Is Christianity “a Religion”?

I know the title question will produce “Well, duuuuuh!” from some quarters, but I’ve heard it argued on and off for years that Christianity is not a religion. Yesterday, I read something that seems to frame the question differently. I frame the question as I do because what I read so framed it by calling Christianity “the end of religion.”

Of course, both “religion” and “Christianity” would need disambiguation were this an attempt at rigorous proof, but it’s not. With that acknowledgement , let me further set the stage.

As an Evangelical, I frequently would hear that Christianity was unique among religions because of this or that doctrine — most typically the resurrection of Christ. And at one time, in my late teens or early 20s, apprehension of the resurrection, changed the course of my life, for the good, in a way that remains relevant but is beyond the scope of this little meditation.

At other times, I would hear “Christianity isn’t a religion. It’s a way of life.” At one time, that could sorta kinda “resonate with me” for a few minutes in the glow of some revivalist emotion. It would quickly fade.

Coincidentally, I heard another version yesterday from a very accomplished Orthodox businessman teaching a Sunday School class (a study of St. Athanasius “On the Incarnation”) say, in effect, that because religion is man’s quest for God, and Christianity tells of God’s pursuit of fallen man, Christianity isn’t a religion. Contemplating the doctrine of the incarnation, that’s got some real attraction to it, but is Christianity the only religion that tells of God pursuing mankind? I don’t know. I rather doubt it.

But here is something that really does get my attention. What if the difference is not that in the Christian story God pursues fallen man, but that His pursuit led Him to the radical step of once and for all breaking down the wall of separation between Himself and fallen man, so that the story for us today is not story (or history) but life?

Christianity…is in a profound sense the end of all religion. In the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus made this clear. “‘Sir,’ the woman said to him, ‘I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus saith unto her, ‘Woman, believe me, the our cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father…. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him’” (Jn. 4:19-21, 23). She asked him a question about cult [the outward practice of religion], and in reply Jesus changed the whole perspective of the matter. Nowhere in the New Testament, in fact, is Christianity presented as a cult [in its technical sense] or as a religion. Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God and man. But Christ who is both God and man has broken down the wall between man and God. He has inaugurated a new life, not a new religion.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World (emphasis added), quoted by (who else) Father Stephen Freeman in his Glory to God blog.

I hesitate to gild Fr. Schmemann’s lily, but I must. I don’t know that this is unique to Orthodox Christianity among all Christian traditions, but it was not until I was Orthodox that it “hit me:” Christ’s ascension, after his resurrection and post-resurrection appearances, was in the flesh. The human flesh He took in the womb of Mary now sedet ad dexteram Patris — is “seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Christ’s Incarnation was not a temporary expedient just so He could be crucified; it is the permanent breaking down of the wall between God and man. (It’s tragic that most Christian Churches in no way celebrate the Ascension any longer. It cannot help but skew everything else in their thought to gloss over that.)

So I would now say that maybe “Christianity” is a religion, but the Christian life, lived in a way that fully realizes the breaking down of the wall, is not.

As Father Stephen always closes, “Glory to God.”