Do You have a Favorite Pew Spot?

My daughter asked me last Sunday: “Where do you sit in church and why did you select that spot?” I thought readers might like to hear my response, even though they may not have reflected on where and why they situate themselves in a particular spot in the auditorium/sanctuary for religious services. My daughter was curious because she sits toward the back.

I am not sure there is anything significant about where one sits in church. There may be about why they sit there, so we may learn something about ourselves by asking the question. I am relatively certain that position in religious acts has little significance to God (if God there be),¹ although I think it is probable that church goers sit where they do for a variety of reasons, both conscious and unconscious reasons.

The Baptist church I attend is a three aisled church with two rows of pews. I regularly sit in the fourth pew from the rear of the church next to the outer aisle on the left facing the pulpit. I tell myself I sit there for utilitarian reasons, since it is under the loudspeaker, which aids in my fading hearing. But there are loudspeakers evenly spaced throughout the auditorium, which raises questions about the utility aspect of where I sit.

I like to sit towards the back of the auditorium because I can easily see most of the people attending the service that morning. And I also like to sit on the aisle because I can easily and more quickly get out of the pew when the service is done and not get caught in the crowd exiting after the service. Because of my balance problems, I have difficulty walking in a crowd, even with a cane.

I find this pew position to be quite comfortable. I have learned the names of those who generally sit around me, who, like I, usually also sit in the same place each Sunday. I have grown accustomed to viewing the service from where I sit, and there is something to say for the comfort of familiar surroundings. Besides, sometimes you like to be around people you know before the service begins. In fact, now that I think of it, everyone I know, attending the service, seems to sit generally in the same place each week.

There is, however, another possibility: that I sit where I do in church for reasons I may have repressed in my unconscious. Unlike the tax collector in Jesus’ story about two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple (Luke 18:10–14), I may have repressed the real reasons I sit where I do. The tax collector in the story seems fully conscious why he stands some distance away to offer his prayer to God (18:13). His distant location in the room corresponds to his sense of alienation from God and perhaps from others as well (18:13).

Sigmund Freud is usually given credit for discovering the unconscious, which he defined “as a reservoir of primitive motives and threatening memories hidden from awareness” in the mind. It is “[i]n classic Freudian theory, a part of the mind that houses emotional memories, desires, and feelings that would be threatening if brought to consciousness.”²

It is possible that I have subconsciously repressed my reasons for sitting where I do. For example, I am not formally a member of the church I have been attending for about four years. They consider me a “regular attender,”³ a classification the church formally recognizes. Thus, I may unconsciously take up a position toward the back of the auditorium because it is a position commensurate with my formal level of participation in church activities. That is to say, I sit where I do to reflect my status as a nonmember who is not fully involved in church activities. Hence, I may unconsciously think I ought to sit in the back some distance away from the center of activities at the front. I hasten to add that my conscious reason for sitting where I do is that I find it a comfortable spot, but who knows what is really going on in their repressed unconscious?

Why do you think you sit where you do in religious services?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For example, there is no prescribed “position” for prayer, for example: see Hedrick, “Representing Prayer in Mark and Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 22.3 (Fall 1995), 254.

²P. G. Zimbardo, R. L. Johnson., and V. McCann, Psychology. Core Concepts (6th ed.; Boston: Pearson, 2000), 342.

³A category of relationship to the church. For example, the “Church Roll” is titled: “Members and Regular Attendees.”

Ash Wednesday and Lent

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, happens on Feb 18 this year. It is a church event that begins a forty-day season of penitence and fasting leading up to the celebration of Easter. On Ash Wednesday ashes are marked on worshipper's foreheads to symbolize they are beginning the Lenten journey. Lent (the word means Springtime) is one of those religious observances of the Christian Church worldwide that I did not experience in my youth.¹ Although some churches in the Anabaptist tradition do observe it,² the Baptist church of my youth did not (First Baptist Church, Greenville, Mississippi, 1940-52). On the other hand, the small Baptist church that I now attend (Grace Baptist, Gladstone, Missouri) does observe it—ashes and all.³

In the fourth century the church invented Lent institutionalizing it with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as its basis and incorporating these religious acts into the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Lent has been practiced as 40 days of self-denial, altruism, and spiritual renewal preceding Easter. The Lenten season is promoted as a time of religious renewal, incorporating, as it does, personal contemplation, simple living, and personal honesty. It begins on Ash Wednesday and extends 40 days to resurrection Sunday (this year April 5). The church modeled the 40-day period on Jesus' temptation by Satan in the Wilderness (Mark 1:12–13; compare Matt 4–11/Luke 4:1–13 from the Q tradition). Only Matthew describes it as a period of fasting, however. Luke says that Jesus did not eat during this period. Mark says nothing about food. The difference between dieting and fasting is that fasting is given a religious connotation.

