A Post-Christendom Faith: Tradition Awakening

by Philip A. Rolnick

Overview

In Tradition Awakening, volume 2 of A Post-Christendom Faith, Philip Rolnick presents an innovative account of tradition as a countercultural remedy to contemporary deracination. Where the historical roots of current problems were addressed in volume 1, The Long Battle for the Human Soul, this volume is an in-depth development of the solution—the still-untapped possibilities of tradition, defined as a community sustained over generations of time. Because the church is the intergenerational messenger of the gospel, it must take the form of tradition.

But in contrast to a stodgy "traditionalism," Rolnick elaborates a traditioning process, a dynamic interaction of "dwelling in and breaking out," borrowing Michael Polanyi’s phrase. It is impossible even to begin advanced human life without first dwelling in what is already known; but once the tradition is handed over to newcomers, they will emphasize and deemphasize and sometimes creatively break out into new skills and understandings. Demonstrating the dual stability and creativity of the traditioning process, Rolnick presents the church as both an enclave and an outpost: an enclave fellowship where the gospel is learned and Christ is experienced; and an outpost for evangelism. Through these functions the church attempts to deepen faith in those who have it and to awaken faith in those who do not.

Rolnick then explores the interrelationship between the gospel in the greater church and the "domestic church," the human family—itself a tradition. As part of a protracted critique of autonomy, the growing phenomenon of "spiritual but not religious" is examined as a foil to tradition. In education and across the public square our post-Christendom civilization has become vulnerable to virulent pathologies. But alerted to the high stakes of contemporary struggles, the church and the family can bolster their own strength, their members' spiritual health, and indirectly exert a medicinal influence on the ailments of late modernity.

Tradition Awakening is not just about God; it is also a Christian humanism—a vision of humanity elevated by divine input.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481321716
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2025
Pages:	277
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.05(d)

About the Author

Philip A. Rolnick is Professor of Theology and Chair of the Science and Theology Network at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He is also the author of Origins: God, Evolution, and the Question of the Cosmos; Person, Grace, and God; Analogical Possibilities: How Words Refer to God; and A Post-Christendom Faith I: The Long Battle for the Human Soul.

Table of Contents

1 Conflicting Visions of Modernity
2 The Traditioning Process: "Dwelling In and Breaking Out"
3 Tradition Rejected, Assaulted—and Defended
4 Church Tradition: Intergenerational Messenger of Transcendence
Introduction to Enclaves and Outposts: The Church in the Wilderness
5 Enclaves
6 Outposts
7 Family and Tradition; The Family as Tradition
8 Spiritual but Not Religious
Conclusion: The Youth of the Gospel

What People are Saying About This

Robert J. Spitzer

Tradition Awakening, the second volume of Dr. Rolnick’s trilogy, is a brilliant explanation and justification for living tradition as the necessary intergenerational community through which individuals can find orientation and instruction, nurturing life’s most important questions and answers. Rolnick goes on to show that without this tradition-community — this dynamic substantive center — individuals and the collective whole are "cast into social, political, and spiritual homelessness," bereft of a haven of intellectual, moral, and spiritual stability in a world of stress and change. Rolnick presents a pathway in a post-Christendom era to rediscover and reanimate living tradition to extricate ourselves from the depression, anxiety, confusion, and division of our spiritual homelessness. This volume is essential for all Christian and religious educators, clergy, and leaders trying to help our culture (particularly our young people) to rise above our current turmoil toward the enduring light, hope, stability, and grace provided by a profoundly loving Providence.

John R. Betz

Few understand the struggle of the Church in the modern world and the massive intellectual challenges it has had to confront better than Phil Rolnick. I can think of no work, past or present, that does a better job helping us to see the problems and respond to them with clarity and verve.

Reinhard Huetter

Accessible, incisive, courageous, cutting to the chase and calling a spade a spade, Rolnick's middle volume of his projected trilogy is timely, illuminating, and ultimately healing. Rolnick not only advances a penetrating diagnosis of the fundamental spiritual ailment of our age after the "death of God" - nihilism, relativism, and materialism - but also re-proposes persuasively the one medicine that heals this deadly ailment. At its heart, this timely work is Mere Christianity with a critical edge and a philosophical penchant, written in a post-Christendom age for a Christianity in the late-modern desert faced with the challenge of rediscovering and reclaiming its apostolic mission. Tolle, lege—take up and read!