The One and the Many: Devoted to the Universal and the Particulars

Recently, I have been thinking and studying about the relationships between cult (or religious life) and culture (involment with society). The prevailing assumption within American evangelicalism, fundamentialism and some forms of so-called Christian politics, is the notion that religious life and society/politics should be coterminous. Christendom is consistantly taken for granted. One of the best defintion of Christendom I have come across is this: “Christendom is the concept of Western Civilization as having a religious arm (the church) and a secular arm (civil government), both of which are united in their adherence to Christian faith, ….Within This Christian civilization both the state and the church have different roles to play, but, since membership in both is coterminous, both can be seen as aspects of one unified reality–Christendom.”[1]