The earliest date for the observance of Lent in Christianity is 325 CE, following the Council of Nicaea, although the custom of fasting in connection with Holy Week goes back to the second century.⁴ Thus, Lent, as such, was not a part of the religious practices of the earliest first-century Jesus-gatherings as reflected in the genuine Pauline letters, for example. Nevertheless, fasting and prayer as a religious exercise were part of the Israelite tradition and hence were practiced in Judea during the time of Jesus (Luke 2:37). In fact, "the practice of fasting is found in all religions" and was "spread across the whole of the ancient world."⁵

Matthew gives a litany of criticisms attributed to Jesus as to how some practiced praying and fasting in Matt 6:1–18. One of these criticisms can easily be applied to the modern Christian practice of Lent, specifically with respect to marking one's face with ashes to indicate that one is observing the Lenten practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving:

And whenever you fast do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt 6:17–18 NRSV)

Do some make a parade of their almsgiving? Jesus criticized that practice, as well (Matt 6:1-4).⁶ It is a mystery to me why some churches continue the practice of Ash Wednesday and persist in its observance of ashes on the forehead in the light of these rather pertinent remarks attributed to Jesus.

Another aspect of Lent, mentioned earlier in this essay, is that of self-denial, likely derived from the idea of denying oneself food. The earliest Jesus-followers did practice a kind of self-denial, but it wasn't like the Lenten practice of denying oneself a few things one enjoys for a short period, like not drinking beer or not eating sweets during Lent, for example. Paul described his commitment to Christ as an all-consuming life-commitment; everything else by comparison he considered trash, loss, rubbish (Phil 3:7–11; Luke 9:23–24). Compared to Paul's idea of self-denial, the contemporary observance of Lent pales in comparison—the personal sacrifices are too little, the time frame too short.⁷

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent

²https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anabaptists. Greenville First Baptist belonged to the Southern Baptist Convention.

³Grace Baptist Church belongs to the American Baptist Convention.

⁴https://groundworkonline.com/blog/a-short-version-of-the-long-history-of-lent

⁵J. Behm, "νῆστις" [nēstis, fasting], vol. 4.26 in G. Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (G. Bromiley, trans.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967).

⁶Hedrick, http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Alms

⁷This essay appeared first on March 24, 2025. It appears here again edited and expanded: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Lent

Pondering Christianity's Legacy

A Millenium, hence, when the final hymn has been sung, and the last parish priest has laid by his chasuble for a final time at the close of Mass; when the only functioning baptistry is filled with dust, and the vibrant edifices of Christian worship are crumbling mausoleums housing the bodies of the faithful awaiting resurrection day, secular historians will ponder the Christian faiths of the twenty-fifth century much as historians today ponder the Greco-Roman religions of some two Millenia ago.

            I personally am unaware of any residual influence those religions of Greece and Rome play in contemporary religious life. No one today, so far as I know, calls in prayer the names of the eternal Gods of the Greco-Roman world. What remains of their crumbling temples are stark testimonies to the once great influence of their religions. What then served as their religious literature is today relegated to ancient history classes, much as might be the case with the Bible in a Millenium or so. The corridors of history are cluttered with the remains of “true” religions. (Everyone’s religion is the true religion.) This observation raises the issue of the legacy of Christianity; what will today’s Christian faiths have bequeathed to the generations after its demise and final gasp as a vital force in human life?

            Legacies are only a matter of opinion, but there is one feature sparked by the Judeo-Christian faiths that has elbowed its way into contemporary human culture as perhaps a lasting residue of Biblical, Jewish, and Christian faiths. It is the caring concern for the most vulnerable in society. Until recently, such a humane concern was even inculcated into some USA governmental programs (USAID, for example, which Mr. Trump has effectively all but eliminated) but is found primarily in innumerable private benevolent programs for the poor and disfranchised of society.

            In Hebrew Bible God was the protector of the most vulnerable in Israelite society, widows, orphans/fatherless, strangers/sojourners, and the poor.¹ For example:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. (Exod 22:21-22 RSV)

You shall not strip your vineyards bare; neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:10 RSV)

Christian faiths used the old covenant texts as Holy Scripture and to them added several postscripts in the form of what they called new covenant texts: gospels, letters/epistles, and an apocalypse. Within these postscript epistles/letters and gospels there is evidence that the gatherings of the earliest Christ followers continued the Israelite tradition of caring for the most vulnerable.

Jesus said, “Congratulations, you poor! God’s domain belongs to you. Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast. (Luke 6:20–21 SV)

In a parable: “Quick! Go out in the streets and alleys of the town, and usher in the poor, and crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21 SV)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (Jas 1:27 RSV)

First Timothy 5:9–16 reflects the existence in the second century of an organized ministry to pious church widows and Paul coordinated a collection of money to support the poor saints in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1–4; Rom 15:25–29; 2 Cor 8–9; Gal 2:10; Jas 2:16–17).

