What Modernism Is (or: On “Pagan Christianity?”)
Feb 5th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 5 Comments |
I just ran across a very interesting looking book. It’s “Pagan Christianity?” by Frank Viola and George Barna. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:
Have you ever wondered why we Christians do what we do for church every Sunday morning?
Fantastic question. Cartesian, perhaps, but good nonetheless.
Why do we “dress up” for church?
Because it shows our respect for God. That’s what I was told by people in my church back in the day. Don’t know that I buy it, but there it is.
Why does the pastor preach a sermon each week?
True. “Forsaking not the assembling of yourselves together” doesn’t require a sermon, I suppose. Jim Palmer, for one, has concluded that the normal church service structure isn’t necessary (see his Wide Open Spaces).
Why do we have pews, steeples, choirs, and seminaries?
I’ve wondered about the steeple thing too.
This volume reveals the startling truth: most of what Christians do in present-day churches is not rooted in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.
There it is! That’s modernism right there. It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it? Modernism is a particular move in philosophy in which:
(a) a current (oppressive) authority is undercut by
(b) appealing to an older, more original, or more primary authority, in order to
(c) make way for something new.
The blurb continues:
Coauthors Frank Viola and George Barna support their thesis with compelling historical evidence in the first-ever book to document the full story of modern Christian church practices.
There’s nothing contradictory about using modernism to undercut “modern Christian church practices.” Modernism is frequently used to tear down modernity and remake it.
Modernity, in other words, is the product of modernism, and therefore not equal to it. I just wonder whether Viola and Barna ask from where they get their method of examination. Is modernism grounded in the New Testament?
Anyway, sounds like a fascinating book to me.
Sounds like I’d like to read this book. I think I’ll request it from the library. :) Thanks, Micah.
:-) And maybe they’ll make a movie out of it. It sounds exciting.
UPDATE:
Reminds me of Da Vinci Code, in other words.
From a Publishers Weekly quote about Wide Open Spaces: “He might raise the hackles of some evangelicals with a confessional narrative of putting aside the Bible for a season, recognizing that it was at the center of …a religion that had left [him] empty, exhausted, and disillusioned.”
Ouch. That hits home.
I think I may need to read both of these books.
Regarding the steeple thing, in my Nonwestern religious thought class last semester, I read a book that was talking about how religions across the world have historically wanted themselves–and especially their sacred places– to be located around the “center of the universe” (the place where god comes down and dwells on earth), and to signify where this center was they would often raise some sort of large verticle object. This, of course, reaches into the heavens and is symbollic of the human union with god.
So anyway. I think maybe the steeple thing is just the Christian version of that…
I’ve had the best church experiences outside of Church.
Palmer’s book is fascinating. And a lot of what he says does really hit home.
I’d read Wide Open Spaces before I read Pagan Christianity, because, as William James once so brilliantly said:
The pointing to heaven thing makes a lot of sense with steeples. I wish I was the center of the universe. Having a towering steeple could help a building be the center of a community, at least.