Talk:Christendom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality. |
"Christendom" isn't really congruent with "Christianity". It was a medieval concept meaning "The collective society of the portion of the world where Christianity holds sway". It's kind of like how "The First World" is used to refer to the grouping of the U.S., Western Europe, and so on.
I think there are salient things to say about it as a historical concept that don't fall under the purview of the Christianity entry. -- Paul Drye
I had a vague recollection that they might not be exactly synonymous, but I reckoned that putting up a redirect from the non-existant link I found would at least make someone who knew better react. That seems to have succeeded. Now, the question is why you put the explanation here and not on the main page? --Pinkunicorn
Because I'm one of the folks who disagrees with the "Write stub articles" rule. I would have to have something longer and better researched -- my current research consists of some dusty old neurons firing -- before I would put it anywhere but /Talk. -- Paul Drye
I'll do some more reaserch.
The word itself is also used to signify "living as christ" or "living as a christian".
Christianity is the whole of all organized systems and groups which claim to be Christian. They come and go though-out history. Christianity may even disappear someday. Any description of it needs to be historical and is dependent on the time when written.
Christendom is more the individual experience of being a christian and how this is reflected in his/her actions and has a more eternal nature to it: Walking The Way, believing The Truth and being in The Life so to say. Every christian needs to define this for themselves and any description here can be only very general: the life of Christ, the apostels, and maybe how the view on this changed with time?
Just an example: Christ forbid the usage of titles like Father (Mt 23). How can one reconcile this with the practice in most churches/groups? So there is a difference between Christendom and Christianity. Needless to say that there is a huge overlap in the two concepts, and it's hard to say which feature belongs to which without starting an edit-war between ideologies. -- 194.159.73.69 08:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
- Evangelical Christians define Christendom as using the Christianity of your definition, while reserving Christianity as the part of Christendom that acknowledges Jesus Christ is fully God and man, died and physically resurrected, and more importantly, all true Christians which is defined as those who have acknowledged Jesus died for their sins on their behalf and the resurrection points to overcoming the wages of sin, that they accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour (i.e. the whole definition of what an evangelical Christian is).--JNZ 02:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
This article mistakenly states that Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 325 in the following paragraph: "The seeds of Christendom were laid in A.D. 306, when Emperor Constantine became co-ruler of the Roman Empire. In 312 he converted to Christianity, and in 325 Christianity became the official religion of the Empire."
In reality, 325 is the date for the council of Nicaea, and 392 is the appropriate date for the declaration of Christianity as the sole state religion of Rome, under Thodosius I. I am cautious about changing this, as I do not have an external source from which to back this, save the Wikepedia article on Christian Anarchism. Thebigcurve
I have gone ahead and made the appropriate changes to the Christendom page, due to the fact that there was no feedback in the last 5 days. Thebigcurve 17:28 EST 16 November 2005
[edit] References
I was surprised to see that the main article lacks a references section. Surely there must be a multitude of scholarly works which address the subject of "Christendom" from various viewpoints. DFH 18:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
