Cultural Christians in the Early Church: Video Lectures

Cultural Christians in the Early Church: Video Lectures considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire, and argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church.

Christians today tend to see the earliest followers of Jesus as zealous converts who were much more counter-culturally devoted to their faith than typical churchgoers today. Cultural Christianity might seem like a modern concept, one most likely to occur in areas where Christianity is the majority culture, such as the American Bible Belt. The story that these video lectures present refutes both of these faulty assumptions. Aiming to be both historical and practical, Cultural Christians in the Early Church argues that in the early church cultural Christians were the rule rather than the exception. Using categories of sin as an organizing principle, classicist Nadya Williams considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire. Recognizing that cultural sins were always a part of the story of the church and its people is a message that is both a source of comfort and a call to action in our pursuit of sanctification today.