Pagan Christianity Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001TAV6EY | Format: PDF
Pagan Christianity Description
Have you ever wondered why we Christians do what we do for church every Sunday morning? Why do we "dress up" for church? Why does the pastor preach a sermon each week? Why do we have pews, steeples, choirs, and seminaries? 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.
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. Many Christians take for granted that their churchs practices are rooted in Scripture. Yet those practices look very different from those of the first-century church. The New Testament is not silent on how the early church freely expressed the reality of Christs indwelling in ways that rocked the first-century world.Times have changed.
Pagan Christianity leads us on a fascinating tour through church history, revealing this startling and unsettling truth: Many cherished church traditions embraced today originated not out of the New Testament, but out of pagan practices. One of the most troubling outcomes has been the effect on average believers: turning them from living expressions of Christs glory and power to passive observers. If you want to see that trend reversed, turn to Pagan Christianity...a book that examines and challenges every aspect of our contemporary church experience.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 53 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: christianaudio.com
- Audible.com Release Date: February 13, 2009
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001TAV6EY
Is today's Church into a revolution that will someday be understood as greater than the 16th Century Protestant Reformation?
Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna will certainly add fuel to the fire of those affirming so. Most evangelicals would consider such a suggestion as absurd, or at best, exaggerated. Yet, undeniably, there is a grass roots revolution taking place on a global scale in Christendom about what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ.
Basically the authors are making three points:
1) A great deal of what we do in church today does not come from the New Testament.
2) Much of what is practiced originated out of Greco-Roman customs and traditions (paganism, not Judaism), and/or human-made inventions.
3) Many of these practices actually hinder the church from being what God designed her to be.
The over-arching question the authors seem to be asking is: Do the practices of modern institutional churches reflect a God-ordained/inspired development, or are they a departure from it?
Of course, one must read the book to understand why Viola and Barna indeed question "church" as most of us know it.
Beware, though. This book comes with a WARNING:
If you are unwilling to have your Christianity seriously examined, do not read beyond this page...Spare yourself the trouble of having your Christian life turned upside down. (pg.7)
A glance at the content chapters will suffice as to the reason for the warning!
1-Have We Really Been Doing It By The Book?
2-The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex.
This is a controversial book with tons of valid points, and ultimately, at least for me, an unsatisfying conclusion.
Here, in a nutshell, is the argument of the book:
1. The origin of many of our church practices (examples: church buildings, orders of worship, sermons, pastors, tithing, clergy salaries) is non-biblical and inconsistent with the practice of the early church.
2. Just because something does not appear in the Bible does not mean it is wrong. However, our non-biblical church practices often hinder the development of our faith and keep us from encountering the living God.
3. "The church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to function as it does." (p. xx)
4. The church must return to its biblical roots. At a personal level, we must ask questions of church as we know it and pray seriously about what our response should be.
This book threatens a lot that pastors and churches hold dear. But it should be evaluated on the evidence, not on how much it will cost us if they're right.
Most of the book traces the origins of common church practices today. They succeed in showing what should be fairly obvious: many of our practices do not appear in the Bible, which in itself does not make them wrong. Barna and Viola argue, however, that many of these practices are harmful.
It's when you get to their solution that, in my view, the wheels fall off. Viola and Barna argue: ""the church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to function as it does." (p. xx)
It could be that Viola and Barna are correct, but I don't think they've proved their case.
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