            Many of the references about care for the disadvantaged in the New Testament relate to those in the household of faith but at several points the concern seems to shade over into care for anyone in need (for example, Rom 12:19–20; 1 Cor 13:8–10; Gal 6:10). The clearest example of humane care for the nobodies of the world, however, is found is a story Jesus told about an unknown man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The man is mugged and left beside the road half dead. Two other men, likely officials of the Judean temple at Jerusalem, pass by him with a furtive glance while a third man, a Samaritan (despised by Judeans) was moved to act compassionately. He tended the wounds of the half-dead man, and took him to an inn, where he cared for him that evening. The next day he paid the innkeeper what amounted to two day’s pay and told him “Take care of him and whatever more you spend I will repay you when I come back” (Luke 10:29b–35). The Samaritan’s abundant benevolence is simply astonishing!² The story is a product of the history of Judaism, but it has been garnered from history’s dustbins by early Jesus followers, who elevated its putative creator to divine status. It represents (in my view) the best example of disinterested benevolence that Christianity has to offer. What in your view will be the most positive legacy of Judeo-Christianity?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹M. G. Vanzant, “Orphan,” NIDB, 4.343; B. B. Thurston, “Widow,” NIDB, 5.846–47.

²The story recalls an aphorism in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus: “Blessed are those who go hungry to fill the starving belly of another.” Gospel of Thomas 69b (my translation).

What's Good About the Church?

In many ways, today we appear to be headed toward a post-Christian era. One indicator of this turn of affairs is the large number of people who have joined the “Church Alumni Association” (CAA). People who are part of the CAA have either quit the church or their participation in regular formal religious activities has taken a far backseat in their lives. They might claim to be spiritual, but are not formally religious. This is not something new. Even at the dawn of the Christian era there were those who, for one reason or another, abandoned what we know traditionally as the Christian community.¹ Church leaders labeled such people apostates (Heb 6:4-6), but we do not know how they thought of themselves. Were they apostates or heretics?² A few of them are named in early Christian texts. For example, a certain Demas is mentioned positively as a companion of Paul (Col 4:14; Philemon 24), but he is also remembered negatively as having “forsaken” Paul and the Pauline church (2 Tim 4:16).³

The situation of the CAA raises the question: how does one maintain a connection to the Christian tradition when one no longer considers oneself a traditional Christian in terms of the fourth century confessions and creeds of the church, which are still universally used to define post-reformation Christianity? Naturally, there is a prior question: why would one even want to stay connected to the traditional Christian community, when one acknowledges that one is no longer traditionally Christian in terms of the modern church’s confessions and creeds?

Pondering an answer to the “why” question leads me to three personal observations in defense of staying connected to the post-reformation church. In my case the church is my heritage. I grew up regularly attending church, and it has played a major part in my adult life. No one ever completely escapes their own history. I can no more shake the church out of my system, than I can shake off my southern accent and Mississippi upbringing. Church, southern accent, and the Mississippi Delta in part define who I have become. For good or ill I will always be a Baptist “Delta boy,” although I have been exposed to strange and novel ideas, traveled a bit in the Western world, and lived for a spell in some exotic places.⁴ Even “progressive Christians” who, in their more extreme forms have abandoned traditional Christology and theology, have remained traditional in terms of their ecclesiology—that is, they still hold to the idea of the church as a positive social institution for housing their activities; however, they reorient the significance and meaning of the ordinances (baptism and Eucharist). In a sense progressive Christians are still a part of the ecclesiastical scene in society as churches that compete with traditional Christian Christology and theology.

As a responsible citizen of these United States, I have an interest in seeing the traditional church succeed. For all its ills, imperfections, warts, and blemishes, it aims to be a positive force in human society. The Gospel of Matthew (5:13-14) cites Jesus as telling his followers “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world” (Gospel of the Savior 1:4; compare Matt 5:13-14). Salt is a well-known preservative that enhances the flavors of the ingredients of food—it makes food tastier. And light is essentially necessary for life in a world that becomes dark about every 12 hours. This directive of Jesus is frequently interpreted as humanitarian service that is quite apart from their primary functions. Who would not want to be associated in some way with an institution that aims for the betterment of human life, society, and culture, even if it often misses the mark? A major focus of many progressive churches is “justice in the social order”—something progressive Christians learned from the traditional Christianity from which they have emerged.

As a retired educator, what I find best about the church, however, is that as an institution it sets aside one day a week for pondering, among other things, human values, ethics, and life’s eternal verities (if such there be).⁵ At its finest, it encourages church members to reflect on societal issues and on what one might consider life’s “enduring mysteries” (that is to say: things beyond the material aspects of life). There is no other institution in society that makes such focal points a weekly event. To be sure, one can also find a similar focus in university classes in philosophy and religious studies, but classes end every quarter or semester—and not everyone is able to go to the university. The church, however, is open every week. Because of the iconic role of the Bible in Western culture, weekly Bible study provides a focus for reflecting on such issues.

