Theology Think Tank," launched in November 2006 with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Cardinal...

What Has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the End of Christendom – By David F. Wright

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 33, Issue 1 p. 53-53 What Has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the End of Christendom – By David F. Wright Philip E. Thompson, Philip E. Thompson North American Baptist SeminarySearch for more papers by this author Philip E. Thompson, Philip E. Thompson North American Baptist SeminarySearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 June 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2007.00146_53.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume33, Issue1January 2007Pages 53-53 RelatedInformation

A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom

A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom

David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom:

David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom: