The Gospel according to Convenience
We are all familiar with the concept of “cultural Christianity:” people in pews who attend church but don’t live as Christians outside of a weekly (or, in the case of the so-called “Chreasters,” biannual) Sunday service. Nadya Williams’s excellent new book, Cultural Christians in the Early Church, suggests that while we may think the distinction between “true believers” and “cultural followers” is a new one—the result of a less religious and more secular age—it has in fact been around since the earliest days of the church. Indeed, she argues that the distinction itself reveals a truth of human nature: no matter what the external cultural and historical circumstances might be, it has always been hard to live out the Christian faith.
Williams puts it this way: “Instead of thinking of cultural Christianity as the exception, a phenomenon that could only flourish in very specific kind of cultural conditions, perhaps we should think of it as a default, a natural result of the fallen and sinful state of humanity.” Following from this idea—that cultural Christianity is a natural result of the fallen and sinful state of humanity—it is perhaps unsurprising that Williams organizes her book around various sins and how they were treated in the early Church. Greed, gluttony, sex, Christian nationalism, and even self-care make her list of sins to be individually examined and culturally dissected.
Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a Christian in his famous Devil’s Dictionary sprang to mind when I started reading Williams’s book. A Christian, he quips, is “One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor,” or “One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” As Williams points out, the first was true in the Greco–Roman World, where there was no shortage of finger pointing. Nor was the Roman empire known for its spotless morality—one need only think of the excesses of Caligula and Nero. Christians at that time, minorities though they were, still remained in the Roman cultural milieu. Like Christians today, they often let their culture, rather than their faith, guide their behavior.
Williams’s first chapter focuses on pecuniary sins. To make her case, she identifies Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament as the “the first Cultural Christians.” Acts 5:1–11 describes how early followers of Jesus held their possessions communally in order to support those in need. Barnabas exemplifies this: he sold a plot of land and donated all the proceeds to the apostles. Inspired by him, Ananias and Sapphira also sold their land. However, unlike him, they kept some of the profit. When Ananias presented a portion to Peter and claimed it was the total amount, Peter confronted him for lying to the Holy Spirit. Ananias died on the spot! Three hours later, Sapphira, unaware of her husband's fate, repeated the lie to Peter. She also fell dead.
The story is startling and unusual in the New Testament. At no moment is the reader told exactly what to think about this violent outcome for the couple. The Holy Spirit does not usually render judgment in this way. Williams provides cultural and interpretive context.
She relates that Roman cultural practices regarding money were generally cutthroat: to accrue wealth was to accrue power, and bribery and abuse were commonplace in Rome. Further, Williams tells readers about the practice of “Euergetism,” or “the use of one’s wealth for the benefit of one’s city or community, [which] was an important feature of Hellenistic city-states and continues into the Roman period.” Although this practice was community focused, it was also a way for the giver to gain power and honor. As Williams puts it, “In the traditionally practiced model, Greco–Roman euergetism amounted to creating an idol of money and honor, all with the goal of elevating oneself and one’s family above others.” In rejecting this “culturally acceptable” idea that finances could be used to “win prestige” by giving their money away, early Christians were expected “to be countercultural.” With this context, we can see the story of Ananias and Sapphira as one that many cultural Christians still face today: an internal struggle over the competing values of their faith and the wider culture. Ananias and Sapphira likely wanted the best of both worlds, to retain the prestige of Roman culture through philanthropy while retaining the spiritual goods of Christianity. Peter and, more to the point, the Holy Spirit would not have that. Wishy-washiness was not tolerated in the early Church.
Each of Williams’s nine chapters offers similar examples. At the same time, she walks readers through the vast historical and cultural backdrop of Late Antiquity. The book is engrossing. At the end of each chapter, Williams connects her historical analysis of cultural Christianity in the Greco–Roman world with today’s concerns about cultural Christianity. I would be lying if I said I agreed with the way she linked every one of her historical claims with our contemporary times. Making through lines between meat consumption in the early Church with the class problems plaguing contemporary foodie culture or discussing similarities in the comedic advice found in Ovid’s Art of Love with advice found in contemporary Evangelical purity culture is not going to be perfect. Yet, I found myself repeatedly discussing these, and other ideas, with others. My nightly walks with my spouse took place against a Roman backdrop. Eventually, I realized this effect was a large part of the book’s magic.
In September of last year, a TikTok trend claimed to reveal that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day. Since reading this book for the first time in January, and subsequently again in May, I have joined their ranks. I have brought up the Roman Empire, its cultural Christians, and our own to anyone who will listen, arguing for and against Williams’s points and sharing new details that I picked up in each reading—like the fact that Romans had to consult “sacred chickens” for battle and early Christian tourists visited saints and ascetics in the Egyptian desert in a pagan-rooted “tradition of the grand tour.”
Master of Saint Augustine, Scenes from the Life of Saint Augustine of Hippo (ca. 1490)
Cultural Christians in the Early Church is filled with historical details and connections that deserve not one but multiple readings. Were I to read it a third time, which I’m sure I will in the future, I know I will continue to find new and surprising revelations. From Augustine, the Southern Baptist Convention, Ovid, Caligula, Bathsheba, #churchtoo, Plato, Wendell Berry, Zacchaeus, and Julius Caesar, this short book covers a vast amount of material cogently and often with a dash of unexpected and welcome wit.
Williams’s work is not just a historical treatise but a call to deep introspection about what it means to live out one’s faith amidst the pressures of any culture that has a different telos than one’s religion. It urges readers to think about how the pressures of living as a Christian today are not substantially different from ones Christians faced in the past. In this way, Cultural Christians in the Early Church can be considered a scholarly triumph in the way it serves as a spiritual and cultural corrective for Christians who may have previously been quick to assume much about the past, themselves, and even their neighbors. This book invites readers to grow beyond such assumptions, perhaps even inviting them to start a new, more thoughtful, and faithful counter-cultural revolution.
LuElla D'Amico is an associate professor of English and coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word. Her research and teaching focus on early and nineteenth-century United States literature, children's literature, Catholicism and literature, and girlhood studies. Her most recent co-edited collection, Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls' Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century, is available now. She is currently working on a book about encountering the Catholic faith in children's literature.