Diana Butler Bass Quote
Indeed, early commentators scarcely attacked Christian doctrines, but they consistently portrayed Christian devotional practices as radical and socially divisive. Christianity had effectively created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior.7 These behaviors, at odds with Roman custom, earned Christians the reputation of being revolutionaries and traitors to the good order of the state. Christian defenders, such as Justin Martyr (ca. 100–ca. 165), used the example of Christian practice to make the case that Jesus’s way mended lives: We who formerly…valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possession, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies.8
Indeed, early commentators scarcely attacked Christian doctrines, but they consistently portrayed Christian devotional practices as radical and socially divisive. Christianity had effectively created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior.7 These behaviors, at odds with Roman custom, earned Christians the reputation of being revolutionaries and traitors to the good order of the state. Christian defenders, such as Justin Martyr (ca. 100–ca. 165), used the example of Christian practice to make the case that Jesus’s way mended lives: We who formerly…valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possession, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies.8
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