The UK-based Anabaptist Network announces the publication of a series of books, beginning with Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World by Stuart Murray. “This book explores what it means to be Christian in a world in which Christianity is no longer the dominant paradigm in our society.”

Except that Christians have always lived in a world in which Christianity is not the dominant paradigm. Maybe it used to be different in your society, but it’s always been this way for the vast majority of human beings throughout history. The Christians in China, India, and Africa know that. Ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, we’ve been living in a “post-God” world. Surely we haven’t waited several thousand years to start wondering how it’s supposed to work.

No, of course not. Many Christian traditions, including the Anabaptists, have spent much effort in deciding how to live for God in a world that forgets God. We need to keep spending that effort.

If any meaning is going to come from the post-modern church movement or emerging church movement or whatever it’s supposed to be called, it will have to notice that other generations, and other cultures, have asked the same questions. That supposedly “new” movement must not limit itself to being a comfortable haven for males with white skins and goatees who like edgy Celtic music and weren’t born when John F. Kennedy died.