Christendom is Bankrupt...

Here we go again, Frist and Hirsh write in "The Shape of Things to Come" some interesting stuff on the Church in America.

"We must admit that Christendom, particularly its ecclesiological and its missional manifestations, amounts to something of a failed experiment. To reiterate, by the term Christendom, we are referring to a period in history when the church assumed influence by its connection to the temporal, secular power. It's high watermark occured in the Middle Ages and continued beyond the Reformation well into the 1700's. Since the emergence of the Enlightenment she has been in decline, disapearing in the latter part of the 20th century."

"We can no longer afford our historical sentimentality, even addiction, to the past. Christendom is not even a biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely a way the church has conceived itself. In enshrining it as the sole form of the church, we have made it into an idol that has captivated our imaginations and enslaved us to a historical-cultural expression of the church. ...We refuse to let go of this idol. The answer to the problem in the West requires something far more radical that reworking a dated and untenable model. It will require that we adopt something that looks far more like the early church in terms of its conception of the church (ecclesiology) and its core task in the world (missiology).

The first publish of this book was 2003. What a timely resource for our day!