STRANGE RELIGION:
How the First Christians Were Weird,
Dangerous, and Compelling
By Nijay K. Gupta
Brazos Press. 240 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 587 435 171
Here’s a book that should probably be on every serious Bible teacher’s bookshelf, and on very few church bookstands. Let me briefly explain.
Gupta is an academic theologian of some distinction, Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, and is the author of many books including Tell Her Story (with which I radically differ, but have profited from) and what is arguably the best technical commentary on 1 Thessalonians.
This book has a lot to say to 21st-century mission in the West, and seems particularly challenging for me, pioneering in rural Wales.
The book is about how the first Christians were radical in their difference from their cultural context, in their creed, and how they set about seeking to identify with it culturally where they could, in order to remove objections and create ‘bridges’ that the gospel message could be sent across.
It fulfils its objective by considering the outlandishness it entailed to become a Christian in a world where maintaining the pax deorum was deemed essential, outlining the perceived oddity in that context of what early Christians believed, how they worshipped, and how their beliefs shaped their conduct.
There is lots of refreshing and good stuff for sermons from the Graeco-Roman background in there.
So why wouldn’t I put it on a church book table? Gupta is in person a sensitive and thoughtful academic theologian who in chapter 9 takes his objection to what he calls ‘Christian exceptionalism’ too far, in my view, calling out the expressions of the human authors as fundamentally mistaken on various ethical points. I believe there are other ways to understand each of the texts he cites and, as far as many of us are concerned, his treatment of them raises issues around the inspiration of Scripture. And yet Gupta consistently handles Scripture as divinely inspired and therefore authoritative to him throughout the rest of the book. In itself it seems a bit ‘exceptional’ to do this.
Do I recommend the book? Yes. Heartily, but with the caveats noted on chapter 9.
