Review: Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a highly distressing book to read on two levels.

First, many of Viola's and Barna's criticisms of the institutional church are resonate with me. We would do well to examine if they are biblical and beneficial to the body of Christ today:
• Is it helpful to continue utilising “church” to refer to a place or building rather than a gathering of believers?
• Is the church service Christ-glorifying or man-centered?
• Is the service structure so rigid that there is no room for spontaneous (yet somehow orderly) leading of song, prayer, sharing of the word, testifying?
• Has church become a spectator activity?
• Do the weekly sermons by seminary trained preachers impede the ability of the congregation from learning how to interpret, understand and apply Scripture?
• Is it sufficient to send would-be pastors to bible college without arranging for their ministry experience?
• Do Christians rely solely on paid clergy to minister to themselves and to others? Does drawing a salary from the congregation render a pastor at their mercy to their whims and fancies?
• Do Christians journey through life together beyond the weekly meetings?
• Are we using a proof texting approach to justify certain practices like quoting Mal. 3:8-10 out of context to mandate compulsory tithing? Does the congregation adopt the eisegetical method in their own bible study?

Yet on the other hand, I sensed that they have an axe to grind in the extensive proof texting to justify their organic church model. While they claim to love the church, I would believe that the average reasonable person would sense that they hate the institutional church with great fervour. For all the emphasis of doing "church" just like the early church, I had expected to read that the organic church movement practiced the selling of property, sharing everything in common and meeting daily as per Acts 2:42-7. But I did not, because they are not honest enough to admit their own clipboard (picking and choosing Scripture) approach to church.

I found Trevin Wax's review (https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/trevinwax/2008/01/02/book-review-pagan-christianity/) extremely helpful as I sought to reflect on the upsetting themes covered in the book - it would probably provide more ammunition for individuals already disenchanted with the institutional church. Rather than drive these individuals toward the organic church movement, I worry whether the effect would be toward a walking away of the Christian faith or toward atheism or anti-christianity.

It perhaps could have been a really great book, if the authors wrote more objectively and not sought to provide quite puzzling opposition to practices like (i) the pagan dressing up nicely for sunday service and how the conduct of the Lord's Supper and Baptism have somehow had pagan mystic origins. I was not quite sold on these points. I found the objections to sunday school, youth pastors and seminary education quite laughable on their ground they were modern inventions.

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