What, in your view, is good about the church that you can express in non-confessional “secular” language?⁶

Charles W. Hedrick
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹By this I mean to indicate the communities of those authors whose writings have found their way into the New Testament. There were also nontraditional communities in the earliest period who claimed the term “Christian” for themselves as well, although they were very different in thought from those who called themselves the “Orthodox”—like the author of the Gospel of Philip, for example.

²http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=apostates+or+heretics

³Three others are Hymenaus, Alexander, and Philetus (1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 4:16).

⁴The term “Delta boy” was coined (so far as I know) by the Rev. Dr. Buddy Shurden, another Mississippi Delta boy.

⁵http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=why+go+to+church

⁶This essay first appeared five years ago, Dec 20, 2019. It appears here edited, updated, and expanded.

How to describe a first-century Church?

The earliest references to the ekklēsia, an expression usually translated as "church," are better thought of as "gatherings," as found in the letters of Paul. He never specifically defines the nature of the church, although he uses the word over 40 times throughout his undisputed letters. These predecessors to what we experience today in the modern church were small, largely independent, gatherings of people. These gatherings were likely viewed as simply another private club or association among the many others in the Graeco-Roman world.¹

            The descriptive expression Paul used most often to describe the nature of the gatherings was "the gathering (ekklesia) of God (tou theou)."² That is to say: "God's gathering." Judging from that expression, the "church" appears to be a gathering of people around a particular concept of God. The Pauline gatherings were not conceived as part of a universal gathering. They appear to be a local phenomenon. It was the gathering of God at Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), for example.³ Or, Paul groups the gatherings in a regional configuration: the gatherings of Galatia (Gal 1:2; 1 Cor 16:1), or Asia (1 Cor 16:19), or Judea (Gal 1:22); or Macedonia (2 Cor 8:1); or in an ethnic configuration: all gatherings of the Gentiles (Rom 16:4), or all gatherings of Christ (Rom 16:16). To these latter two configurations, one must add "of which I Paul am aware."

Paul also thinks of these local and regional groups in an aggregate sense: the brother famous in all the gatherings (2 Cor 8:18; 11:28); Paul's rule in all gatherings (1 Cor 7:17).⁴ Both individually (Phil 4:15-16) and collectively (2 Cor 11:8) these gatherings were organized enough to provide financial support to Paul and others (1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 9:1-15).

Their gatherings seem to have been rather spontaneous with no set order to what they did once assembled (1 Cor 14:26-33). Leaders of the gatherings were not democratically elected but emerged in the gathering at God's behest, as Paul describes them as those with "spiritual gifts" (1 Cor 12:4-11, 27-31). Outsiders and unbelievers (1 Cor 14:23-25) were allowed in the gatherings, and sometimes allowed to have leading roles, such as settling a disagreement between members of the gathering (1 Cor 6:2-6). Their "pot-lucks," which passed as a commemoration of the "Lord's Supper," scandalized Paul (1 Cor 11:17-22).

Alas, in the gathering at Corinth women were required to veil themselves when they prophesied or prayed (1 Cor 11:2-16) and only the male members of the gathering were allowed to speak (1 Cor 14:33-35). I doubt, however, such restrictions held true in the gathering of Cenchreae, where sister Phoebe was a deacon (Rom 16:1), or in the gathering at the home of Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3-4; 1 Cor 16:19), since it was their house. Nor do I think that Junia, a lady "outstanding among the apostles" would be prohibited from speaking or required to veil herself in the gathering (Rom 16:7).

            The Pauline home gatherings appear quite different from modern churches with their fine buildings, education and other programs, large budgets, choirs, business meetings, set order for worship, and professional requirements for the ordination of ministers. By comparison, the forerunners of the modern church were simply a home gathering taking place under the radar of state sanction. I am coming to think of the modern church as a clinic for seekers after truth and the world-weary. It is a formal organization that offers religious advice, treatment, and instruction, and an opportunity to shut out the world with all its raucous demands.⁵

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Charles Hedrick, "Pondering the Origins of the Church," Wise Guy Blog," Feb 16, 2017:  http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2017/02/pondering-origins-of-church.html

²I Cor 1:2, 10:32, 11:16, 11:22, 15:9; 1 Thess 2:14; Gal 1:13; 2 Cor 1:1. Thrice he associates these gathering with Christ (Rom 16:16; 1 Thess 2:14; Gal 1:22). Once he refers to it as churches of the holy ones (i.e., saints, I Cor 14:33).

³Other specific gathering locations are Thessalonica (1 Thess 1:1), the gathering in the house of Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:4), the gathering at Cenchrea (Rom 16:1); or the gathering in the house of Philemon (Philemon 2), or the gathering at Philippi (Phil 4:15).

