How Early Christians Became a Family

Happy Sunday, and welcome back to Dispatch Faith. Hope the start to your year has been a happy one.

It’s easy to throw around labels with little thought as to what they were supposed to signify originally. In that way they can function as clichés—words we use without ever really stopping to think about whether they’re the best fit for what we’re trying to communicate.

That’s why Norman Hubbard, a campus minister and author, thinks it’s worth Christians’ time to re-examine the words with which first-century Christians addressed each other, why they were so counter-cultural, and how modern-day Christians might use them more intentionally today.

Norman Hubbard: How Early Christians Became a Family

City-limit signs often offer you their welcome as you drive into many small towns in the U.S, and sometimes local churches and civic organizations join in. When I drive into the little community of Bayport, Minnesota, for instance, just south of the most recently abandoned yacht on the St. Croix River, three community churches welcome me: Bethlehem Lutheran, St. Croix United, and St. Charles Catholic. If you drive into Bayport—may I recommend the summer—they will welcome you, too. If you wanted to find one of these churches, you could probably stop at the local tire shop and ask the lapsed Catholic mechanic where it is located.

I suppose this would be true in most small towns in America. It is certainly true in much of Europe. I’m writing this from southern Spain. If you are in Cadiz and want to find a church, look up. The spires of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross Over The Waters dominate the skyline. In Mijas? Half the tourists are pointing their cameras at the Ermita del Calvario on the hill. In most cities of the Western world, it’s easy to find a place where Christians gather for worship. 

None of this was so during the first few centuries of the Christian movement, and remembering why—and how those early Christians designated themselves and each other—can offer lessons for today.

Put yourself in the shoes of a traveler to ancient Tyre, a city conveniently located where the modern city of Tyre is, in Lebanon. How would you find a church in the first century? There would be no signs. The mechanic at the local Tyre Shop probably couldn’t help. You couldn’t even ask for a “church.” The word “church” (ekklesia in Greek) was a common term that meant “civic gathering.”

You could also forget about asking where the “Christians” gathered. For a time, no one used this term at all. When it came onto the scene (see Acts 11:26), it was almost certainly a slur. In some cases, it could have been lodged as a criminal accusation (see 1 Peter 4:15-16). Asking someone at the Tyre Shop where to find a “Christian church” might have sounded like you were searching for a civic gathering of anti-imperial agitators.

So if you wanted to find a Christian church 2,000 years ago in places like Tyre, you could start by asking where the Jewish synagogue was. For at least a few centuries, Christianity would have been regarded by many as a Jewish sect. In his book, The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark indicates that churches and synagogues were meeting in the same buildings as late as the fourth century A.D. Since Jewish groups enjoyed an appreciable measure of protection in the Roman Empire, there’s a good chance you could find a synagogue in many cities.

But how would you know whether the synagogue assembly was a group of Christians? You could start by looking at the composition of the group and then listen to what they called each other. If you happened upon an assembly that consisted of Jews and non-observant non-Jews, there’s a good chance you were among Christians. If some of them referred to one another as “brothers and sisters,” “beloved,” or “saints,” this would be a dead giveaway. Biblical scholar Paul Trebilco calls terms like these “self-designations” in his monograph, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament. If you stumbled across a mixed assembly of Jews and Gentiles, wealthy patrons and indigent slaves, men and women, all referring to each other as “brothers and sisters,” your search was over. You were among Christians.

Terms of self-designation.

Terms of self-designation help people identify and shape the social groups to which they belong. They tell us who is “in” and how close (or distant) we stand from one another. For example, I recently joined a group of expats for a game of pickup basketball in Alhaurín de la Torre, Spain. When one player removed his sweatshirt to reveal an Auburn Tigers T-shirt, I immediately walked over and said, “War Eagle!” This is how Auburn fans greet one another, everywhere in the world, even when our football team is shamefully bad. (But, hey, “Call God,” there’s always basketball!) “War Eagle!” is conversational shorthand that can quickly unlock a closer relationship with a complete stranger.

That’s what our hypothetical church in Tyre was doing when they referred to one another as “brothers and sisters” or “beloved.” They were closing long-standing gaps between Jew and Gentile, or the stratified stations occupied by rich and poor. Or to be more precise, they were announcing with simple words their belief that these gaps had already been closed by their faith in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Their language reflected what they knew to be true. 

It is good when our descriptions of ourselves map onto reality. As Tom Holland has put it in his book, Dominion, “Christians did believe they belonged to a common ethnos: a people. The bonds of their shared identity spanned the world, and reached back across the generations … Never before had there been anything quite like it: a citizenship that was owed not to birth, nor to descent, nor to legal prescriptions, but to belief alone.” 

By far the most common term of self-designation in the New Testament was “brothers and sisters” (adelphoi in Greek). It’s used in direct address 77 times and in self-description 111 times. In fact, it was used three times more often than any other term of self-designation in the letters of the New Testament. If you found yourself in a Christian gathering in the first or second century, there is a good chance this is what most people would be calling each other. A Beatles fan or Southern Baptist might not find this odd, but there was no precedent for it when the church began.

Calling one another ‘brothers and sisters.’

It might not have been surprising to hear Jewish believers in Jesus referring to other Jews as “brothers and sisters.” The apostle Peter used the term this way to address a crowd in Jerusalem during the Feast of Pentecost, for instance (see Acts 2:29). Jews, after all, traced their ancestry through their fathers back to Abraham. (Sociologists would call this a “patrilineal kinship group.”) They believed they were one family because of blood and covenant, and they rigorously protected both from outside influence. Jewish law required endogamous marriage, and various covenant markers like circumcision and keeping kosher preserved a barrier between Jews and non-Jews. 

