"We've reached the end of Christendom," according to Wack. However, he said that the church's goal should not be to restore a supposed golden age of Christianity or rebuild a political culture where the Christian faith reigns supreme.

"Our faith is not built on this state-sponsored or state-supported Christianity. It's built on a person: Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow," said Wack. He explained in the interview his vision of the Christian faith and modern society that he wrote about in his first pastoral letter.

Wack's 18-page letter, entitled "Sharing the Gift," focuses on evangelization. He echoes Pope Francis by urging Catholics in his diocese to become "missionary disciples" by living their faith and seizing opportunities to share it with their neighbours.

In the letter, Wack, a Holy Cross priest who became the bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee in 2017, acknowledges the "great deal of anger, division, anxiety and hopelessness" in modern times.

In such circumstances, Wack says the temptation is to retreat and "circle the wagons" to defend the Christian faith from outside forces, or to use the Gospel solely to address hot button social issues. Such approaches, Wack says, miss the essence of the Christian faith.

"There's so much acrimony and division. We have to get out there. We have to evangelize again," Bishop Wack told NCR.

"We're in a world that's very fractured, very fearful," Wack continued. "There's confusion, there's anger, there's anxiety. And that's nothing new. That has existed since the time of Jesus, and before Jesus.

"But in the middle of that, we are called to live our faith. We are changed people because of Jesus Christ".

When asked about his comment saying "Christendom is dead," Wack responded saying, "I meant that to be provocative, so people can look that up, talk about that and ask themselves what that means".

"It really means that we're back in apostolic times. We have to just go out and preach the good news, in very simple ways," Wack continued.

"I'm not saying you should go out on the corner with a Bible and a catechism. If you do, great, but share your faith. Pray in public. Give people hope. Comfort people. Point them toward something greater than all this stuff that we're dealing with today".

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

La Croix International

The forces fighting Israel are essentially the same as those trying to remove Bashar al-Assad in Syria and those seeking to take over Afghanistan on the borders with Russia - radical Sunni jihadists, most notably the group ISIS who look back to the tradition of the conquering caliphate.

Their sworn enemy is not primarily the liberal West or the imperial United States, but instead Catholic and Orthodox Christendom.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State stretching from Iraq to Syria, has called on Muslims to rally behind his pan-Islamic project:

"Rush O Muslims to your state. It is your state.

"Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis. The land is for the Muslims, all Muslims.

"This is my advice to you. If you hold to it you will conquer Rome and own the world, if Allah wills."

This should come as no surprise to anyone.

For decades Sunni jihadists have waged war on Christian oriental communities across the Middle East and North Africa, while other Islamic extremists are fighting Russian Orthodoxy in the Caucasus and throughout Central Asia.

In novel and frightening ways, this pits the militant strands of Sunni Islam not only against the more traditional forms of Sufism, including the Alawites in Syria, but also the remnants of Christendom.

I shall return to the importance of Christendom in due course. But first, a number of points need to be made about the contemporary global geopolitical situation.

The end of Westphalia and the rise of "neo-medievalism"

To begin with, we are witnessing the death throes of the Westphalian system that was dominated by national states and transnational markets, in which great powers could simply buy off small countries and rule by proxy. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: The Telegraph
• See also: Christendom at War, in Catholic Vote and Persecution of Christians by ISIS contradicts idea of a Caliphate in The Conversation.