⁴Rom 16:23 likely refers only to the gathering at Rome.

⁵Webster's New World College Dictionary (4^th ed., 2002), s.v. "clinic," 5^th definition.

Is Giving Alms a Christian Obligation?

I ask the question because when I go grocery shopping, the islands separating street lanes around the grocery store are occupied by people holding placards asking for a handout. "Anything will help," many of them read. The spectacle raises the question how should one respond?

"Alms" (eleēmosunē), or charitable giving, is defined as something (food or money) given to relieve the needs of the poor. Altruistic giving, as an organized religious activity (i.e. giving "alms"), was unknown among the Greco-Roman religions in the ancient world,¹ but it does appear as a practice in the modern religions of Christianity and Islam. For example, in Roman Catholic Catechism, section 2462, almsgiving is considered "a witness to fraternal charity" and a "work of justice pleasing to God."² Alms (zakat) is one of the five pillars of Islam.

            The situation with respect to the early followers of Jesus is somewhat mixed. Matthew attributes to Jesus instruction (Matt 6:1-4; Luke 11:41) about how to give alms (eleēmosunē; ηλεημοσυνη), as if giving alms were a formally recognized community custom, and he endorses giving alms as a religious practice by directing something few of us do:

Sell your possessions and give alms; provide yourself with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens where no thief approaches and no moth destroys (Luke 12:33, RSV).

Oddly, however, alms as a formally recognized religious custom is not part of the undisputed Pauline religious gatherings nor is it found in most of the New Testament; the word "alms," eleēmosunē, only appears in Acts, Luke, and Matthew. The custom is also mentioned in the Apostolic Fathers (2 Clem xvi.4 and Did. 1.6; xv.4), a little later than the New Testament period.

            Among the earliest Hellenistic followers of Jesus altruistic behavior in giving rather than ritual behavior (alms) seems to have been the practice (1 Cor 16:1-3; 8:1-15; 9:6-7;Gal 2:9-10; 1 Thess 5:15; Phil 2:3-4; Eph 4:28; 1 Tim 6:17-18; 1 John 3:17; Jas 2:14-17). Most of these passages reflect a community ethic; in other words, it is altruistic behavior directed toward those within the religious community. Nevertheless, here and there, the altruistic behavior shades over toward those outside the community (Gal 2:10; Phil 2:3-4; 1 Thess 5:15; Eph 4:28). In the Pauline gatherings it was left up to individuals to decide what they should do by giving to relieve the needs of others (1 Cor 16:1-3; 2 Cor 8:1-15; 2 Cor 9:6-7). That was not necessarily the practice in the extended Christian family. In the Gospel of Thomas (around 200 CE), for example, a very difficult saying is attributed to Jesus:

Those who go hungry to fill the starving belly of another are favored (Gos. Thom. 69b).

In other words, one is mandated to share with others, nameless or otherwise, in spite of one's own immediate needs and the hunger pangs gnawing at one's own insides.³

            Hence, we find in the "Christian" tradition from its earliest beginnings to the modern-day contradictory advice for those seeking a compassionate way of giving to others. The options vary: ritualistic giving of alms, altruistic behavior to members of your own religious community, a universal altruistic giving, and finally a giving to others indiscriminately until your own resources are exhausted. They all agree, however, that those more fortunate among us have an obligation to help the less fortunate in the human family. The most practical advice for negotiating these alternatives comes from Paul: Give to others in need as you yourself prosper and regularly set something aside for that purpose (1 Cor 16:1-3). Give as you are able and a little more besides (2 Cor 8:3), but don't overburden yourself (2 Cor 8:13-14). Make up your own mind about your giving and develop a cheerful attitude about giving to others (1 Cor 9:6-7). The ultimate goal is to help raise the standard of living of the poor to match your own (2 Cor 8:13-14).

            The sum of the matter among early followers of Jesus is this: give systematically to those less fortunate.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://aeon.co/essays/the-poor-might-have-always-been-with-us-but-charity-has-not

²http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2462.htm

³ See Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus (Cascade, 2014), 89 for a discussion of this radical saying.

