Strangers again
The loss of Christendom
For the better part of fifteen centuries in the West, the church did not have to ask whether it belonged. It simply did. Its calendar set the public calendar, its feasts ordered the year, its assumptions were the water everyone swam in, and its authority was not argued for so much as presumed. Kings were crowned in its name and laws were written in its shadow. That long arrangement has a name, Christendom, and within living memory it has been quietly unraveling. For a Church grown used to sitting at the center, this is a profound disorientation, to wake one morning and find its voice now one among many, its assumptions no longer shared, its authority openly questioned, its old home no longer home. It feels like loss, and in a sense it is. But the church was not born at the center. It was born on the margins, an illegal sect in a hostile empire, meeting in houses and catacombs. Peter wrote to exactly such people, scattered and out of place, and called them what they were and what the church may be relearning to be: sojourners and pilgrims, resident strangers in a world that was never finally their address.
“Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.”
— Peter — 1 Peter 2:11 (WEB)
“Because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
Disorientation here is the church losing its cultural home, the assumed center it occupied for centuries, and waking to find itself a stranger again, its authority questioned and its voice one among many. This phase asks the church not to grasp for the old centrality in grievance, but to relearn an older posture: the sojourner's, the pilgrim's, the resident stranger never finally at home in the world.
If your faith now feels like a minority report, odd at the dinner table, suspect in the public square, no longer the default but a position you have to explain and sometimes defend, then you are living the loss of Christendom in your own skin. It is disorienting to go from assumed to strange, and the temptation is sharp: grievance, anger that the world has moved on, a frantic grasping after the standing you used to have. But measure that instinct honestly. Your faith did its deepest growing in you not when it was easy and expected, but when it cost you something to hold. Being a stranger for what you believe is not the death of your faith.
But measure that instinct against the actual story. It may be the recovery of its truest and most fruitful posture, the one it held when it turned the world upside down. You are not declining from the norm; you are returning to it. The center was always the anomaly.
For the better part of fifteen centuries the Church in the West did not have to ask whether it belonged; it simply did, its calendar setting the public calendar, its authority presumed. That long arrangement has a name, Christendom, and within living memory it has quietly unraveled, leaving the Church to find its voice one among many. The temptation of the whole Body is to answer with grievance and panic, grasping to recover its old centrality as though cultural power were its birthright. But the Church was born on the margins, an illegal sect in a hostile empire, meeting in houses and catacombs, and did its most explosive growing with no throne behind it. Peter called such scattered people sojourners and pilgrims. Relearning that posture is not the Church's death but the recovery of its most fruitful self.
Cultural centrality can be shaken, and it is; the calendar, the assumed authority, the place at the center were never the church's foundation. What cannot be shaken is the kingdom never of this world, and the church's identity as a pilgrim people belonging to it. When the borrowed home is removed, what remains is the home that was always real.
- Where am I grieving the loss of a cultural centrality the church was never promised in the first place?
- Have I confused being at home in the culture with being faithful to Christ?
- Can I receive the calling to be a sojourner again, not as decline but as a return to the church's truest posture?
Lord, the church I love has lost its old place at the center, and I feel the pull toward grievance and grasping. Forgive us for confusing cultural power with faithfulness to You. Teach us again to be sojourners who belong to Your kingdom. Make us fruitful on the margins, as at the first. Amen.