Calvin Chen

“I once welcomed the passing of Christendom and found Richard John Neuhaus's demurrers misplaced; but now, as I earlier mentioned, I am having uncomfortable second thoughts. The waning of cultural Christianity might be good for the churches, but what about society? To my chagrin, I find myself thinking that traditionally Christian lands when stripped of their historic faith are worse than others. They become unworkable or demonic. There is no reason to suppose that what happened in Nazi Germany cannot happen in liberal democracies, though the devils will no doubt be disguised very differently. From this point of view, the Christianization of culture can be in some situations the churches' major contribution to feeding the poor, clothing the hungry and liberating the imprisoned. So it was in the past and, given the disintegration of modern ideologies, so it may he at times in the future. Talk of `Christian America' and John Paul II's vision of a `Christian Europe' make me uncomfortable, but I have seen a number of totally unexpected improbabilities come to pass in my lifetime, such as Roman Catholic transformations and communism's collapse, and cannot rule these out as impossible.”
― George A. Lindbeck, The Church in a Postliberal Age (Radical Traditions