Christendom is gone. So, too, is much of the Western civilization that was built atop it. Christians find themselves strangers and sojourners in an unfamiliar land. Aaron Renn calls this landscape the “Negative World.” In the Negative World, it is socially and politically harmful—and economically dangerous—to be publicly Christian. What should Christians do in this Negative World? How should we live in the face of the disintegration of Christendom and the civilization Christendom built?
One answer, put forward by James Shea, is to reorient Christian structures away from maintenance and toward mission. Every domain of Catholic life—schools, seminaries, lay movements, parishes, churches—should be oriented to evangelical, or missionary, activity. Shea is undoubtedly right about this. In an apostolic age, our job is to be apostles. The mission is mission.
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