Most of our religious habits are man-made choices. A
new book challenges common assumptions about the church.
Editor’s note: As an organization, we have long held
to the position that presenting viewpoints that don’t
necessarily mirror our own is a healthy, and even stretching
proposition. We believe strongly in divergent perspectives as
they often have the power to make us think, re-think, and
challenge our long-held beliefs.
The following article is an excerpt from Pagan
Christianity?, a new book that asks very important
questions about the history of the Church and how we have come
to accept most of the “normal” patterns of church life that we
have today. On the surface it may seem heretical to even
question some of these engrained values, but that’s what a
good argument does: It presents historical evidence, it raises
questions, and it dares to help answer them.
Because the majority of our readers have their lives vested
in the local church, we thought it was important and
mind-stretching to present the authors’ viewpoint in this book
and allow for meaningful dialog and careful reflection.
What do modern and postmodern Christians know about the
history of the church that would help to shape present-day
attempts at honoring God and being the church? Precious
little, it turns out. And therein lies a significant problem.
Historians have long held that if we do not remember the past,
we are doomed to repeat it. There is ample evidence to support
that warning. Yet we often persist in our well-intentioned but
ignorant efforts to refine life.
The recent story of the Christian church in America is a
great example of this. The major changes in spiritual practice
over the past half century have been largely window dressings.
Pick a trend — megachurches, seeker churches, satellite
campuses, vacation Bible school, children’s church, affinity
group ministries (e.g., ministries for singles, women, men,
young marrieds), contemporary worship music, big-screen
projection systems, EFT giving, cell groups, downloadable
sermons, sermon outlines in bulletins, Alpha groups. All of
the above have simply been attempts to rely on marketing
strategies to perform the same activities in different ways or
places, or with particular segments of the aggregate
population. Whatever difficulties were present in the larger
institutional setting that spawned these efforts are
invariably present in the smaller or divergent efforts as
well.
Altering the ways in which we worship is no simple task.
When people suggest significant changes in some of the
hallowed practices, cries of “heretic” can be heard coming
from all directions. Such protest is common largely because
people have little knowledge of the true foundations of their
faith.
Rather than foster continued resistance to methodological
innovations, it’s time that the body of Christ get in touch
with both the Word of God and the history of the church to
arrive at a better understanding of what we can and should do
— as well as what we cannot and should not do.
If you spend time searching God’s Word for most of the
common practices in conventional churches, you will rarely
find them. If you go further and spend time tracing the
history of those practices, you will soon discover that most
of our religious habits are man-made choices. In fact, you’re
likely to discern a pattern about the way that we “do church”
these days: If we do it, it’s probably not in the Bible as one
of the practices of the early church!
Does it surprise you that most of what we do in religious
circles has no precedent in Scripture? This includes many of
the activities within church services, the education and
ordination of clergy, the routines commonly used in youth
ministry, the methods of raising funds for ministry, the ways
in which music is used in churches, even the presence and
nature of church buildings.
There were three historical periods when a bevy of changes
were made in common Christian practices: the era of
Constantine, the decades surrounding the Protestant
Reformation, and the Revivalist period of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. But as you are about to find out, those
changes were the result of passionate, though often
ill-informed, followers of Christ. The believers during those
periods simply went along for the ride, which resulted in new
perspectives and practices that churches have held on to for
many years. So many years, in fact, that you probably think of
those routines as biblical in origin.
Not surprisingly, having changed the biblical model of the
church, we have become adept at building support for our
approaches through proof-texting. Proof-texting is the
practice of taking disparate, unrelated verses of Scripture,
often out of context, to “prove” that our position squares
with the Bible. You may be stunned to discover how many of our
esteemed practices are way off the mark biblically.
Does it really matter how we practice our faith, as long as
the activities enable people to love God and obey Him? The
preponderance of evidence shows that these perspectives,
rules, traditions, expectations, assumptions, and practices
often hinder the development of our faith. In other instances,
they serve as barriers that keep us from encountering the
living God. The way in which we practice our faith can,
indeed, affect the faith itself.
Does that mean we must go back to the Bible and do
everything exactly as the disciples did between 30 and 60 AD?
No. Social and cultural shifts over the last two thousand
years have made it impossible to imitate some of the lifestyle
and religious efforts of the early church. For example, we use
cell phones, drive in automobiles, and utilize central heat
and air. The first-century Christians had none of these forms
of human convenience. Therefore, adhering to the
principles of the New Testament does not mean
re-enacting the events of the first-century church. If
so, we would have to dress like all first-century believers
did, in sandals and togas!
Also, just because a practice is picked up from culture
does not make it wrong in and of itself, though we must be
discerning. As author Frank Senn notes, “We cannot avoid
bringing our culture to church with us; it is part of our very
being. But in the light of tradition we need to sort out those
cultural influences that contribute to the integrity of
Christian worship from those that detract from it.”
It is in our best interest to scour the Words of God to
determine the core principles and ethos of the early church
and to restore those elements to our lives. God has granted us
great leeway in the methods we use to honor and connect with
Him. But that does not mean we have free rein. Caution is
advisable as we strive to be humble and obedient people who
seek His central will. Our goal is to be true to His plan so
that we may become the people He desires us to be and that the
church may be all she is called to be.
