The terms Christianity and Christendom have often been used interchangeably, which turns out to be a problem for at least two reasons.
The first is the notion that there was ever a singular Christianity. There were wildly different understandings of Jesus among his followers even when he was still alive, and though Christians spent centuries trying to figure out what had happened, to hammer out authorized belief, often with the help of swords, there has always been diversity within Western Christianity, as well as movements that never fell under the sway of the Western church.
The Coptic Christian communities of northeast Africa have existed since the beginning, and four of the five patriarchs, those in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, never consented to the primacy of Rome. The Western Church claimed the title “catholic” to assert that it was the only universal church, while the Eastern patriarchs described themselves as “orthodox,” meaning theirs was the only correct belief. Because humans…
Still, at our withering end of the Christian family tree, it is not uncommon for folks to say Christian and mean only this Roman branch and its off-shoots, especially those associated with the three branches of the Protestant Reformation as well as the Azusa Street movement that would become Pentecostalism.
The second reason we no longer tend to use the terms Christianity and Christendom as synonyms is that faithful Christians, gospel Christians like us, recognize that conflating the religion and the empire creates problems, not just the sort of thing that happens when the Pope tells Henry VIII “no more wives for you,” but also the sort of problem that occurs when a movement founded by an un-credentialed rabbi and focused on social and religious revolution becomes an institution that caters to the powerful, cons the poor, and does everything in its power to make sure that it has power and wealth.
Today, we tend to use the term “Christendom” to refer to this toxic religious movement that was co-opted by empire, and remains co-opted by empire today, the Jesus-claiming movement that embraced social Darwinism’s systemic violence while denying biological Darwinism, that believes in capitalism and colonialism, the Jesus-claiming movement that is obsessed with what LGBTQ+ folks are doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms while happily electing rapists and racists to higher office. Christendom was well represented among the insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021.
If the idea of a singular Christianity denies history and ignores diversity, the idea of Christendom is a perversion. If I accomplish nothing more in this life than helping a handful of people encounter Jesus and break-free from the toxicity of Christendom, it will have been a life well spent. Because Jesus is awesome, and Christendom sucks.
Continue reading “Palm Sunday 2022: Good & Crazy”