“What are we not doing now?” The question was as much a plea as a query. The Jamaican pastor that spoke was a student in a church history course I was teaching (in Jamaica, of course!). A contrast ate at his soul. On one hand, there was the dynamic of the Ancient Church, as that of 13th friars, 16th century Anabaptists, 17th century German Pietists, and 18th century Evangelical Revivalists (to mention a few) that we had been studying. On the other hand, there was the struggle he faced every day to get a hearing for the Gospel among his neighbors.
The answer to his question might be a theological one, or a cultural one, or a methodological one. The early Christians did not yet have a fully developed understanding of the Trinity, but they did have an absolute certainty that everyone had to meet this Jesus who had risen from the dead. Perhaps we are too settled in our theological formulas, but our heritage of profound theological thought ought to be an advantage to us.
Photo by tallisen
The cultural contexts could not be more different. The Roman world was decadent, licentious, polytheistic, and cruel. Jamaica has more churches for the size of the population than most countries in the Christian world. It shares with the rest of the world serious economic problems and a sexual ethic that threatens family structure. But the Christianization of Jamaican culture (shoppers hear contemporary Jamaican gospel music in the supermarkets!) ought to be an advantage, shouldn’t it?
“What are we not doing now?” C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, described Christian faith as a “good infection,” spreading from person to person. I am proposing that much of the difficulty of getting a hearing in Christianized culture is in significant part a methodological problem. All of the movements I mentioned in the first paragraph share one common feature: evangelism was a outcome of small meetings in homes, not large gatherings for preaching. That, of course, is seriously oversimplified. In many cases these groups used their homes because they weren’t allowed to gather in public, or the public meeting places were hostile to their message. They would not have understood their pragmatic response to opposition “a focus on small groups in homes.” But from the historian’s perspective, that is what circumstances forced on them.
In the West we have grown increasingly resistant to “intrusions” into the private world of our homes. Whatever the reasons (and I’ll have to return to them in another posting), the spiritual and personal result is that we hold people—especially non-believers—at arm’s length. We have swallowed the pervasive cultural myth that our religious lives should be private affairs, not to be “imposed” on others in any context.
Because of the impersonality of this (“Come to church with me” is as close as we get) our friends and neighbors do not see Christian faith operating in the ordinary circumstances of our lives. It is in our homes that others see us—and Christ in us—in our marriages, our families, our hobbies, our entertainment, our food, our ability to include outsiders without discomfort.
Hang on a minute! Maybe there’s something here. What would non-believers find in our private worlds?
Our homes and our friendships—our private worlds—are the best way to spread the good infection. Could it be that Christians are not sure that they have anything of value to share with outsiders?
Reader Remarks