I should go ahead and warn you that this will not be any kind of in-depth, academic, or even very useful review of Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna. I read it fairly quickly, absorbing more of the general thrust than the specific arguments. In truth, I think that's probably the best way to approach it.
I should also confess that I went into the book with a couple of conflicting biases. First was my standing distrust of anything with the name 'Barna' attached. George Barna has no doubt done some good over the years as a collector of information, but his willingness to jump into every trend that comes down the line severely dilutes his effectiveness. It's not so much that he seems openly biased as that he seems to hold every bias at one point or another. The best I can say is that whichever way the wind happens to be blowing, you can count on Barna to have some numbers on it.
My second freely-admitted bias was that I've been reading, thinking, and discussing about house churches a great deal over the last few months, and believe that they are far and away more biblical and more basically 'Christian' than the standard evangelical church model. In that sense, then, I was primed for Viola's message and predisposed to accept it.
So what is that message? Simply that everything modern evangelical churches do is wrong, because it's based on ancient pagan religious practices. I don't say 'everything' as hyperbole; from church buildings to communion to the sermon itself, it's all apparently pagan and antithetical to the Christian faith as practiced in the first three centuries. Pastors, choirs, seminaries ... they all prevent the open and free worship that characterized the New Testament church, and should be done away with.
The overall effect is numbing. Every chapter is a broadside assault on American evangelicalism as it is currently practiced, and after a while the individual arguments cease to have much effect. No matter the topic, the script is the same: we do it this way, but 'this way' actually came from paganism and displaced the way Jesus did it, so we should stop doing it 'this way'. I finally reached the point of simply skimming each chapter so as not to have to hear the same arguments over again.
Viola does provide examples of house church meetings in which his view of New Testament Christianity is displayed, and it honestly sounds wonderful. I have to question, though, whether these examples are really as common as he implies. When I think about the people in the congregations I've belonged to over the years, I can't help but think that the most common result of 'open and free worship' is chaos. The fact that house churches fail at a spectacular rate would seem to back that up.
In summary, there is a great deal to think about in Viola's book (and it's clearly Viola's; it seems as though Barna's name was just there to boost sales). We should strive to worship as the Bible instructs, and we should avoid the temptation to add to Scripture with pagan beliefs and practices. While the basic idea is sound, though, the execution leaves much to be desired. And 'execution' is the right word; Pagan Christianity left this reader feeling as if he'd faced a firing squad.
(There's no disclosure statement to be made, because no one gives me free books to review ... YET.)
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