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Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices | 
 enlarge | Authors: Frank Viola, George Barna
Publisher: BarnaBooks
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  181 reviews
Sales Rank: 1841
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 141431485X
Dewey Decimal Number: 262.0017
EAN: 9781414314853
ASIN: 141431485X
Publication Date: January 2008
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Product Description
Have you ever wondered why we Christians do what we do for church every Sunday morning? Why do we "dress up" for church? Why does the pastor preach a sermon each week? Why do we have pews, steeples, choirs, and seminaries? This volume reveals the startling truth: most of what Christians do in present-day churches is not rooted in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles. Coauthors Frank Viola and George Barna support their thesis with compelling historical evidence in the first-ever book to document the full story of modern Christian church practices.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 176 more reviews...
 The author means well but the book is flawed August 21, 2008
There are many good and strong points in this book a few of which are
1.Many Christian practices come from paganism
2.The Apostles belonged to no set church
3.Churches are actually modeled on pagan temples
And many others
4. The Romans used already established Pagan holidays as Christian ones
5. Mega churches are in effect dumbing down Christianity confusing the need of people for a close and personal relationship with God by offering them entertainment.
The author spends too much of his time describing in great detail what is wrong with the established church and really providing no clear goal or agenda on how to fix those problems. When you cite a list of things that are problems according to your own point and not based on any particular scriptural guidelines then eventually your argument however well intentioned is going to fall apart.
Organized Christianity may in many respects be a flawed creation but it's the only one we've got. The author means well but he has in effect thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
Overall-It is impossible as the author maintains to "get back to the roots" of Christianity because Christians can't even agree on what those roots were and speaking for myself my alarm bells go off when I hear people talking about it. The important thing is Christ the Lord not weather or not churches or church organizations have some creeping vestiges of Paganism regardless of weather or not you think it's the Sabbath day or the vestments or the incense or the liturgy or baptism. The victory is already won in Jesus Christ what does it matter?
OK, but opinionated August 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Got a lot of good insights in the book.
As with many such books, it's better at critiquing the current state of affairs than it is at offering an alternative.
I found the critique to be very helpful; although my tendencies in favor of primitive Christianity may have biased me. I like the critique of the institution of the clergy and of the idolatry surrounding church buildings.
As for its weaker "how we should really do church" side; the book fails to distinguish the basic nuances and tension between whether the New Testament is talking about the early church in descriptive or prescriptive terms.
The book is also too hard on music leaders. A group of people sitting in a circle where a few people might break out in song spontaneously (and others encouraged to follow) is no nearer to the heart of God than the skilled song leaders in the Old Testament (who also had heavy instrumentation) singing the songs of Zion.
The book tends toward a repristination model of church where a dozen or two people meet on the Lord's day and a few (uninhibited extroverts) control things. Extroverts always end up controlling things in groups when there is no structure.
I am a church planter in California (www.RobinwoodChurch.com) and am also self employed (www.ThornHeart.com).
 Thank God for the fearless Ones! August 12, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
I thank God for this book. It has gone where no book has ever gone before. The Authors takes dead aim at all of our 'sacred cows', & systematically strip them of their ability to deceive and to control by a)exposing the roots of our traditions, and laying bare the reality that these were never born in God. & b) In giving us understanding, reason, and obligation to stand for what has been clearly presented as truth.
We all knew that some things were seriously amiss when we gathered together. This book confirms our suspicions in no small way and sets us free from the expectations & the bondages, to now just 'be' who we were created to be, both singularly & collectively.
Thank you for the taking the time to research, but more importantly, thank you for the time you've spent in the very Presence of God, in order to hear His heartbeat for His people. And thank you, thank you, thank you, for your fearlessness and audacity in bringing this to us.
Becky Solomon
 Um, could you pass me a dish of history, please? August 12, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Another failed attempt at Restorationism.
I hope this book will spark your interest in the topic, but that you will read more than just this book. If you read my reviews you will know that I rarely review books I don't like, even though I read a fair amount of them. But this one merits a critique because it is so off the historical mark. (And no, I did not waste my money on this, but when a friend had it at his house I couldn't resist a fast read.) It is the typical "me and Jesus" anti-Catholic/Lutheran/Orthodox, anti-tradition pseudo-scholarship that I used to believe and teach wholeheartedly. The only problem is that it isn't true. But to make their points, the authors misuse their sources wildly, including the Holy Scriptures and if you don't know better, you may start to wonder. Here are some basic, general critiques of the author's numerous points, but it is not exhaustive. They have many more mistakes of scholarship that I will not go into.
