The Introduction, for Reference

If you've ever cared about what the world will be like after you die, you've probably desired a fulfillment of your religion and your faith. For the Christian, the consummation of this desire lies in the second coming of Christ, the last judgment and the setting to rights of all things. But there is a preliminary taste of this fulfillment that occurs within history, when Christians of good faith and character live together in peace and justice. You might have felt yourself close to heaven in the home of a beautiful family, or in communal worship during a Sunday service. The sense of this harmony with the divine order can be extended beyond the boundaries of a property, to a neighbourhood, to a city, to a state, to a nation, to an alliance. Though in each extension the aura of blessing loses something of its hue in the blemishes that go along with the tolerance of evil, yet perhaps, even to the outer boundaries of human affiliation, that is, empire, or the large alliance between nation states, its essential nature remains, and it can be said by a citizen or a subject within its realm, "it is good to dwell here." The large-scale enjoyment of the Christian life has been called 'Christendom', and great statesman have occasionally made it the ultimate object of their policy, a policy which often stretched beyond their own lifetime.

Christendom, these days, has a bad name. And it probably doesn't exist. Perhaps it should, perhaps it shouldn't. Maybe it never did. But if there's any temporal political hope for the world, I've an inkling that it lies in a Restoration of Christendom. What would this look like? What would be the conditions of restoration? What could we do about it? What lessons can we learn from history, and from literature? How might we go about bringing Christendom to our own homes? To what extent should the idea of Christendom organize the education of our children? What can we do to restore the dignity of the idea of Christendom? How important an object is it, really, in the hierarchy of ends?