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AR 28:15 - Is Christianity defined by its "Roman-ness?"
In this issue:
CHURCH HISTORY - what today's Christians share with those in imperial Rome
SECULARISM - secular thought and informal organizations to supposedly replace centuries-old, faith-based institutions?
Apologia Report 28:15 (1,612)
May 3, 2023
CHURCH HISTORY
The March issue of First Things journal includes the book review "Apostolic Empire" by Iranian-born Catholic author and editor Sohrab Ahmari. It begins: "The young are eschewing marriage. Birth rates are collapsing. Abortion and even post-natal infanticide are commonplace. Yawning inequalities divide the haves from the have-nots, spreading decadence among the former while immiserating the latter. Society is losing the thread of its noblest aspirations, the meaning of its civic ideals. And the faith is widely reviled, its claims illegible in the public square.
"This is all true enough for contemporary Christians. But I'm describing the situation of our spiritual ancestors in imperial Rome, the chief setting for the first book in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ, recently reissued [following its initial life as] a ten-book series over the span of two decades, from 1948 to 1965...."
As an attention-getter, this is a great introduction and a good reminder for us today. Ahmari, founding editor of the online magazine Compact <compactmag.com>, continues: "Daniel-Rops' descriptions of the earliest liturgies will move Christians of every denomination.
"At the same time, the book offers a robust defense of the Catholic Church's claims, not least the principle of Petrine supremacy."
Nevertheless, we were drawn into the appreciation of other details: "The most important lessons of [Daniel-Rops'] history are, first, that the Church of the Catacombs was, in fact, a highly organized, hierarchical, corporate institution prepared to capture an empire for Christ; and second, that the universalist - in the sense of world-spanning - religion of this new church was from the beginning suited to and even prefigured by the political universalism of the Roman Empire. Roman-ness, this history teaches, is of the essence of Christianity."
Daniel-Rops discusses "the sole framework of Christian life during the faith's first few centuries. ...
"Christians were deeply and publicly embedded within the larger structures of pagan social and political life. 'We Christians,' wrote Tertullian, 'do not live apart from the rest of the world. We visit the Forum, the baths, the workshops, the stores, the markets and all the public places.' This interpenetration took place within individual families, many of which included Christian and pagan members, now raging in antagonism, now living in uneasy accord; the historical record even preserves the case of a pagan husband who, when he discovered that his wife was no longer leaving the home to cheat on him, but to worship Christ, 'begged her to take back her lovers' - better a cuckold than married to a Christian.
"Even those monastics, missionaries, and wild-eyed visionaries who consciously chose to live apart from the world for the sake of the gospel, Daniel-Rops shows, were integrated within and hierarchically governed by the outward-facing Church. There were even rules dictating how laypeople should treat missionaries and 'prophets' who spoke in tongues, whether because God spoke to them or because they were a little touched in the head. (The rules: Don't lodge them for too long and don't give them any cash.) ...
"Martyrdom, the author writes, 'was a fundamental attribute of the primitive Church, a sacramental act, which was granted like a gift, 'the Grace of the Graces,' to certain privileged souls, and whose supernatural effects were transferred upon the whole community of the children of God.' ...
"Daniel-Rops delicately notes that there were plenty of lukewarm or otherwise nonheroic Christians in the first few centuries, people who succumbed under torture or found themselves unable to bear social ostracism. ...
"Daniel-Rops' account throws cold water on the fatalistic over-eagerness for 'martyrdom' among today's doom-mongering would-be troglodytes. As he notes, the Church as a whole and most individual Christians [were of the mind]: 'We reprimand those who [willingly] submit themselves to the tribunals,' declared one ancient text. 'This is not the spirit of the Gospel.' There is a lesson there for Christian intellectuals today who urge their fellow believers to forgo political solutions to persecution by gender ideologues and others, on the grounds that ours is a martyr's faith.
"Which brings us to the second of Daniel-Rops' two main contributions to contemporary debates, namely, his clarification of the Church's political congruity with Rome."
Ahmari finds that "just as there was a providential synthesis between Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian revelation in the realm of ideas, so there was a natural kinship between the legal and political practice of Rome and that of the nascent Church. The result was that, notwithstanding the violence meted out by Rome to Christians, the Church came to assume Roman political forms.
"For Daniel-Rops, the essence of this unlikely congruity is universalism, beginning with Rome's drive to subject all nations to its own governing rationality. ... At great length, the author argues that these were the essential 'material conditions' (his term) without which early Christianity couldn't have flourished. But more than mere material conditions, Roman reality structured the Christian mind and lent it the same universalist impulse. 'While Roman universalism still appears far inferior to Christian universalism, it must nevertheless have been a useful introduction to the latter.' ...
"It's unfortunate, then, that in the largely sympathetic profile of Constantine that concludes the political portion of the book, the author falls into the same ahistorical tendencies criticized in much of the rest of the book." Ahmari describes this further and later adds - and we conclude with this - that Daniel-Rops "objects to the Church's determination to enshrine the faith as the Roman public cult by appeal to the 'secular arm.'" (Sounds to us like this might be a failed opportunity to acknowledge the contribution of the Protestant Reformation.) <www.bit.ly/448GRB8>
Michael Warren Davis' response to Ahmari (The Common Man, Mar 3 '23), was amusing enough to foster its mention here in AR: "It may shock you to learn that, historically, Christians were known to disagree among themselves on any number of issues - even politics!
