post-Christianadj.n.
/ˌpəʊs(t)ˈkrɪstʃ(ə)n/, U.S. /ˌpoʊstˈkrɪstʃ(ə)n/ A. adj.
1. Occurring in or dating from a time after the lifetime of Jesus, or after the rise of Christianity.
ΘΚΠ
society > faith > sect > Christianity > [adjective] > after
post-Christian1838
post-Christian1929
after-Christ1979
1838 H. H. Milman in E. Gibbon Decline & Fall I. ix. 372/1 Schlözer..considers their [sc. Runic characters'] sixteen letters to be a corruption of the Roman alphabet, post-Christian in their date.
1864 E. B. Pusey Daniel ix. 542 Literature,..collected in post-Christian times by the Sassanidæ.
1888 T. K. Cheyne et al. Bible (Variorum Teacher's ed.) (1893) Pref. The vowel-points merely represent a valuable, but still post-Christian, exegetical tradition.
1920 Amer. Jrnl. Semitic Lang. 36 284 Since the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris were too well known in post-Christian times to be romantic, Paradise was placed at the source of the Nile.
1956 K. Clark Nude iii. 109 The yearning for another world had entered the post-Christian spirit.
1981 Jrnl. Amer. Oriental Soc. 101 366 Prof. I. Rabinowitz was able to recall only one definite genitive-construct name, but it was a late Syriac (post-Christian Era) form.
2. Subsequent to the decline in importance of Christianity in a region or society; subsequent to a person's rejection of the Christian faith.
ΘΚΠ
society > faith > sect > Christianity > [adjective] > after
post-Christian1838
post-Christian1929
after-Christ1979
1929 H. Keyserling Amer. set Free ii. 583 This is not a pre-Christian, but a post-Christian state.
1977 Michigan Q. Rev. 16 367 Are we talking about a post-Christian malaise, the sense of disorientation which presumably always comes whenever the symbols and beliefs of one age are no longer taken seriously by people in a new age?
1995 New Yorker 4 Dec. 48/1 Late-twentieth-century Britain is a post-Christian country as well as a post-imperial one.
B. n.
A person living in a nominally Christian society who has turned away from the Christian faith or has been brought up without reference to it.
ΘΚΠ
society > faith > aspects of faith > theism > atheism > [noun] > person
wanbelieverc1440
unbeliever1526
infidela1530
nullifidian1564
atheist1571
sceptic1638
disbeliever1648
non-believer1649
scorner1651
scoffer1691
sceptic-Christian1711
nothingarian1776
nothingist1797
no-religionist1827
nihilist1854
netheist1855
non-theist1857
agnostic1869
nescient1872
post-Christian1886
bush baptist1902
no-Goddite1952
1886 Atlantic Monthly Mar. 431/2 Some..have looked upon George Eliot as a post-Christian.
1946 Downside Rev. 64 117 We may have wondered for whom the book was written, for Mgr Knox addresses sometimes the post-Christian, sometimes the ‘Sunday Mass’ Catholic and sometimes his fellow priests.
1961 Christian Cent. 18 Jan. 80/2 Australian Catholics sincerely believe that their countrymen would be better off as Catholics than as post-Christians.
1992 D. Hampson Theol. & Feminism 42 What should the post-Christian then hold of the religion that there has been down the ages?
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.n.1838