Ikc 20 Practice In Christianity: Practice In Christianity (H669/Mrc)

Practice in Christianity is the second volume in what could be called the collected Works of Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaards new pseudonym. Anti-Climacuss first volume, The Sickness Unto Death, appeared just a year earlier in 1849. The use of a pseudonym is consistent with Kierkegaards usual practice when presenting an idealized statement of his subject, be it sexual seduction or Christian theology. Anti-Climacus argues the conceptual content of Christianity against the leading thought of the times and also against the ethical and social import of the comforts and consolations of bourgeois culture and religion which he called Christendom. In his own mind at least, Kierkegaards presents Christianity as it must be thought and lived if it is to be authentic. The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity can be and are read quite independently, but jointly they provide the basis of Kierkegaards devastating critique of a secularized, culturally homogenized, and tame Christianity.