For most of you who read my blog regularly, this book is likely not worth your time. Written in 1997, he is making the argument that Christendom is over and that its demise will be a good thing for the church. Since I think that most of us already know and agree with that, the book will likely be preaching for the choir. I am more interested in books that assume the demise of Christendom and are helping us to think about new ways of approaching the church in such a context.

Not only is the book a little dated, but it is quite dry. This book is a collection of four short lectures, and they read about like someone presenting at an American Academy of Religion meeting. I was disappointed in this book because I thoroughly enjoyed reading another of his books, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. In fact, this later book written in 2003 is much more helpful in regard to guiding us in the midst of a Christendom-less world, so buy it instead. The End of Christendom might have been helpful in its day, but it is much less so now.

If at the level of fundamental belief and lifestyle we disengage ourselves, as a Christian movement, from the dominant societies, classes, and institutions we have been for centuries trying to court, we may be able to serve those societies, classes, and institutions in ways far more faithful and more humanly needful than Christendom usually did. (51)