The Church in a Post-Christendom Era

Much has been written and said of late about our having entered a post-Christian era. More often then not the people who make this assertion fail to explain exactly what they mean by it. If they are asserting that North American culture is bereft of the influences of the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ, then there is much evidence to suggest that they are wrong. On the other hand, not all movement under the banner of Christianity is a genuine sign of life. I have argued elsewhere that the rise of the religious right in America during the 1970s and 1980s was not evidence of the persistence or renewal of biblical religion within the culture but, to the contrary, a symptom of the truly advanced pace of secularization in our culture. These spasms of political involvement signified a refusal to acknowledge the fact that the era of American Christendom is over, a refusal to accept the fact that it would be best to lay the notion of Protestant America quietly to rest.

But a vital evangelical faith and practice does persist and does continue to find new life and expression in American Christianity, among Protestant Christians, Catholics, and Orthodox alike. There are hints and suggestions that all the churches still have the capacity to leaven the moral lump of society. Even mainline Protestant Christianity, which seems to be in an especially advanced state of spiritual rigor mortis-- still manages to contribute in significant ways to the common good within a pluralistic society.
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from Vigen Guroian, Ethics after Christendom: Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic, pp. 11-12.