Post Christian
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Post Christian, post-Christian or postchristian is a term used to describe a personal world view, religious movement or society that is no longer rooted in the language and assumptions of Christianity, though it had previously been in an environment of ubiquitous Christianity (Christendom). A post-Christian world then is one where Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion, but one that has changed to embrace values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian.
Within evangelical Christian circles the term is typically used pejoratively in reaction to the notions of posthumanism, postmodernism, pluralism, and multiculturalism and is used in advocacy of a Christian worldview.
Other American Christians also use this term to discuss evangelism to unchurched individuals who may have grown up in a non-Christian culture where such traditional biblical references may be unfamiliar concepts. The argument goes that in previous generations in the United States, such concept and other artifacts of Christianese would have been common cultural knowledge and would not have needed to be taught to adult converts to Christianity. In this sense, post-Christian is not a negative term, but is used to describe the special remediative care that would be needed to introduce new Christians to the nuances of Christian life and practice.
"Post-Christian" is also used for self-description. Dana McLean Greeley, the first President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, described Unitarianism as post-Christian insofar as Christians no longer considered it Christian while persons of other religions would likely describe it as Christian. [[1]]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Liberal Religion in the Post Christian Era, Edward A. Cahill, 1974
- The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda, Harry Blamires, Vine, 1999 (ISBN 1-56955-142-1).
- "The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era", Gabriel Vahanian, George Braziller, NY, 1961
- Dana MacLean Greeley, 25 Beacon Street, and Other Recollections (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 11-12.
- Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966).
- Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).
- Bernard Murchland, ed., The Meaning of the Death of God (New York: Random House, 19
