re-thinking Christendom

A lot of the intellectual issues I try to deal with our fundamentally about the relationship between the Church, it's theologies and political practice. Recently I have decided to try and work through something that John Milbank poses in an interviewover at the The Other Journal:

"And that means of course, re-think Christendom. But now in more festive, pro-body, yet more interpersonal, less fearing terms and ones celebrating much more excellence and virtue in every realm including those of craft, farming and trade. And having a greater will to the democratization of excellence."

Considering the anti-Christendom strain in my thinking and the traditions I have been apart of (Anabaptist,evangelical,anarchist and missional) this quotation is directly challenging. The political thinking intrinsic to Milbank is that theology has a place in the economic, social and political world beyond the position of prophetic utterance or face-to-face relationship. Examining my thought it seems that the ecclesiology I pertain to puts a monopoly first on the personalist 'face-to-face' and the Anabaptist/liberationist 'prophetic utterance'. For me Milbank has effectively de-stabalized these two monopolies in my mind.

In Missional Church, a book I have mentioned before, Darrell Guder describes the relationship of the church, the people of God, to the reign of God as "the sign,foretaste,instrument and agent of God's rule in Christ" (pg 221). The church is not identical to the reign of God, but is certainly related and the relationship is not easily severed. I will call 'Christendom' a social arrangement which is not identical to the reign of God and neither identical to the Church.

Milbank seems to mention some of the harsher criticisms of the Christendom arrangement including the less festive,anti-body,impersonal,fear-mongering,lack of virtue and lack of respect for the common person as citizen and worker. He is open about the reality that historic Christendom has major flaws but does not abandon the project altogether after the failure of both socialism and liberalism in avoiding both wide-scale genocide,economic injustice and nihilism.

As a member of those various traditions above I would argue about, or more precisely add to, his constructive politics of a re-thought Christendom is a heavy suspicion of power, a rejection of violence, a need to reconcile localism with global technocracy and a recognition of cultural diversities. I would also caution that european imperialism has been an experienced reality of the last five centuries partially out of the failures of the old Christendom.

Re-thinking Chistendom means for me thinking through my cautions and additions to what Milbank is saying. Much of what seems to me to be 'post-Christendom' political theology seems to bubble out of a dialect between an ethical aim (to respond to the other, to have justice) with political suspicion (which comes out of a lived reality of imperialism - such as the Anabaptist persecutions by the state churches in Europe). Yet at the same time in quite clear terms Post-Christendom theology must come to the realization that it is not politically neutral and that even the concept of 'Christendom' is the recognition that our theology will inevitably, if taken to their the logical conclusions, will produce or support some sort of social arrangement which although neither the reign of God nor the Church is something related to the two.

First of all, following Macintyre and also Milbank and 'Theology and Social Theory', we must recover a robust understanding of virtue. But I would caution that this must be 'textured' by the Scriptures and should be more from the Spirit than Aristotle. This means both practice and understanding arising out of the New Testament, especially Paul's epistles. Perhaps love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" can be the virtues of this new order.

Secondly the suspicion of power and rejection of violence must be taken into account, especially as informed by the New Testament. This means both the development of virtues and communities of nonviolence and a communal respect and distrust of power. There are practical ways of exploring this including favouring the local and de-centralized institutions, including economic and politics ones.

Thirdly - learn from De Certeau and Ellul about technology and it's use. Technology is not a bad thing intrinsically but has the potential, as is shown in actual history, to be very alienating. There are ways to use technology to build community, strengthen the local economy and build towards what Illich call 'conviviality'.

Two things in those whole Christendom discussion:

First - it is secondary or ever tertiary. Not in the sense that it does not matter but in the sense that ethics come before politics. What matters primarily is not the setting up of an order but the spiritual flourishing of individuals and the church in the willingness to suffer and love the last,the lost, the least,the widows, the orphans and the enemies.

Secondly we must head Illich's warning "Responsibility is the soft under-belly of power".