Worship in the Ancient Christian Tradition

It has been common for Baptists to describe what the church does on Sunday mornings at the customary hour of eleven as "worship." The gathering of the church at this hour is referred to as the "morning worship service." Baptists regard this ritual as one hour in the week that the church formally and corporately revers or pays homage to the deity,¹ or as Gaines S. Dobbins, the imminent Baptist educator, said it is an hour the church recognizes the "worth-ship" of God. Be that as it may, whatever else this gathering is, it is clearly a Baptist ritual or rite. Ritual is defined as "any formal and customarily repeated act or series of acts." A rite is defined as "a prescribed form or manner governing the words or actions for a ceremony."² The word that describes such rituals in the New Testament is sebomai, which means the expressing in gestures, rites, or ceremonies an allegiance or devotion to deity; that is to say worship in a corporate sense.³

            In my experience virtually all protestant and catholic churches follow similar rituals (Quaker services, I have read, are more spontaneous⁴). Until recently the Baptist Church that I currently attend follows, in general, a basic ritual for Sunday morning worship that varies a bit depending on emphasis or the season. The following elements seem regularly standard, however:

Welcome; Call to worship; Hymn/Praise song; Opening prayer; Hymn/Praise song(s); Prayers of and for the people followed by the Lord's Prayer; Reading of the text for the day; Special Music; Preaching/Sermon/Lecture; Prayer; Song of Commitment/Dedication; Benediction, Postlude.

Ritualistic language introduces aspects of the various parts, particularly in the benediction. A short meditative video is generally used in various parts of the service.

Describing this Sunday morning ritual as "worship" led me to ponder two questions: (1) how does what Baptists do on Sunday morning compare to the earliest gatherings of Jesus followers? (2) how is it that corporate ritual can be construed as worship?

The early Jesus followers (not yet Christians) did gather together (1 Cor 11:17-33) for encouragement (Heb 10:25), to gather contributions for mission work (1 Cor 16:1-4) on the first day of the week (1 Cor 16:1-4; Acts 20:7). They also gathered to break bread (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 11:17-22). Music, teaching, admonishing one another, and giving thanks to the Lord were also a part of their gatherings (Eph 5:19-20; Col 3:16). The only extended passage I know, describing a gathering of Jesus followers, is 1 Cor 14:1-40. This passage is unlike gatherings in the mainstream churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation (Anabaptist, Anglicanism, Lutheran, Reformed, Catholic, Orthodox). It focuses on speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophesying. None of which, in my experience, have been a part of Baptist gatherings for worship. Paul tried to order the confusion in the gathering with this comment: "When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification" (1 Cor 14:26). Yet he concedes that prophecy and tongues should continue to be a part of the Corinthians' gatherings (1 Cor 14:39-40). But I do not find in any of the passages I mentioned that these early followers of Jesus described their gatherings as worship.⁵ The word worship is derived from Old English and Middle English rather than from Greek. In the writings of the earliest New Testament writer (Paul) five words have been translated as worship in modern translations: proskuneō (1 Cor 14:25); latreuō (has the sense of carrying out of religious duties of a cultic nature; Rom 1:9, 25; Phil 3:3); sēbazomai (Rom 1:25); latreia (Rom 12:1; 9:4); leitourgeia (2 Cor 9:12; Phil 2:17, 30). The lexicon Danker-Bauer translates only three of these words using the English word worship: proskuneō, sebazomai, and latreia. It appears to me that Paul uses two of these words to describe individual worshippers (1 Cor 14:25; Rom 12:1; 9:4). He uses latreia once (Rom 9:4) describing worship in a corporate sense when writing of the worship of the ancient Israelites (as does Heb 9:1).⁶ In Romans 12:1 he appears to address my question when he describes worship as an individual act rather than a corporate act:

I therefore appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship (logikēn latreian).

            The heart of the issue seems to lie in the following question: are cultic acts to be considered worship or is worship only characterized by an inner attitude of awe? No doubt many Baptists on a Sunday morning only formally carry out cultic acts of a ritual nature, for who never dozes or finds their minds wandering during prayers or sermons. And if that is the case how can a corporate act be worship if all are not completely engaged?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The deity that is the focus of the service is increasingly changing from God to Christ under the influence of the Trinitarian dogma, which is not reflected per se in the New Testament.

²Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s. v., ritual, rite.

³F. C. Danker and Walter Bauer, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.; Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 2000).

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_for_worship#:~:text=A%20meet.ing%20for%20worship%20is,comparable%20to%20a%20church%20service.&text=Attenders%20are%20encouraged%20to%20speak,and%20beneficial%20to%20the%20meeting

⁵Except, perhaps, for Eph 5:19.

⁶It is worth mentioning that at least two of the prophets report that Yahweh was repulsed by the corporate worship of the ancient Israelites: Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8.

Thomas Paine and the Bible, Third Part

Readers of the Age of Reason should not assume that Paine is in step with all positions of modern critical scholarship. One way that he is out of step with the results of modern scholarship is his view of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Judging by the current state of scholarship, Paine correctly understood that the gospels were anonymous and that their authors were not eye witnesses; that they contradicted one another in many ways both large and small; that they were written many years after the times they describe by persons he described as “half-Jews”¹⁶ (meaning, I gather, that they were from a mixed culture); that they were not written by apostles.¹⁷ He thought, however, that the canonical gospels were independent of one another,¹⁸ whereas the dominant position in modern scholarship postulates that a literary relationship exists between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source drawing on another source no longer extant (Quelle, “source”) for material Matthew and Luke shared but does not exist in Mark. The dominant position on the Gospel of John is that John was written independent of the other three gospels.

