Pagan Christianity(?)… my thoughts
Pagan Christianity By Frank Viola and George Barna
I finished Pagan Christianity shortly before leaving for my family vacation last week, I had time to post something beforehand, but I’m lazy, so here it is… only a week and a half late.
I found that I actually enjoyed Pagan Christianity more than I thought I would originally. I think there is a largely mixed bag of reviews out there about the book, so I was rather hesitant before actually purchasing it (the poor selection of books at the store I was in helped out a bit). A little backstory on the authors, if you didn’t know, Frank Viola is a big house church proponent and loosely affiliated with the Emerging movement, and George Barna is and evangelical and the creator of the Barna Group, which has put out some pretty controversial poll findings.
The reason I enjoyed the book is the large amount of history presented in the text. Being somewhat of a history nerd (or you could probably just say I’m a nerd in general) the amount of facts (I hesitate in using that word) presented. Everything is well sourced out, so if you find yourself doubting any of the presented information (not the opinions) they make it quite easy to find where they are pulling from.
Viola and Barna (henceforth V/B) break the book out into smaller sections that deal with things from the Eucharist to Pastoral Leadership to the very setup of our church buildings. They use the historical information to describe how we have gone from the Early Church practices to what we have today, and follow that with their opinion on how the previously mentioned changes are harmful to the health of the Church today.
I think it’s in the statement of their opinions on why exactly these things are wrong that V/B start to lose their audience (as they did with me at times). The general theme seems to be “If it’s not how the Early Church did it, we should have no part in it.” Had V/B stopped at showing how certain things cause damage if overused/used wrongly, but aren’t necessarily bad practices in and of themselves, as well as pointing out that requiring all to follow these (new…ish) practices as “The way church needs to be done” is nothing more than a colonialist façade. (That last part reminds me of a story, during my younger years (12/13 years old) my pastor said that he worried for the church health of any assembly that did not have a steeple.)
I would have no qualms with recommending the book, I think it’s a beneficial read, but needs to be taken with a grain of salt. If you’re the kind of person who is able to come to their own conclusions based of the facts given and not wholly influenced by the opinions also given, then you’ll be able to get through the book all right. If you’re the kind of person who gets frustrated when someone is stating facts contrary to what you believe to be the right way of doing things… you might want to pass it up.
One final note I should mention, Viola recently published Reimagining Church, where he may have corrected his approach from Pagan Christianity, and if you want to read a good review of it head over to Andrew Martin’s blog post here.
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