A Christian brother and I recently had a friendly disagreement regarding the interpretation of 1 Cor 14:26 and whether this passage in context is descriptive (describing something that is allowable) or prescriptive (declaring something that should be normative). In this friendly disagreement, he urged me to read Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna.

At first, I confess, that I had no intentions of reading this book as the reviews I’d read from some people I respected had little good to say about it. But then, something stirred within my heart and I felt compelled to purchase and begin reading this volume. Why? Because I disagree with the premise of this book so strongly that I want to just quote other reviewers and stand ignorantly by and not “waste my time” reading something I think can’t possibly be right. I’m sure you see the sin in this. If I were indifferent, that would be something completely, well, different. But I’m not.

So, my disclaimer as I begin to read this book is that I approach it as a person who didn’t want to read it and am pretty much convinced I won’t like it. That said, I have purposed in my heart to try and read this with as much of an open mind as I can muster considering my original bias. I am not a scholar and this will most certainly not be a scholarly review; however, this is appropriate as Frank Viola makes clear that he and Barna wrote this for non-scholars with footnotes for those who wish to investigate further. So… here I go with commentary on the introduction.

Based upon the introduction (pp. xvii-xxi), the thesis of this book is two-fold: 1) show that the institutionalized (Viola’s word) church in its current form and structure is almost completely based upon human tradition and not on those forms found in scripture, and 2) the truly Biblical form of Christian gathering is something that Viola calls an organic church “which are characterized by Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership.” (p. xix).

Viola’s “outrageous proposal” will indeed be considered outrageous by many (including myself). That proposal is “that the church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to function as it does.” Viola promises to cite much evidence to back up this claim and, to his credit, specifically says that it is up to the reader to decide if the proposal is valid or not.

The cornerstone statement, it appears, is that the first century church is the church as God intended - in its purest form. I struggle with this premise for a couple of reasons - not the least of which is the simple statement that the church for almost 2000 years now has been increasingly paganized to the point that it is no longer as God intended. This comes across as a poignantly faithless statement in my humble opinion. While I recognize that my argument has some weakness as it cannot be applied univerally to any church practice due to the fact that it would then weigh church tradition above scripture… I cannot help but doubt that the Spirit of God has allowed His church to be tainted this much for this long. I also doubt that the church that Viola and Barna are going to paint in the first century is reasonable considering the culture of the time and the fact that the church in that era could not legally exist - for the most part.

But - I eagerly look forward to reading the evidences as I have no reason to suspect Viola of being insincere in his desire to pursue a sound reading of the biblical text and present his argument with the weight of Scripture and history to vindicate his view. So, with great anticipation, I will continue to read prayerfully and thoughtfully. I do believe there will be areas concerning the institutionalized church where he and I will be in great agreement… but I pause at that because coming to the same philosophical conclusion about certain elements does not always translate to the same active outcome. In other words, just because I might agree with him on some of the failings of the current most common iterations of the typical Protestant church… how we go about responding to those failings is an area where agreement is more unlikely.