Christianity v Churchianity

Richard Rohr Rohr distinguishes between "Christianity" and "Churchianity", where the first constituted a challenge to the status quo, and the second supported the status quo.

Richard Rohr OFM

In his interview with Stephen Crittenden, Richard Rohr  talked of his vision of the Christ-event as originally a reform message for all religious people which had become corrupted once the message became a distinct religious movement.

After Constantine, Christianity bought into the imperial model of ecclesial polity and lost its original radical critique of that very model.
Written at a time when the Jesus movement was anything but part of the status quo, Mark's Gospel was culturally subversive.
Claire over at A Seat At the Table has a lovely post on how the early church members shared their possessions and were united in one heart and mind. How very far we are  from that today ??!!




Meanwhle over at People for Others, an excellent site I regularly follow, Paul Campbell  SJ has started this week an interesting dual blogalogue with More Meredith Gould where they each pose a question and answer it and invite comments. They too are talkng about their own unease at the state of the institutional church they clearly both love.

The problem that confronted the Markan Christians, as it does us today, is to steer a middle course between the twin tensions of conformity to cultural expectations and the vocation to be counter cultural in working for a better world.
 My own comments :
So many of us Catholics and other Christians increasingly find ourselves caught in this point of tension between  loyalty to the church we love and wanting to break free from its constraints and at times its seemingly extreme corruption but then as Thomas said  Where would we go Lord?  You have the message of eternal life.