The winner of the vote for the next book discussion was Pagan Christianity: exploring the roots of our church practices by Frank Viola. Here's the synopsis of the preface to the book. Hope this series will be very constructive.
The Pharisees and the
Sadducees were the two leading religious parties of the culture in which Jesus
lived. The basic error of the Pharisees
is that they invented traditions and laws and added them to the Scriptures. The basic error of the Sadducees was that
they subtracted from the Scriptures.
Contemporary Christianity has fallen into the errors of both camps. It has adopted traditions that have
suppressed the living, breathing, functional headship of Jesus Christ in His
church; and it has removed much of true Christianity from the Christian
landscape.
Most would agree that we find
our practices for the Christian life in the life of Jesus Christ and that the Church
is now Jesus Christ in a different form; “the body of Christ,” which is an
organic entity alive with the life of God that indwells its parts and the whole. But the fact is, much of what we practice
today is borrowed from somewhere else and stands in conflict with biblical
principles and teachings, thus choking the life out of the organism and turning
it into an inanimate object.
So, where did these practices
come from? The unmovable, historical
fact is that most of them were borrowed from pagan culture. These are not practices that differ because
of the culture in which people live.
These are practices addressed in this book that, if the Church is
following the life of God that indwells it organically, will never be produced
because they are not programmed into the DNA of God. They are practices that God’s people have
picked up from their pagan neighbors as far back as the fourth century. They were embraced and labeled “Christian” in
whatever cultural form they are found, although at the roots they are not.
The proposal of this book is
that the contemporary, institutional form of church has neither a biblical or
historical right to function as it does.
This book is not exhaustive, but focuses on the central practices that
define mainstream Christianity today. So,
let’s identify the errors of the Pharisees and Sadducees that we’ve fallen into
and remove them to make room for the Lord to be the fully functional Head of
His Church.
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