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Archives: November 2009
Momentum...
Archives: November 2009
Ten episodes from the history of the church that I didn't know took place but am glad they did...
Part two:
The club is a tough one to get into...
By Craig Borlase
Our good friend Craig is taking us on a bit of a journey over the next few months as he investigates a bunch of different significant events in church history that you may never have heard of before. This month he looks at how the threat of persecution drove the church underground, giving it a relational and personal vibe that helped the numbers of converts grow despite the lack of platforms and public figures!
How’s this for ironic: the time when Christianity was growing at its fastest rate also happened to be the time when it put up the greatest number of obstacles to new members. Forget the fresh coffee and pizza nights – joining Christianity 1.1 meant putting yourself through some serious physical challenges
By the end of the first century – and not more than seventy years after Christ’s handful of followers were told to get on with the job of making disciples – there were as many as one million Christians spread across the Roman empire.
The growth was significant, and for today’s observer the increase in numbers appears to be linked to the increase in persecution. A couple of centuries later, as Christianity prepared to be adopted as the religion of choice for Roman Emperor Constantine, between five and twenty-five per cent of the Empire’s population proclaimed – albeit with a certain degree of fear when doing so in public – their Christian faith. Within another three centuries some estimates suggest that 40 million people counted themselves as Christians – almost a quarter of the world’s population.
But it is the early period of the faith – the one marked on one side by the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and Constantine’s single-handed creation of Christendom on the other – that concerns us. Just how was it that they managed to achieve such growth while remaining an underground – and sometimes violently and extensively persecuted – movement? How did this sect of Judaism evolve into the early Church at all?
What was the early Church like?…
They didn’t have public buildings. Instead they met in houses, choosing to modify their homes by knocking down the odd wall to accommodate increasing numbers.
While we can see evidence in the book of Acts, long after the time the last eye-witnesses to Christ had died off, public preaching was simply too dangerous and praying for others to convert was rare.
Instead, intercession was dominated by the theme of grace for their enemies. As for evangelism, there is little mention of it in original texts. The North African Bishop – and eventual martyr – Cyprian, compiled a list of 120 instructions to help establish a sound Christian faith. Evangelism simply didn’t feature. Perhaps it was at best the 121st most important element of Christianity, but even this form of optimism puts the early Church at stark odds with the forms into which it would evolve.
Worship was hardly attractive either; if you were a pagan you were simply refused admission. The doors were shut and, from the mid-first century onwards the only way of opening them was by making a colossal commitment of time, energy and trust and signing up to become a catechumen.
These students of the faith were trained towards the ultimate goal, baptism into the Christian faith, but not without considerable sacrifice on their own part.
Throughout their training – which lasted at least three years – any catechumen would take part in daily lessons which would have them exploring, absorbing and understanding the impact of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. This rabbinical pattern of study and discussion, passing on wisdom from one to another was as laborious as it was essential.
Students were regularly exorcised; they were expected to behave with integrity and honour and were asked to leave every service as soon as the biblical reading and teaching were over. It was only after baptism – with its three-day long preparation of exorcisms, fasting and fully naked submersions overseen by a fully naked priest in a river on Easter Sunday at dawn – that they truly belonged.
Only then that they were allowed to join in with prayer, the kiss of peace and share in the Eucharistic meal of bread and wine.
So, baptism was never seen as a single event, just as Christianity itself was not seen as a service or meeting. The process of becoming a member of the Church unfolded over a long period of time, the Church nurturing her growing infants just as a mother grows her young.
Finally, emerging from the waters, the former catechist would fill their lungs with fresh air and let out the cry ‘I believe’. New life was finally theirs.
Caecillus – a contemporary (and sceptical) writer – wondered why it was that Christians ‘never speak in public, never meet in the open, if it not be that the aspect of their worship is either criminal or shameful?’
The answer requires a less rigid mind than Caecillus’s; Christianity was an underground affair not because their practices were abhorrent or deviant.
They were hidden from public view because Nero’s persecutions put an end to the pursuit of Paul’s advice to the Church in Corinth to integrate. They were underground because – by their own admission – they were paroikoi: resident aliens, the sort described in 1 Peter as strangers living here in ‘reverent fear’. They had shifted away because theirs was a viral revolution, a relational, personal phenomenon that did not require big platforms or political support to prosper. They were underground because it was the most effective place to be.
If there was one central text that the early Church revolved around, it was Christ’s instruction to ‘love your enemies’. Such love not only dictated how they responded to those who opposed and persecuted them, it also defined and united their communities. Lending a clear identity, this attitude informed more than their rituals and roles, it defined their very essence; their relationships.
About the author...
Craig is a lovely chap who lives in Reading. He's a writer, think and all round creative tinker! He has a lovely family and back in the annuls of time used to work for Soul Survivor (in fact he was the one who invented the idea of a Soul Survivor Magazine... so you owe him a lot... well, we do).
Soul Survivor is a Christian charity that puts on events for young people. Our registered charity no. is 1080720. We are also a company limited by guarantee in England & Wales. Our company registered number is 03991111, which is nice. Thanks for caring.
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