            Paine, however, was not really interested in advancing the cause of critical scholarship of the Bible. He was primarily interested in the Bible only as a means of debunking Christianity as a religion of revelation, for Christians argued that the Bible was the word of God, God’s revelation to the world. Paine, on the other hand, argued that it is “fraudulent” to classify the Old and New Testaments as “being all revelation”:

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrible cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us. Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Old Testament is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the [Old Testament] have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the [New Testament the cause of ] the other.¹⁹

Nevertheless, Paine should probably be regarded as something like an “independent” scholar in the history of biblical scholarship. In contemporary language the term means that the individual so designated is not connected to an institution of higher learning, but has the requisite credentials and demonstrated learning to be included among the “guild” of scholars. In Paine’s case he would qualify as a scholar who demonstrated sufficient knowledge of the subject to be taken seriously by others in the field of the critical study of religion. “Layman” is an ecclesiastical term, meaning that that an individual is not ordained clergy, and hence would not be familiar with the professional knowledge of clerics. This term is surely not appropriate for Paine because of his demonstrated hostility against both the church and members of the clergy. As a deist, he would not want to be associated in any way with traditional Christianity.

Although his writing does not reflect the discipline of a mind academically trained, his insights were original for his day. He deserves to be included among the vanguard of modern critical scholarship and required reading for theological seminaries.

Paine deserves the last word. To close this essay, here is a challenging comment from Thomas Paine completely dismissing the entire theological enterprise as practiced in a Christian context, which relies on the Bible for its data:

The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.²⁰

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹⁶Paine Collection, 217, 219.

¹⁷Paine Collection, 210-16.

¹⁸Paine Collection, 212, 216.

¹⁹Paine Collection, 222.

²⁰Paine Collection, 225.

Thomas Paine and the Bible, Second Part

It is surprising to me that, although my graduate education was in the critical study of the New Testament literature in its historical context, I never read Paine’s Age of Reason. I cannot recall offhand that anyone ever cited Paine as a part of the history of biblical criticism. Because of the character of his book, one would think that at some point I should have encountered Paine’s work since he preceded both D. F. Strauss and F. C. Baur in describing the importance of mythology and its influence on Christianity and was interested in the historical Jesus before Ernst Renan.¹

Paine’s writings reflect a better than competent knowledge of the content of the biblical texts. Although he lived at a time when public education was not compulsory, on his own initiative he read in translation many of the Greek and Roman classics, especially in the sciences.² He was basically self-educated with respect to the biblical texts yet he anticipated many of the positions that critical scholarship has come to hold today.

            For example, Paine anticipated the necessity for textual criticism, a basic approach to the Bible in modern criticism, but did not have the requisite skills or training to follow it through. Textual criticism is an investigation of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible with a view to producing a version of the biblical texts that restores the readings of the originals.³

It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as they now appear under the name of the Old and New Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.⁴

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidence that human language, whether in speech or in print cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.—The Word of God exists in something else.⁵

Paine’s Age of Reason is a part of the Quest for the historical Jesus, an attempt to separate what can be known of the historical man from the Christ of early Christian faith. Paine viewed Jesus as the son of God “in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is Father of All.”⁶ The canonical gospels do not present a “history of the life of Jesus Christ but only detached anecdotes of him.” Little is known of his childhood.

Where he lived, or how he employed himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his father’s trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that he had any school education, and the probability is that he could not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being able to pay for a bed when he was born…Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.⁷

The public career of Jesus was short, lasting “not more than eighteen months.”

            Paine raises the issue of traditional material being found in the Bible, meaning that it was not invented by the author in composing the text in which it appears but was material passed down until its inscription. For example, he says of the Genesis account of creation:

[I]t has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know how they came by it.⁸

The canonical gospels he regarded as “founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between; and which they have nevertheless published under the names of the apostles of our Lord…”⁹ The recognition that the Bible contains traditional material anticipates at least two contemporary critical approaches to the biblical literature: Form Criticism (the attempt to identify oral forms in Old and New Testaments before they became incorporated into the biblical texts),¹⁰ and Tradition Criticism (the study of Hebrew and Christian oral traditions).¹¹

            Here are a few of the conclusions that Paine shared with contemporary critical scholarship: Moses did not write the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible);¹² the Book of Proverbs was not written by a single author but it is a collection;¹³ David is not the author of the Psalms; they are rather a collection;¹⁴ and the canonical gospels were not written by eyewitnesses.¹⁵ It seems clear that Paine shared the critical spirit of modern scholarship.

            The third part of Thomas Paine and the Bible will follow.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Paine Collection, 148, 153, 156, 161, 170. See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1968) 1968. For Strauss, pp. 68-77; for Renan, pp. 180-92. For F. C. Baur see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Christian_Baur

²Paine Collection, 172, 186.

