From Pagan to Christian: Part II – The Religious Marketplace

The previous post described the culture of the Roman Empire within which Christianity originated as religiously cosmopolitan.  Types of religiousity included atheism, polytheism, pantheism, monotheism, animism and mysticism, as well as philosophers and proponents of religion who sought to identify truths representing the essential unity of all religions.

What drew people to religion in this cosmopolitan religious environment? Not surprisingly, the motives were varied. In Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity, Luke Timothy Johnson ventures to identify four general categories of religiousity or religious interest, in Greco-Roman culture, including desire to “participate in divine benefits”, hope for “moral transformation”, a desire to “transcend the world”, and the use of religion to “stabilize the world”.  

Participation in divine benefits
Hope for the benevolent attention of divinity was a powerful motive for religious activity. Johnson characterizes this, somewhat clinically, as a desire to participate in divine benefits; i.e. to have access to divine power in human life. A desire for healing of physical and spiritual ailments was a dominant manifestation of this way (and is heavily represented in the gospels). However, this form of religiousity includes prophecy and divination, miracles of all types, and the practice of magic. According to Johnson, early Christianity, with its emphasis on healing, the power and gifts of the spirit, including prophecy and speaking in tongues, the forgiveness of sins, where sin, guilt and the prospect of judgment were considered as much a burden as disease, and the conquest of death with the prospect of eternal life, were greatly attractive to the seekers in this category. 

Religion as Moral Transformation
Johnson finds illustrations of this category among the moral philosophers of the Greco-Roman world. Whether theistically or atheistically inclined, they were concerned with practices and teachings of a way of life dedicated to truth and virtue; in training for a kind of moral athleticism.

Religion as Transcending the World
Johnson finds the roots of this tendency in Ancient Greek religious and philosophical traditions and in mystery religions. It manifested itself in views that characterized human existence and the world in terms of illusion and entrapment and that sought to transcend the physical and corrupted world and attain unity with a spiritual realm through special insight and secret knowledge. This trait can be found in the gnostic movements of the era which influenced many early Christians.

Religion as Stabilizing the World
This category is a little less clear in Johnson's account, but includes the official institutions of religion such as the priests, sacrificial practices and public religious activities that were closely connected to the dominant political and cultural forces of the day. This way seems to be important to those who turned to religion to support and validate the fundamental structures of society.


The theme of this post, and the WNMC Adult Sunday School session on Sunday, May 19, 2013, were the parallels between religiousity in the cosmopolitan environment of the Roman Empire and that of WNMC in the 21^st century. In that spirit, the class was presented with a modified version of Johnson’s categories, tweaked to accommodate WNMC sensibilities, as follows:

Blessings & Deliverance (Participation in Divine Benefits)
The emphases under this heading include

·        Divine initiative: “God for us”

·        The power of Creation, Healing, Revelation, Redemption & Salvation

·        Hope in the miraculous power of divine love

Pursuing paths of Righteousness (Moral Transformation)
The emphases here include:

·        Human initiative (in response to Divine initiative)

·        Ethics, right relations, social justice

·        Hope for the transformation of person & society

Communion with Divinity (Transcending the World)
Johnsons’ category emphasized a rejection of the material world. The emphasis of the WNMC version has been re-characterized more positively as an embrace of the spiritual life:

·        Divinity’s encounter with the individual (and vice versa)

·        Divine affirmation of the reality of spirit

·        Hope in the way of the Mystic

Divine Covenant of Community (Stabilizing the World)
The emphases under this category have been shifted to a focus on a smaller gathering:

·        Divinity’s encounter with people as a collective

·        Relation to the Divine found in relation to the neighbour

·        Hope in the Divine affirmation of social reality

The participants in the class were requested to sort themselves out into the various categories with reference to which characterizations represented for them the strongest draw to religion. As they complied, a frequent comment was that it seemed artificial to select only one attribute of religiousity as primary. Nevertheless, each category drew a substantial number of individuals, with Communion with Divinity and Divine Covenant of Community representing the largest groups. Is it the case that this ad hoc exercise represents a diversity of religious sensibility at WNMC reflective of the diversity in Imperial society in the first centuries after the death of Christ?

Feel free to respond to the following questions by “comment” below.

• Do the categories of religiousity which Johnson argues motivated religious seekers in the first centuries A.D. have any parallels in the WNMC community or other Mennonite gatherings?
• Can the diversity of religious impulses at WNMC be accommodated within a single congregation?
• Which of the religious impulses found within the WNMC congregation are best satisfied by WNMC religious practices and language? Which are most neglected? Does it matter?