This is an interesting framing, because "Who killed Christendom?" would seem to be downstream of "What is Christendom?"
My priors are that a semantic history of the *word* "Christendom" would not indicate any particular coherence, such as could ground a philosophically rigorous definition. That leaves it fair game for an author to invest it with their favorite meaning. An author who thinks the Sexual Revolution killed "Christendom" presumably just means something different by the word compared to an author who thinks the piece of Westphalia killed "Christendom."
It makes me think about an author who tries to write a book about banks, in a manner inclusive enough to apply to both both the financial and riparian forms, and to seamlessly interweave discussions of mortgage lending and fluvial hydrology. :)
Of course, it's not the same thing. But you've set yourself quite the task framing a meaningful concept of Christendom that can serve as the flip side of these very diverse complaints!
Well, that’s sort of the thing. There seems to be widespread agreement that Christendom is dead but not the same clarity on what it actually is. My hypothesis is that we tend to work backwards and “Christendom” in people’s minds becomes a kind of placeholder for “what we have lost.” Greengrass has a pretty clear sense of what he thinks Christendom is or was and what he thinks happened to it. But most people who lament its loss are far less clear. Their sense that it’s gone probably says more about them than about any objective thing that “Christendom” might be taken to mean.
And yet, I don’t think that makes the term utterly meaningless and I don’t even think it would be quite right to suggest that its meaning is just entirely fluid, a fill-in-the-blank for whatever is ostensibly wrong in the world. It’s more than that. But figuring out the “more” might be hard and that’s the motivation for looking at various narratives of collapse, to see what people think they’ve lost and whether/where those narratives of decline intersect.
Hopefully that can then give us more insight into what sort of rebuilding or rejuvenation we want or need. Christendom Reborn.
Yes, it heightens the interest in what this reborn Christendom might look like. There might be a new form of it that will answer a lot of different needs.
This is an interesting framing, because "Who killed Christendom?" would seem to be downstream of "What is Christendom?"
My priors are that a semantic history of the *word* "Christendom" would not indicate any particular coherence, such as could ground a philosophically rigorous definition. That leaves it fair game for an author to invest it with their favorite meaning. An author who thinks the Sexual Revolution killed "Christendom" presumably just means something different by the word compared to an author who thinks the piece of Westphalia killed "Christendom."
It makes me think about an author who tries to write a book about banks, in a manner inclusive enough to apply to both both the financial and riparian forms, and to seamlessly interweave discussions of mortgage lending and fluvial hydrology. :)
Of course, it's not the same thing. But you've set yourself quite the task framing a meaningful concept of Christendom that can serve as the flip side of these very diverse complaints!
Well, that’s sort of the thing. There seems to be widespread agreement that Christendom is dead but not the same clarity on what it actually is. My hypothesis is that we tend to work backwards and “Christendom” in people’s minds becomes a kind of placeholder for “what we have lost.” Greengrass has a pretty clear sense of what he thinks Christendom is or was and what he thinks happened to it. But most people who lament its loss are far less clear. Their sense that it’s gone probably says more about them than about any objective thing that “Christendom” might be taken to mean.
And yet, I don’t think that makes the term utterly meaningless and I don’t even think it would be quite right to suggest that its meaning is just entirely fluid, a fill-in-the-blank for whatever is ostensibly wrong in the world. It’s more than that. But figuring out the “more” might be hard and that’s the motivation for looking at various narratives of collapse, to see what people think they’ve lost and whether/where those narratives of decline intersect.
Hopefully that can then give us more insight into what sort of rebuilding or rejuvenation we want or need. Christendom Reborn.
Yes, it heightens the interest in what this reborn Christendom might look like. There might be a new form of it that will answer a lot of different needs.