³W. Randolph Tate, “Textual Criticism,” in Interpreting the Bible. A Handbook of Terms and Methods (Hendrickson: Peabody, MA, 2006), 368.

⁴Paine Collection, 158.

⁵Paine Collection, 160.

⁶Paine Collection, 161.

⁷Ibid.

⁸Paine Collection, 158,

⁹Paine Collection, 217.

¹⁰Tate, Interpreting the Bible, 137-38.

¹¹Ibid., 374-75.

¹²Paine Collection, 186.

¹³Paine Collection, 159.

¹⁴Paine Collection, 200.

¹⁵Paine Collection, 216.

Thomas Paine and the Bible, First Part

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born American. As a youth he attended an English Grammar School (Thetford) for five years (1744-49) before he was apprenticed to his father as a corsetmaker at age thirteen. Later as a master corsetmaker he opened his own shop in Sandwich, Kent in England. He emigrated to America in 1774 at age thirty-seven, where he blossomed into a political activist, philosopher, political theorist, revolutionary, and Bible critic. He is best known for his political pamphlet (1776) Common Sense that had a profound influence on the common folk of the American colonies leading them to support the cause for independence from England.¹

            He was born into a religious family (his father was Quaker and his mother, Anglican), but he himself in his maturity described himself as a Deist, which meant the following to Paine:

I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.²

The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating, the power, wisdom, benignity of the Deity in his works [i.e., nature], and endeavoring to imitate him in every thing, moral, scientific, and mechanical.³

When we behold the mighty universe that surrounds us, and dart our contemplation into the eternity of space, filled with innumerable orbs revolving in eternal harmony, how paltry must the tales of the Old and New Testaments, profanely called the word of God, appear to thoughtful man.⁴

            Paine was severely critical of organized religion of any sort⁵ and particularly harsh in his condemnation of Christianity and “revealed religion”:

The Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.⁶

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism but with little deism, and is near to atheism as twilight is to darkness.⁷

[T]he church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.⁸

            He had no documented formal training in biblical criticism and did not know Latin or the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew.⁹ Nevertheless he wrote several pamphlets critical of the Bible, which were collected to form the Age of Reason¹⁰ by applying what scholars have later come to know as “literary criticism” in analyzing the biblical texts. Basically his analysis relied on human reason and common sense in reading the texts. What is surprising is that he claimed to have written Part One of the Age of Reason without access to a written Bible at the time of writing but rather he was writing from memory.¹¹

Paine was arrested in France on charges of treason and jailed in the French prison at Luxembourg on December 28, 1793.¹² His release was secured by his friend James Monroe on November 4, 1794.¹³ Before he was arrested, he hurriedly finished Part One of the Age of Reason, and entrusted it to a friend, as he was on his way to prison.¹⁴ While he was in prison, Part One was translated into French and published without Paine having proofed it.¹⁵ Not knowing what might happen to him or the manuscript he had written, Paine says he committed it through his friend Joel Barlow “to the protection of the citizens of the United States.”¹⁶ Part Two of the Age of Reason was written in the home of James Monroe while he was recovering from his incarceration of nearly a year. Monroe found him in prison “more dead than alive from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess. It was not supposed that he could survive.”¹⁷

After his release from prison, he acquired “a Bible and a Testament,” and commented “that I have found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in anything, in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.”¹⁸

Much of Paine’s critique of the Bible in the late 18th century surprisingly parallels many of the insights of contemporary critical biblical scholarship. Paine’s critique of the Bible and modern critical scholarship will be the subject of a second essay to follow.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

²Thomas Paine, Thomas Paine Collection. Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination of the Prophecies: Age of Reason (1793-94), 152. [No editor or publication information given.]

³Paine Collection, 173.

⁴Paine Collection, 233.

⁵Paine Collection, 152.

⁶Paine Collection, 156.

⁷Paine Collection, 167.

⁸Paine Collection, 162.

⁹Paine Collection, 169-70, 172.

¹⁰Age of Reason consists of two parts and a never published third part, consisting of several essays: an Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination of the Prophecies, Appendix; and an essay entitled, My Private Thoughts on a Future State: Paine Collection. Table of Contents.

¹¹Paine Collection, 183.

¹²Luxembourg Prison was formally a palace but turned into a prison during the French Revolution:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-paine-is-arrested-in-france#:~:text=Thomas%20Paine%20is%20arrested%20in%20France%20for%20treason.&text=Paine%20moved%20to%20Paris%20to,for%20crimes%20against%20the%20country.

¹³Paine Collection, 149.

¹⁴Paine Collection, 183.

¹⁵Paine Collection, 145, 183.

¹⁶Paine Collection, 183.

¹⁷Paine Collection, 149.

¹⁸Paine Collection, 184.