This book
Pagan Christianity has been getting a lot of traction lately. I saw it pop up on quite a few prominent blogs and it's creating a little bit of a buzz. The author, Frank Viola, has teamed up with George Barna to give a really insightful look at church traditions. The book explores the roots of most church traditions today including the sermon, church building, dressing up, communion, baptism, pews, music, choirs, and the professional clergy. The book is both a historical look at the traditions as well as a personal commentary from the author.
The basic thrust of the book is that the established church attempts to brand itself as doing church according to scripture, but in reality, just about every part of the established church today has been formed through adopting pagan and cultural influences. It's a call for the established church to be honest and admit that the church today doesn't seem to be what Jesus or the early church envisioned. Viola's goal is to free the church from the traditions that have her in a choke hold and hopefully recover a more biblical church. The church has adopted so many traditions and structures through the years, and unfortunately, many of them are not for the better. Yet the church fails to understand when and where the traditions come from and so they continue to hold on to them even as it harms their church.
I found this book quite good. It's probably one of the best books I've read since
The Irresistible Revolution. It would be a really hard read if my pay check was tied to the structures that Viola argues are unbiblical. (He also argues that a full time professional clergy is unbiblical as well.) What I found most interesting is that I had already come to the same conclusions as Viola, but via a different route. I came to my conclusion through a practical perspective. He gets to his point through a historical perspective. Either way, the conclusion is the same. The established church today is quite different than the early church. The question each person has to decide is whether this is acceptable or not. You probably know where I come down.
Comments (7)
I'd love to read this. My talkative coworker's son has joined an orthodox church, and so I've been hearing a lot about traditions lately.
Sounds like a thought-provoking book. I guess the question is, does the church claim its traditions are biblical when they are not? Understanding the origins of some of our practices can help us decide if those traditions should be embraced or abandoned.
Thanks for the write-up.
J
You come down on the side of vestments and vestibules, right? Right? 'Cause otherwise I'm out of a job.
So after Viola deconstructs tradition, does he get into the conundrum of what exactly a biblical church would look like? There are a number of different models, depending on when in the early church you're talkin'. There's the movement church as it gathered around Jesus in Judea. There's the Holy Spirit church of the Gospel-writing communities and of Paul's 7 Letters. Then there's the institutionalized church of the Pastoral Epistles, with it's hierarchies and insistence on church order. There's also the let's-all-hide-in-our-compound-till-the-End-Times church of John of Patmos.
I tend to favor the first two, myself.
@Beloved_Spear - He draws a distinct line before and after Constantine. I tend to agree. Before Constantine, you have a church that's egalitarian, practices mutual edification, home based, and no full time clergy. I don't think I would call the church of the Pastoral Epistles "institutionalized" just because there were bishops. (I assume that's why you say 'institutionalized.') But these bishops and overseers were more nomads than elite, eh? And what hierarchy was there? The leaders were the ones who got to serve the widows. That's moving up!
Check out the book and let me know what you think. And yeah... I don't really come down on the side of vestments and vestibules. I would argue against your...ahem job ahem... but not through that historical perspective. However, I don't see it as "wrong" per se. Just not ideal, ya know? But I do appreciate that the job provides you time to write some great posts.
This is way prettier with the blues and the greens!
@jedyFredy - so you like? this is the first comment about the new look. i think everyone reads from an rss feed or their subscription page. so i'm not sure anyone's noticed. :)
ryc: my current podunk zip code is not "serviced" by Pods. Seriously. I entered the info cuz I was curious as to price - that's the answer I got.