"Throughout that history, we find Christians espousing two different approaches to Christianization. One is the political method. This is when the government not only promotes but enforces the Christian faith. The other is the evangelical method, which stresses the need for a free and informed decision to embrace Christianity.
"Mr. Ahmari clearly prefers the political method...."
Davis concludes: "Political Catholicism is hard in theory, but it's easy in practice. It promises that we can fundamentally transform the modern world by conforming to it as closely as possible. All it demands of us is 'collective action,' which seems to mean 'doing nothing at all.'" <www.bit.ly/3VaxZad>
(Now, to our shame, there's yet something else many Protestants would have in common with Roman Catholics.)
---
SECULARISM
Here's a counterpoint to the secularism item in the previous edition of AR. "Perspective: Why even secular people should worry about Gen Z's lack of faith" by Samuel J. Abrams (Politics, Sarah Lawrence College; senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute) -- "It's not just religion that young adults are shunning. They're also less likely to volunteer, donate to charity and value pluralism. ...
"What is not being actively discussed is that the decline in faith among America's youngest cohorts represents a real danger for civil society itself. More research is needed on the consequences of a decline in faith among the youngest Americans, particularly as it affects civility and national cohesion. ...
"The data show that religious younger Americans are more than twice as likely to do community work as their nonreligious Gen Z counterparts. ...
"What is powerfully revealing - and deeply concerning - is that when younger Americans are asked about the importance of community service and volunteer work (not if they have done the work), real differences between those with and without faith emerge. ...
"In fact, religiosity does not lead to insularity in networks or social connectivity. More religious members of Gen Z have greater levels of connectivity than those with lower levels of faith. The false narrative that faith can socially isolate an individual is far too common and needs revision.
"The data show that not only are religious Gen Zers interested in interacting with other faiths, but they are also focused on learning about their communities. ...
"Despite narratives of insularity and social disconnect among religious Americans, religious members of Gen Z are anything but living in a bubble; if anything, the unfaithful are those who are isolated and not connecting to others. ...
"While it is impossible to tell if religiosity improves connectivity and community in the data itself, attitudes and actions toward community and charity are vastly different among those who are religious and those who are not within America's youngest adults.
"It would be foolish to assume that secular thought and informal organizations can replace centuries-old institutions, especially the faith-based, that have lifted up, supported and transmitted positive values to millions around the globe." Deseret News, Mar 4 '23, <www.bit.ly/3LAoEFr>
We noticed another counterpoint in Kevin DeYoung's January 17th article, "Is the Church Failing at Being the Church?" <www.bit.ly/3Lh3RFy> in which he recommends Bradley Wright's 2010 book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites ... and Other Lies You've Been Told. <www.bit.ly/3AEp5IB>
DeYoung mentions that "In his blurb [for Wright's book], Scot McKnight - who, in a much more dire mood, recently <www.bit.ly/3oWKDxm> called for 'Saving Evangelicalism' - urged everyone to buy the book, read it carefully, and give the book away to others because, he insisted, 'there's lots of good news when it comes to the condition of the church in the West.'"
In addition, DeYoung makes reference to how "Christianity Today published a list <www.bit.ly/427hC0u> of its top stories from the past year. Several observers pointed out that most of the articles on the list had to do with scandals and controversies in the church."
Responding to this, DeYoung notes: "according to research cited by Wright, only 1 in 33 churchgoing women reported that a religious leader had made a sexual advance to them. ...
"Wright's point was not to excuse the 3 percent but to make clear that 3 percent is not a lot considering that 1 in 4 women reported inappropriate sexual attention from authorities in non-religious workplaces. Similarly, Wright showed that instances of domestic abuse declined significantly among those who attended church weekly."
More recently, in "Is a 'Surge of Faith' Happening With Younger Americans?" the Colson Center's Breakpoint of May 1st by John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander <www.bit.ly/3LOOvd1> adds: "One Barna study found that, globally, 52% of teenagers today identify as Christian, and 6 in 10 are motivated to know more about Jesus. In the U.S. and Canada, Barna concluded, teens feel less negatively about sharing their faith than Millennials do, with 81% rejecting the statement that 'if someone disagrees with you, it means they're judging you.' ...
"The results are a mixed picture. As rates of disbelief in God and rejection of Christian doctrine rise, young people are grappling seriously with a search for meaning, truth, and belonging. This is a critical moment to reach what is the loneliest, most agnostic and most distraught generation on record. They are the epitome of a line widely attributed to G.K. Chesterton: 'When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.' ...
"If kids do not receive a clear and consistent message from their parents that religion is important, they are likely to simply conclude that it is not important.
"One of the main predictors of belief is that a young person's objections were taken seriously by someone willing to listen and address them. It isn't enough simply to repeat what is true, especially when Christians are one voice among so many."
Wrapping up, the authors remind us that "opposing viewpoints must be considered thoroughly in order to inoculate, not isolate, Christian young people.
"To that end, I highly recommend Summit Ministries, a lifelong friend of the Colson Center and one of the best places I know for asking hard questions." <www.summit.org>
Their adamant conclusion: "The spiritual openness of Gen Z is an opportunity we must not miss."
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