Expert: J.M.J. West - 3/28/2009

Question
What social or political factors, outside the church, affected Christianity in the Middle Ages? What impact did these factors have upon the Church? What do these factors tell us about the relationship between Christianity and culture? What factors might be influencing Christianity in America today?

Answer
Elle,

Thanks for the question.

The entire medieval period was fraught with a variety of problems.  Before the reformation, there were plagues, warring kings, invading barbarians, famines, wars, other religions, other peoples, etc.  Especially the Muslim invasions and the divisions between the Eastern and Western churches in 1054AD).  The Church was never a Monolithic, overarching structure, and often was the last-resort peace keeper.

After the Reformation, Christians couldn't even trust other Christians, because none of them shared any doctrine, and all were continually having to re-assert the primacy of their own belief over the beliefs of others.

The modern day Christian church which is heir to the reformation is still struggling to find it's identity.  Many of the mainline denominations have all but imploded, resulting in basically evangelical Christianity and Catholicism being the only two serious contenders in the western world.  Add to this a growing secularization which is hostile to religion (not all secularization is hostile to religion) and you begin to see some of the factor so affecting the Church in the Western world.

If you care to ask a more particular question, I'd be happy to go further into this, but given the general scope of the question, I'd be writing you a 20 page paper before i was able to give a more adequate treatment of the problem.

You might like these books:
Fr. Neuhaus's American Babylon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465013678?ie=UTF8&tag=gotjus-20&linkCode=as2&c...

Shelly's Church History in Plain Language http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0718025539?ie=UTF8&tag=gotjus-20&linkCode=as2&c...

How the Catholic Church Build Western Civilization http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PTG3KG?ie=UTF8&tag=gotjus-20&linkCode=as2&c...

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West