ABSTRACT
This chapter draws out the significance of the long-running English Christendom and some of its salient distinctives before proceeding to a more general analysis of the particular form of theocracy that is embedded in Christianity and the ambiguity of christendom as a form of political and ecclesial life for Christianity. How did the earliest christian relate to the social institutions of their time, how did they created their own ecclesial institutions and how did these two things inter-relate when Constantine colonised the church in the name of the empire. The responses of Alan Kreider and Stanley Hauerwas to the end of Christendom are considered. In the attempt to approach an ecclesiology for modern times, particularly for Anglicans, how might issues to do with power, order, difference and unity, and catholicity be approached? Christendom has never been the only way to corruption for the church, but in the modern world with its demise it highlights the challenge of other powers that can bring the kinds of challenges that were previously brought by christendoms.
