Christendom and Kingdom of God

Recent missional and other Christian writers have attacked a church paradigm called 'Christendom'. This cultural paradigm for the church assumes that the church should have some sort of cultural control on state and society. The critique of this view has long been part of the traditions of the radical reformation and has since flourished in certain evangelical-glocal Christian circles.

Now I have to say I agree with the critique almost entirely, at least the parts I understand of it. I totally see how being ecclesial-centric can actually harm both our ethics and seriously damage any worthy christology. Yet what I find interesting is how often in these anti-Christendom literatures they speak about the centrality of the Kingdom of God (KoG). The KoG, a term founded heavily in the synoptic gospels and sparsed through the New Testament is a term referring, clearly in study of the gospels, to a non-spatial political-spiritual entity where the entire Cosmos is put under the reign, or rule, of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I make this distinction from a view of the KoG being a nation-state type entity rather than it being a 'religion-with-out-religion' (Caputo) and politics-without-politics that it truly resembles.

My point here is how spot on these new writers are when they contrast Christendom (which essentially is a Imperialist way under the guise of Christianity) with the Kingdom of God (which is a biblical idea about the anti Imperial community of Gift which comes through the work of Christ).

My rant is now over, but I will flesh these ideas out in the future more.