The First Epistle of Peter and Christian Life in a Post-Christian Civic Religion
There was a time when Christianity functioned as a shared moral background, even where living faith had grown weak. That time is drawing to a close. The transition towards a post-Christian civic religion not only reshapes the public sphere; it also compels the Church to rethink its own self-understanding. The task is no longer simply to discern a changing cultural environment, but to learn how to live faithfully within it, without confusing nostalgia with obedience or resistance with faithfulness.
In this new context, the letters of the Apostle Peter take on particular significance. Not because they offer a sociological analysis of power or a strategy for cultural survival, but because they articulate a theology of Christian life shaped explicitly for communities that are no longer central, visible, or symbolically dominant. Peter writes to a Church that lives under suspicion, that does not control public language, and yet is called to a faithfulness that is clear, sober, and non-negotiable.
From the very beginning of the First Epistle of Peter, the recipients are defined in a decisive way: “foreigners” and “pilgrims”. This is not a devotional metaphor nor a rhetorical flourish. It is a theological category that orders the entire letter. Christians are not portrayed as reformers of the existing order nor as cultural revolutionaries, but as people whose ultimate identity does not fully coincide with any historical form of social organisation.
To be a “foreigner” does not mean living on the margins of society, but inhabiting it without claiming it as one’s ultimate homeland. The foreigner participates, works, contributes, and lives alongside others, yet knows that their belonging is relative and derivative. To be a “pilgrim”, for its part, introduces an even deeper dimension: Christian life is marked by an awareness of transience. It is not merely a matter of living in tension with one’s immediate environment, but of living oriented towards a hope that transcends every historical order. Together, these categories describe a real presence without absolutisation, and a firm hope without escapism.
This sense of foreignness must not be understood in modern terms, as though it referred to a voluntary or strategic expatriation. Peter is not speaking of believers who have withdrawn from the world, nor of communities that have chosen marginality. The condition of being sojourners is not a sociological choice, but an inevitable consequence of Christian confession. Whoever acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord, by definition relativises every claim to absolute loyalty made by the civil, cultural, or symbolic order in which they live.
At this point, a profound point of contact emerges with the contemporary situation. Post-Christian civic religion does not present itself as an explicit cult or as a formal doctrinal system, yet it establishes unquestionable boundaries, rituals of belonging, and forms of moral exclusion. Conflict does not necessarily arise when Christians participate in social life, but when they are required to make an ultimate decision concerning anthropological, moral, or identity-based definitions that no longer permit dissent. At that moment, Christian life ceases to be passive and becomes necessarily deliberate: a choice must be made. There, foreignness ceases to be a theoretical category and becomes a concrete experience, not as withdrawal or dilution, but as an assumed identity that refuses to merge with the dominant culture and, precisely for that reason, shows that another way of life is possible.
This situation constitutes a real challenge for contemporary Christianity. The cultural moment we are passing through demands more than good intentions or inherited moral intuitions; it requires from each believer a clear, deep, and properly appropriated knowledge of the Christian faith. In this context, the Church is called to be a genuinely catechetical community, one that disciples, teaches, and forms the whole people of God, not as an intellectual elite, but as a body prepared to discern, decide, and live faithfully amid real pressures that seek to nullify or at least diminish its identity. Without such patient and shared formation, faithfulness runs the risk of being diluted; with it, Christian foreignness can be embraced with clarity, freedom, and hope, while also accepting the costs that this identity entails and being willing to bear the consequences of remaining faithful when the surrounding culture responds with discomfort, resistance, or rejection. It is precisely this formation that makes it possible for faithfulness to become neither uncritical assimilation nor reactive confrontation, but a discerning and spiritually mature presence.
Peter does not encourage his readers to withdraw from society or to confront it systematically. On the contrary, he exhorts them to live in such a way that their conduct is beyond reproach even in the eyes of those who regard them with suspicion. Christian life is presented as a form of faithful presence, not as a strategy of cultural resistance. Obedience to civil authorities is affirmed with clarity, yet always within a broader framework in which only God receives absolute obedience. The emperor is honoured, but not sacralised. Participation in common life is encouraged, but without absolutising its values. Within this same framework, Peter calls believers not to respond to hostility with retreat or aggression, but to bless, even when they are treated unjustly, thereby showing that Christian foreignness is not expressed in contempt or resentment, but in a way of life that, even under pressure, seeks the good of the society that surrounds it.
This balance is particularly demanding because it often lacks visible heroic gestures. It produces no epic narrative and offers no immediate consolations of identity. It requires daily discernment, moral patience, and a willingness to endure misunderstanding without falling into resentment or self-justification. The suffering of which Peter speaks is neither sought nor instrumentalised; it is accepted as a possible consequence of a faithfulness that refuses to dissolve itself in order to avoid conflict.
Christian history shows that precisely under such conditions the Church has been purified, strengthened, and sent forth with greater clarity. When it has remained faithful without privilege, when it has confessed Christ without relying on cultural approval, it has not only persevered but has also blessed the societies in which it has lived. That blessing has not consisted in dominating the public sphere, but in proclaiming the Gospel and living it in a visible, coherent, and transformative manner.
For this reason, Christian engagement with culture is not exercised from a position of supposed moral superiority, but from an obedience learned in humility. The path of holiness traced by Peter is neither an inward-looking withdrawal nor an arrogant confrontation, but a life shaped by the Christian kerygma, known, embraced, and embodied in every area of existence. It is from such a life that culture is questioned, not by aggression, but by contrast.
This does not eliminate the necessity of limits. At some point, every Christian faithfulness must learn to say, “no further”. Not as an act of provocation nor as a strategy of conflict, but as the inevitable consequence of a loyalty that cannot be negotiated. To avoid that moment out of fear of discomfort is, ultimately, a form of silent unfaithfulness.
The Church that emerges from the First Epistle of Peter is thus a pilgrim community. Not because it despises the world, but because it knows that it does not ultimately belong to it. Not because it renounces social life, but because it refuses to absolutise it. This pilgrim consciousness does not weaken Christian witness; it purifies it. It frees the Church from the need to dominate the public sphere symbolically and returns it to a form of faithfulness that is more austere, yet also more profound.
In a context of post-Christian civic religion, this perspective proves particularly fruitful. The Christian task does not consist in resisting every cultural change nor in adapting uncritically to them, but in discerning clearly where legitimate coexistence ends and where a demand for loyalty incompatible with the confession of Christ begins. Such discernment is not exercised from positions of power, but from faithfulness lived out.
Peter offers no guarantees of recognition and no promises of cultural success. He offers something more demanding and more enduring: a way of inhabiting the present time without losing one’s identity, a way of living in a foreign land without ceasing to be fully human, and a hope that does not depend on the approval of the prevailing order. Here, perhaps, lies the deepest teaching of this letter for the contemporary Church: not how to recover a central place, but how to remain faithful when that place no longer exists.
Soli Deo gloria