You probably know that today’s jets use very sophisticated
computer systems to constantly reorient a plane as it travels
on its path. During the course of a trip from Los Angeles to
New York, literally thousands of course corrections are made
to ensure that the plane sets down on the appropriate landing
strip. Without those course corrections, even a tiny one
percent deviation from the original flight plan would land
that airplane in a different county! The contemporary church
is like a jet airplane that has no capacity for in-flight
course corrections. A little change here, a minor deviation
there, a slight alteration of this, a barely perceptible
tweaking of that — and before you know it, the whole
enterprise has been redefined!
Is this hard for you to believe? Then we encourage you to
invest yourself in the process and do some of your own
research. Frank Viola, spent many years laboriously tracking
down the historical data that identified how the church got
onto this crooked path. If you are skeptical — and we
encourage healthy skepticism that leads to fact-finding and
truth — then commit yourself to identifying exactly what did
happen over the course of time. This matters! Your life is a
gift from God and is to be lived for God. Furthermore, the
church is one of God’s deepest passions. He cares about her
well-being, as well as how she expresses herself on the earth.
So understanding how we got from the early church to the
contemporary church, and figuring out what you will do about
it, is very important.
Questions We Never Think to Ask
As Christians, we are taught by our leaders to believe
certain ideas and behave in certain ways. We are also
encouraged to read our Bibles, yes. But we are conditioned to
read the Bible with the lens handed to us by the Christian
tradition to which we belong. We are taught to obey our
denomination (or movement) and never to challenge what it
teaches.
(At this moment, all the rebellious hearts are applauding
and are plotting to wield the above paragraphs to wreak havoc
in their churches. If that is you, dear rebellious heart, you
have missed our point by a considerable distance. We do not
stand with you. Our advice: Either leave your church quietly,
refusing to cause division, or be at peace with it. There is a
vast gulf between rebellion and taking a stand for what is
true.)
If the truth be told, we Christians never seem to ask why
we do what we do. Instead, we blithely carry out our religious
traditions without asking where they came from. Most
Christians who claim to uphold the integrity of God’s Word
have never sought to see if what they do every Sunday has any
scriptural backing. If they did, it would lead them to some
very disturbing conclusions that would compel them by
conscience to forever abandon what they are doing.
Strikingly, contemporary church thought and practice have
been influenced far more by post-biblical historical events
than by New Testament imperatives and examples. Yet most
Christians are unconscious of this influence. Nor are they
aware that it has created a slew of cherished, calcified,
humanly devised traditions — all of which are routinely
passed off to us as “Christian.”
A Terrifying Invitation
I now invite you to walk with me on an untrodden path. It
is a terrifying journey where you will be forced to ask
questions that probably have never entered your conscious
thoughts. Tough questions. Nagging questions. Even frightening
questions. And you will be faced squarely with the disturbing
answers. Yet those answers will lead you face-to-face with
some of the richest truths a Christian can discover.
You will be stunned to learn that a great deal of what we
Christians do for Sunday morning church did not come from
Jesus Christ, the apostles, or the Scriptures. Nor did it come
from Judaism. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70,
Judaic Christianity waned in numbers and power. Gentile
Christianity dominated, and the new faith began to absorb
Greco-Roman philosophy and ritual. Judaic Christianity
survived for five centuries in the little group of Syriac
Christians called Ebionim. But their influence was not
very widespread. According to Shirley J. Case, “Not only was
the social environment of the Christian movement largely
Gentile well before the end of the first century, but it had
severed almost any earlier bonds of social contact with the
Jewish Christians of Palestine … By the year 100, Christianity
is mainly a Gentile religious movement … living together in a
common Gentile social environment.”
Strikingly, much of what we do for “church” was lifted
directly out of pagan culture in the postapostolic period.
(Legend tells us the last surviving apostle, John, died around
AD 100.) According to Paul F. Bradshaw, fourth-century
Christianity “absorbed and Christianized pagan religious ideas
and practices, seeing itself as the fulfillment to which
earlier religions had dimly pointed.” While today we often use
the word pagan to describe those who claim no religion
whatsoever, to the early Christians, pagans were those
polytheists who followed the gods of the Roman Empire.
Paganism dominated the Roman Empire until the fourth century,
and many of its elements were absorbed by Christians in the
first half of the first millennium, particularly during the
Constantinian and early post-Constantinian eras (324 to 600).
Two other significant periods from which many of our current
church practices originate were the Reformation era (sixteenth
century), and the Revivalist era (eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries).
Chapters 2 through 10 [of Pagan Christianity?] each
trace an accepted traditional church practice. Each chapter
then tells the story of where this practice came from. But
more importantly, it explains how this practice stifles the
functional headship of Jesus Christ and hampers the
functioning of His body. If you are unwilling to have your
Christianity seriously examined, do not read beyond this page.
Give this book to Goodwill immediately! Spare yourself the
trouble of having your Christian life turned upside down.
However, if you choose to “take the red pill” and be shown
“how deep the rabbit hole goes” … if you want to learn the
true story of where your Christian practices came from … if
you are willing to have the curtain pulled back on the
contemporary church and its traditional presuppositions
fiercely challenged … then you will find this work to be
disturbing, enlightening, and possibly life changing.
Put another way, if you are a Christian in the
institutional church who takes the New Testament seriously,
what you are about to read will force you to have a crisis of
conscience. For you will be confronted by unmovable historical
fact.
On the other hand, if you happen to be one of those rare
breeds who gathers with other Christians outside the pale of
organized Christianity, you will discover afresh that not only
is Scripture on your side — but history stands with you as
well.