I recently read an incredibly important book (!) for understanding how the church has gotten to where we are today, as well as what choices faces us as we approach tomorrow: Craig Carter's Rethinking Christ and Culture. The whole book is a re-analysis of what H. Richard Niebuhr called "the enduring problem" - how Christ (and/or) the chrch relates to culture. Regardless of whether you've ever heard of him, Niebuhr has shaped the way all of us think - at least those of us who are Christian and American and have lived any time from 1950 to today. In 1951 he wrote a book called Christ and Culture, which was an instant classic and has been read as a textbook in colleges and seminaries ever since. In this book Niebuhr laid out five options for how Christ has been and can be related to culture by his followers: Christ of culture, Christ against culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ transforming culture. Among other things, this work popularized the idea that pacifist Christians can only remain pacifist at teh expense of responsible engagement with society.

Carter's book is a thorough critique of Niebuhr's work; Carter's main gripe is that Niebuhr fails to account for the underlying assumption between all five types: Carter calls "Christendom," which basically refers to a world where the church functions as the religious arm of the state as part of a unified system in which both are seen as partners in God's efforts to run the world. I'm oversimplifying horribly, and I'll try to offer a better analysis after the other books I promised to blog through, but for now I just want to mention a fe specific things. Oh, let me say one more general thing about the book first: Carter locates the dividing line between faithful and unfaithful Christian approaches to culture precisely at the church's willingness (or nonwillingness) to engage in state-sponsored violence of any kind. Very interesting.

In this and the next few posts I'll discuss a few specific points Carter made that line up exactly with thoughts I've been having lately. It was actually eerie at one point, when Carter made the very same claim I tried to articulate in the last post: "Like Jesus, we are called to live lives that make no sense if there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead" (208). I know, crazy! :) Let me say again that I think this is absolutely crucial to following Jesus faithfully. How we talk about God (theology), how we aim to be good and do right (ethics), how we lead churches, how we pray, how we get and stay married (or don't get married at all), how we raise children (whether ours or someone else's) and everything else in our lives must be founded upon, line up with, and draw its resources from the central reality of resurrection. Stating it bluntly, to the extent that our lives and choices fail to require resurrection in order to make sense, they should not be described as "Christian."

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Over the next bit, I’ll be blogging through a little book called The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom by Alan Kreider. I have chosen this book for three main reasons. First, I’ve wanted to read and absorb it for a long time, and blogging through it provides this opportunity. Second, at Real Life we’re presently revisiting what it means to “cross the line” from non-Christian to Christian in our context, and I think this book will provide important insight. And third, those of you who responded to my survey of topics expressed interest in how the church should relate to culture, the church in relation to the use of power (and violence), etc, all topics this book deals with in (I think) an unique fashion.

Kreider aims to better understand the changes that took place in the church during the fourth century (when the Christian faith was legalized and standardized by Constantine and his heirs) by examining their practice of conversion. If we look at how the process of becoming a Christian changed throughout early church history, especially with the beginning of the period called ‘Christendom’, perhaps we will better understand the larger transformation of the church during this time.

In the Introduction Kreider lays out three goals: (1) Tell stories of early conversions in an attempt to distill the essence of conversion during this period. He will analyze these conversions in terms of belief, belonging, and behavior. (2) Attempt to chronicle the changing nature of conversion. He states that as the church gained the power to compel (even force) adherence, the meaning and process of conversion was altered. While some of the words and actions remained part of the package, the relationship of the parts within the package shifted. (3) Look closely at the phenomenon called ‘Christendom’. (Generally, by the way, this term is used to describe a world in which Christianity and the ‘secular’ powers of government are wed together and attempt to co-rule the world.)

I am excited to learn about these things, and I think studies like this can be very helpful to our current 21st century post-Christian situation. We are for the first time in seventeen hundred years in a world in which Christianity is no longer ‘dominant’ in the wider culture. I think this is to be celebrated, but it brings lots of scary realities with it too. As for possible critique, I’m a bit leery of forcing ‘conversion’ to fit within the boxes of belief, belonging, and behavior; I just hope he lets history bend his boxes rather than the other way around.

Let me end with a question: How is conversion practiced in your faith community? (Or in past faith communities of which you’ve been a part?) No complicated analysis needed – just a general description of what is constant and central in the process. How does one cross the line and become a follower of Jesus? If you’re not comfortable with (or capable of) speaking for your entire community, what would you say to a non-Christian who asked you how to ‘cross the line’?

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