Racism, Segregation and the Early Church
Today, Eugene discusses a CNN article about racial segregation and church. One segment of the article goes something like this:
But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew — it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.
DeYoung, the “United by Faith” co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.
“People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period — could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion,” DeYoung says.
Well, not exactly.
OK, there was much that was exemplary about the early church, perhaps far more than the present-day church. But let's not idealize the early church beyond the textual/historical evidence.
Let's face it. If issues like segregation and racial/ethnic division were not the huge problems they were in the first-century church, we probably wouldn't have half of the New Testament. Or if we did, they'd look hugely different.
I've become convinced that Paul's central struggle, evident in nearly all the Epistles, was to strive to keep the new church together in spite of the racial/ethnic tensions that were permeating it. In fact, we might even be so bold as to say that we might never have heard the term "justification by faith" were it not for those tensions, and Paul's insistence that they had no place in the New People of God.
Read the last few chapters of Romans to see what Paul was basically working up to throughout the first 10-11 chapters. The Jews had been ordered to leave Rome about a decade earlier. The letter was probably written at around the time Nero rescinded that edict and many Jews returned to Rome, likely to a less-than-adoring welcome. What Paul was saying to the gentile church in Rome, essentially, is that "These are your older brothers and sisters in the faith. They are certainly my kinsmen according to the flesh. Though it must be easy for you to gloat over your new status as God's people, don't do it. These are the people through whom God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus. If you feel anything for their unbelief, feel anguish, as I do."
The same can be said of Galatians and Ephesians, if not for all of Paul's letters. There is a difference between saying that Paul was proclaiming that the church must be "one, in Christ," and saying that the church was one in Christ. If it was, Paul would probably not need to spend so much energy proclaiming it.
There is a comfort in knowing that the church has always gone through the struggles that we face today. There is a realness in seeing the exemplary early church get stuck in the same muck that we do. It breaks through the fairy tale that says that Jesus' early followers got it all right, and we have been distorting that rightness ever since.
As I've said before, one of my favorite stories from the New Testament is from The Book of Acts. Acts 12:12-16 is one of the funniest, saddest, and most encouraging passages in all the NT. Picture it. Peter is in prison. The exemplary, Spirit-filled early church has gathered at Mary's house to pray for a miracle, for Peter's release, and when their prayers are answered...they don't believe it. "You're crazy," they tell the maid who informs them that Peter's at the door (who's so excited herself that she forgets to let him in).
I think that story is a clue to what it all boils down to. It boils down to faith. Faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, over and above faith in all the other systems of the world, no matter how prevalent, no matter how "given." The trouble is, that kind of faith is often times a fragile, frail thing in the hands of us human beings.
In fact, I think it's always been.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew — it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.
DeYoung, the “United by Faith” co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.
“People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period — could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion,” DeYoung says.
Well, not exactly.
OK, there was much that was exemplary about the early church, perhaps far more than the present-day church. But let's not idealize the early church beyond the textual/historical evidence.
Let's face it. If issues like segregation and racial/ethnic division were not the huge problems they were in the first-century church, we probably wouldn't have half of the New Testament. Or if we did, they'd look hugely different.
I've become convinced that Paul's central struggle, evident in nearly all the Epistles, was to strive to keep the new church together in spite of the racial/ethnic tensions that were permeating it. In fact, we might even be so bold as to say that we might never have heard the term "justification by faith" were it not for those tensions, and Paul's insistence that they had no place in the New People of God.
Read the last few chapters of Romans to see what Paul was basically working up to throughout the first 10-11 chapters. The Jews had been ordered to leave Rome about a decade earlier. The letter was probably written at around the time Nero rescinded that edict and many Jews returned to Rome, likely to a less-than-adoring welcome. What Paul was saying to the gentile church in Rome, essentially, is that "These are your older brothers and sisters in the faith. They are certainly my kinsmen according to the flesh. Though it must be easy for you to gloat over your new status as God's people, don't do it. These are the people through whom God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus. If you feel anything for their unbelief, feel anguish, as I do."
The same can be said of Galatians and Ephesians, if not for all of Paul's letters. There is a difference between saying that Paul was proclaiming that the church must be "one, in Christ," and saying that the church was one in Christ. If it was, Paul would probably not need to spend so much energy proclaiming it.
There is a comfort in knowing that the church has always gone through the struggles that we face today. There is a realness in seeing the exemplary early church get stuck in the same muck that we do. It breaks through the fairy tale that says that Jesus' early followers got it all right, and we have been distorting that rightness ever since.
As I've said before, one of my favorite stories from the New Testament is from The Book of Acts. Acts 12:12-16 is one of the funniest, saddest, and most encouraging passages in all the NT. Picture it. Peter is in prison. The exemplary, Spirit-filled early church has gathered at Mary's house to pray for a miracle, for Peter's release, and when their prayers are answered...they don't believe it. "You're crazy," they tell the maid who informs them that Peter's at the door (who's so excited herself that she forgets to let him in).
I think that story is a clue to what it all boils down to. It boils down to faith. Faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, over and above faith in all the other systems of the world, no matter how prevalent, no matter how "given." The trouble is, that kind of faith is often times a fragile, frail thing in the hands of us human beings.
In fact, I think it's always been.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
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