First off, is traditional church worship in liturgy pagan, as the authors claim? No. Look at what God commands his people to do in the Old Testament regarding worship. Surprise! It looks mighty pagan with vestments and songs and incense. Maybe the pagans had something right. Hmmm, maybe it is because pagans, whatever that means, are humans, too, and God created them and their hearts long to worship even what it doesn't fully know and there are only so many ways to do it, just like other things in our lives that take on a ritualistic element, hrmph! I think St Paul had something to say about that at Mars Hill while talking to actual pagans. Liturgical worship is pleasing to God. Read the OT and Acts and Revelation (now that is liturgy!) to tie it into how the earliest Christians worshipped. And no, Jesus did not somehow cancel out the Jewish forms of worship that his own Father instituted, as the practices of his followers demonstrate. They kept to the feasts, the prayers and the breaking of bread, still going to temple to pray. Were the apostles the first Paganized Christians? So much for the Spirit leading them into all truth, or is the publication of this book what that verse meant? I think not.
Secondly, you better be careful when you start playing the "Constantine did it" game, claiming he is the cause for so much of the pagan creepage. Think about the formation of the NT canon and then consider what so many scholars, like Bart Ehrman, do with that knowledge. If you follow their reasoning, and the reasoning of these two authors, then the doctrine of the Trinity is pagan and political, along with the canon of Scripture and the Council of Nicaea, when Jesus supposedly "became God". But our authors don't want to take it that far for obvious reasons, so they pick and choose what to blame the Emperor for, deciding to have their cake and eat it, too.
Thirdly, to say that having a building set aside for worship is pagan is like saying that reading and writing are pagan. It just doesn't follow and you cannot pretend that Acts' house-churches, which did have liturgies, however, are somehow the norm for all ages to come. Where does the bible teach that? Nowhere, of course, because the authors are flatly wrong again. There are buildings set aside for the purpose before the Peace, too. Besides, the houses where they worshipped early on became churches in the sense that they always worshipped there in the same manner, or in the tombs (uh oh, sounds a little pagan again), so in that sense they were churches that functioned as homes when not in use as a church.
Pagans talk about a Logos, so the Logos of St John is pagan. Pagans baptize, so baptism is pagan. Pagans speak Greek, so Greek is pagan. You see where this goes, and quickly. And who decides where it ends? The authors, or you, or me. You see, in this model we all read our bibles which tell us what to believe and you and I disagree so we act like our own popes and know in our hearts what is true. Thankfully, however, the bible is not meant to function like the Quran and it is the product of the Church that decided which books were in and which were out, based upon their usage in liturgical (pagan?) worship.
Fourthly, saying that there was no hierarchy in the NT seems to forget the role not only of Apostles, but also of the elders and overseers. See Elders in Every City: The Origin an Role of the Ordained Ministry for a better review of the material.
Lastly, I love how their ideal church structure is amazingly non-denominational Protestant in a curiously American Restorationist flavor. Hmm, it seems that they have been influenced by the pagan culture around them. Bring on the guitars and drums and open bibles and no-one-leading-anything worship going and in two weeks you will, even there, have a untraditional tradition begin to emerge, but in this case it will be amazingly tacky and probably heretical.
For an alternative view, please consider reading the following: The book of Revelation, Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament, The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary, The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth, Constantine's Bible: Politics And the Making of the New Testament, Against the Protestant Gnostics, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants, Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation: A Sourcebook of the Ancient Church (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church's Future), Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians",Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity With the Temple, the Synagogue and Common Ground: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity for the American Christian. Each of these books deserve to be read by you if you have any inkling of interest on this very important subject.
Christian Syncritism August 9, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
It is good to see it all in print. As one who has been accused of syncritism in Native American Churches, this book reveals the extent of the practice of syncritism inheirant in Christianity. Some of the repetition weakens the argument of the book; but, over all, every Christian should read this.
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