How often do you think about the Roman Empire? For the last month, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit! I was invited to participate in an early-access launch team for “Strange Religion,” which officially releases today.
Nijay is an historian and NT scholar, and his book evidences careful scholarship. But he writes in an approachable way, and intentionally limits his “Christianese”—presumably to reach a wider audience, and to reinforce the book’s main premise. And that main premise is that Chrisianity emerged as a very strange kind of religion—one that felt unfamiliar, counterintuitive, and even dangerous in its ancient Roman context. By that same token, its strangeness is precisely what made it compelling, transformative, and ultimately explosive.
Throughout the book, Nijay examines early Christian doctrine, worship, and practice against the backdrop of the pagan Roman Empire in which it was conceived—and the contrast is striking. Not only did the early Christians attribute universal supremacy to a crucified criminal; but they were also strangely oriented toward the future, and seemingly utopian in their familial posture and disregard for social status. Christians confessed belief in only one God—and oddly, they emphasized the importance of a personal, loving relationship with that God. Their religiosity was not merely outward and pragmatic; it was inward, and it centered around the heart. Moreover, all Christians had access to this one true God, regardless of their status or location. No priest but Christ was necessary for intercession, and Christ was made available to all. No temple was necessary for worship; the Holy Spirit now indwelled Christians bodily. No longer was ritual sacrifice a necessity; rather, the very lives of Christians were now understood as sacrifices to God (Rom. 12:1-2).
While the book is certainly worth a read for non-Christians (especially history buffs with an interest in Ancient Rome and/or religion), Christian readers will uniquely benefit, and likely find their faith revitalized. Implicitly, the book also serves as a powerful warning to the modern Western church. As you read through it, it becomes clear that there are many ways in which the modern Western church looks much more like the power-hungry Roman Empire than it does the church envisioned by the New Testament. We would do well to reclaim the more radical, upside-down, and outright strange faith that was embraced (albeit imperfectly, as Nijay makes clear in a later chapter) by the earliest Christians.
I don’t want to say too much more, in case you decide to read it for yourself. But I do highly recommend the book! Pick up a copy if you’re able.
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Reviews with images
A readable and accessible historical study of early Christianity under the Roman Empire
I am an occasional historian and a contextual theologian. So Nijay Gupta's "Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling" ticks quite a few boxes for me. I frequently set the historical context of the Old and New Testaments of Christian Scripture to set the stage for my weekly sermons. "Strange Religion" helped me to grasp a deeper understanding of the religious differences between the Romans and the Christians, but in particular, how Christians operated as a counter-cultural worldview as it does today.Gupta helps us understand that the early Christian believers did not have cultic statues, temples, or detailed worship practices with the purpose of appeasing their god, like the Romans. Instead, early Christians relied on faith in an invisible God, who was revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It was through a personal following of this Jesus, the Messiah, that Christians lived out lives that were counter-cultural to a Roman worldview - much as it does today in today's multicultural world. Because of their religious faith, the Christians were considered to be "athenoi" (atheists) and a mystic cult by the Roman people.I liked this book because it is both accessible to the general public and reflective of the scholarly work behind it. So, I recommend it to a wide audience of readers, from first-century Roman historians to faithful Christian believers. For myself, I think I'll keep it close on the shelves to pull down and read again as I attempt to be true to the context of faith then and now.
Top reviews from other countries
James Petticrew
CLEAR, CONSCISE, RELEVANT AND HELPFUL
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Import for those seeking to understand our heritage
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