What is Christendom?

“Christendom” is the name given to the sacral culture that has dominated European society from around the eleventh century until the end of the twentieth. Its sources go back to the time when Constantine came to the throne of the Roman Empire and granted Christians complete freedom of worship and even favored Christianity, thereby undermining all other religions in the empire (Edict of Milan - 313 AD).1

A number of significant shifts took place after 313 AD. In order to see our own experience of Christendom in a clearer light, it is necessary to outline major shifts that took place after its imposition.


The Christendom shift meant:
•The adoption of Christianity as the official religion of a city, state, or empire.
•The movement of the church from the margins of society to its center.
•The creation and progressive development of a Christian culture or civilization (Dualism).2
•The assumption that all citizens (except for the Jews) were Christian by birth.
•The development of the corpus Christianum,3 where there was no freedom of religion and where
political power was regarded as divinely authenticated.
•Infant baptism as the symbol of obligatory incorporation into this Christian society.
•Sunday as an official day of rest and obligatory church attendance, with penalties for noncompliance.
•The definition of “orthodoxy”4 as the common belief shared by all, which was determined by
powerful church leaders supported by the state.
•The composition of a supposedly Christian morality in the entire society (although normally Old
Testament moral standards rather than New Testament were applied – i.e. legalism).
•A hierarchical ecclesiastical system, based on a diocesan and parish arrangement, which was
similar to the state hierarchy and was buttressed by state support.
•The construction of massive and ornate church buildings and the formation of huge congregations.5
•A generic distinction between clergy and laity, and the relegation of the laity to a largely passive role.
•The increased wealth of the church and the imposition of obligatory tithes to fund this system.
•The defense of Christianity by legal sanctions to restrain heresy, immorality, and schism.
•The division of the globe into “Christendom” or “heathendom” and the waging of war in the name
of Christ and the church.6
•The use of political and military force to impose the Christian faith.
•The use of the Old Testament, rather than the New, to support and justify many of these changes.
This metanarrative (grand story) not only defined church and state, it defined all the individuals and
social structures in its orbit of influence. Members of that society were assumed to be Christian by birth
rather than by choice. Christianity was an official part of the established culture of Europe. In some
countries, the king or queen actually became the head of the church. Overall, Christianity moved from
being a dynamic, revolutionary, social, and spiritual movement to being a religious institution with its
assisting structures, priesthoods, and sacraments.
1 Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 to order the government to stop the persecution of
Christians, and convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed included belief in
"one holy catholic and apostolic Church", possibly an interpretation of the Great Commission.
Christianity became the state religion of the Empire in 392 when Theodosius I passed legislation
prohibiting the practice of pagan religions. The orthodox Church (see footnote 4) gradually became a
defining institution of the Empire. (Wikipidea - Christendom)
2 “Dualism” is a separation between the sacred (in the sanctuary) and the profane (outside of the
sanctuary), the holy from the unholy, the “in” from the “out”. We talk routinely about the “world out
there.” What else can that mean other than that we, the church people, are “in here”? This dualism
has, over 1,700 years, created Christians that cannot relate their interior faith to their exterior
practice, and this affects their ethics, their lifestyles, and their capacity to share their faith
meaningfully with others. Because the missional/incarnational church, by its very nature, exists
organically within its host community, it has to abandon Western Christianity’s (Christendom) dualistic
worldview in favor of a whole-of-life spirituality. (The Shaping of Things to Come – Pg 19, 21)
3 The Latin term Corpus Christianum is often translated as the Christian body, meaning the community
of all Christians. However, to say that the body of Christ is the church is not the same as saying that
the church is the body of Christ. When we say that the church is the body of Christ, it claims a certain
authority for a particular expression of the church. (The Forgotten Ways – pg. 198)
4 “Orthodoxy” is a system that believes that right thinking provides the context for us to embrace right
living. The reverse is called orthopraxy – a system that believes that right living provides the context
for us to embrace right thinking. Note the Pauline Epistles and Paul’s constant references to righteous
Christian living as the framework for Christian theologizing. The embracing of a balance between
orthodoxy and orthopraxy is one of the correctives we must take in order to become more truly
biblical, where the focus is definitely on right acting rather than merely on right thinking. We have to
recover a sense of the ultimate meaning of our actions if we are going to become a truly
missional/incarnational church. (The Shaping of Things to Come – pg. 121)
5 This was the beginning of the “attractional mode” of church. To be attractional means the church plants
itself within a particular community, neighborhood, or locale and expects that people will come to it
to meet God and find fellowship with others. This is also the beginning of dualism (see footnote 2)
which is the idea that God can only be found in that which is sacred or holy and not in what is
secular, profane or unholy. (The Shaping of Things to Come – pg. 18)
6 We will have further discussion on the difference between “Centered Sets” and “Bounded Sets” as it
relates to being missional vs. attractional. For now, a Bounded Set is a set of people clearly marked
off from those who don’t belong to it – a mechanism or system that determines who’s “in” and who’s
“out”. A Centered Set is defined by its core values, and people are not seen as “in” or “out”, but as
closer or further away from the center. In that sense, everyone is “in” and no one is “out”. Though
some people are close to the center and others far from it, everyone is potentially part of the
community in its broadest sense. (The Shaping of Things to Come – pg. 47)