Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World AfterChristendom After-Christendom

The end of Christendom, where the Christian story was known and the church was central, invites Christians in western culture to embrace marginality and discover fresh ways of being church and engaging in mission. While the transition from modernity to postmodernity has received a huge amount of attention, the shift from Christendom to post-Christendom has not yet been fully explored.

This book is an introduction; a journey into the past, an interpretation of the present and an invitation to ask what following Jesus might mean in the strange new world of post-Christendom. Drawing on insights from the early Christians, dissident movements and the world church, this book challenges conventional ways of thinking.

For those who dare to imagine new ways of following Jesus on the margins, it invites a realistic and hopeful response to challenges and opportunities awaiting us in the 21st century. An accessible but carefully researched survey of Christendom and its legacy. A missiological overview of European church history that combines theology, hermeneutics, sociology, missiology, ecclesiology, and ethics.

The most comprehensive summary of the impact of the end of Christendom currently in print. About the After Christendom Series: After-Christendom is an exciting new series of books exploring the implications of the demise of Christendom and the challenges facing a church now living on the margins of western society.

The authors of this series, who write from within the Anabaptist tradition, see the current challenges facing the church not as the loss of a golden age but as opportunities to recover a more biblical and more Christian way of being God's people in God's world. The series will address many issues, such as social and political engagement, reading Scripture, peace and violence, mission, worship and being church after Christendom.