This was one of the most prominent distinctions between normative Judaism at the beginning of the first century and the sect that sprung up around Jesus. Jewish followers of Jesus began welcoming non-Jews into their assemblies without requiring them to undergo circumcision or observe all the Law of Moses. They believed that God’s salvation and Spirit were bestowed on all people solely by grace through faith in the Son of God. At least, this was the argument that carried the day at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:6-21). The church leaders at that gathering held that everyone united by faith in Jesus was reconciled to God and to everyone else who believed in Jesus. They signaled this conviction every time they called each other “brothers and sisters.” 

Most scholars today call this use of “brothers and sisters” a metaphor (see Reider Aasgaard in My Beloved Brothers and Sisters) or a specimen of “fictive kinship language” (see Joseph Hellerman in The Ancient Church as Family). I suppose this is fine insofar as modern classification goes, but I doubt the earliest Christians would have seen it this way. Of the 188 times they called one another “brothers and sisters” in the New Testament, they never said they were like siblings. They seem to have believed they really were. New relational bonds had been made actual (not merely possible and certainly not “metaphorical”) by Christ’s sacrifice (Ephesians 2:11-22). New relationships, for them, were simply one more aspect of God’s new creation, inaugurated at the cross of Christ. As the apostle Paul explained it, “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”(2 Corinthians 5:16–17).

It is therefore inadequate to say the early Christians were trying to imitate families. So far as they understood the gospel, they were a family, and they were trying to figure out how to live accordingly. Several New Testament letters show how difficult this was: What were Jewish believers in Jesus supposed to do when Gentile “brothers and sisters” showed up to meals with un-kosher food (Romans 14:13-15)? How was a believing master supposed to relate to a slave who had put his faith in Jesus (Philemon)? What kind of deference were wealthy patrons to be shown in an assembly where all were siblings (James 2:2-6)? 

Working out the details of solidarity and support within the Christian family was not easy. (Was it easy to grow up with your brother or sister?) God had not made Christian siblingship easy. He had made it actual, and the world had never seen anything like it before. 

Beloved brothers and sisters today.

It would probably do Christians some good to reflect on this aspect of the gospel and the gaps that separate us today. Is there room in your church for people who do not vote like you? Do most of the people you worship with share your tax bracket? Does your Sunday service (or shared meal afterward) consist largely of people from your own ethnic group? Have the forces that have molded our culture into carefully partitioned sub-groups also shaped the community you worship with? In other words, does your church look like the world around you? If so, there is good news: You can close big gaps with small words when these words reflect reality. Christianity posits that the work of reconciliation among believers was accomplished roughly 2,000 years ago at the cross. Christians are not siblings because of our choices but because of God’s grace.   

A sensible first step for many believers today would be to use the language of the early church and start calling one another something more than “Christians.” I have made a book-length argument that we can and should put our words to work like believers did in the first century. We cannot create a cosmos like God did with his words, but we can shape a world with our words. Heaven knows, enough people are tearing it down with theirs. For many, it will not feel natural to call other Christians “brothers and sisters” or “beloved,” but when does the experience (or explanation) of supernatural grace feel natural?

Knox Thames: Will the World Protect Syria’s Religious Minorities?

Few will miss the totalitarian regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was forced from power last month. But myriad questions remain regarding Syria’s future, including what will happen to the country’s religious minorities as another Islamic group with a history of extremism assumes power. On the website today, Knox Thames, a former special envoy with the State Department, examines those questions and argues the U.S. has a role to play in safeguarding religious liberty there. 

Headlines about Syria belie its diversity. The U.S. government estimates that 74 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, but Syria’s Christian population was one of the largest in the Middle East before the war, at about 2 million strong. The faithful belong to various historic churches, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic churches, such as the Maronites, and the Assyrian Church of the East, but there are also small Protestant denominations and underground converts from Islam. Yet years of fighting have led thousands to flee. Open Doors—a nonprofit that advocates for persecuted Christians around the world—believes approximately 579,000 remain. That’s a precipitous drop, but Syria’s Christian community is still one of the largest in the region.

Even within the majority Sunni Muslim community, diversity exists among Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, and others. Roughly 15 percent of the population identifies with minority Muslim sects, such as Alawites and Ismailis. In addition, small communities of Druze inhabit areas near the Lebanese and Israeli borders, while Yazidis are found in the northeast.

Post-war Syria presents a myriad of problems for all Syrians and for the new Trump administration. Bashar Al-Assad’s brutality created a humanitarian catastrophe. Of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million, roughly half are displaced or have sought refuge in Lebanon, Turkey, or Europe. The world is watching how the new ruling power in Damascus, Islamist rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), will govern. Despite HTS’ past connections with terrorists, initial statements pointed toward an inclusive future for a multicultural Syria.

The stakes are high not just for Syria itself, but for the entire region, Thames writes.

Syria stands at a crossroads, its future uncertain and its diverse communities in peril. A Syria that respects the rights of all its citizens is not just a moral imperative—it is essential for lasting peace and stability in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing.

The Dispatch Faith Podcast

Hubbard joined me on this week’s Dispatch Faith podcast to talk about his essay, which was adapted from a book-length work on the topic publishing this coming week. These weekly conversations with Dispatch Faith contributors are available on our members-only podcast feed, The Skiff. Dispatch members can learn how to add it to their podcast platform of choice here. If you want to hear those more in-depth conversations with Dispatch Faith writers, join us! 

Another Sunday Read

Since we published our most recent issue of this newsletter, former President Jimmy Carter died. While obituaries have abounded, historian Thomas S. Kidd wrote for The Dispatch about Carter’s most perplexing legacy: his inability to capture the hearts of white evangelicals despite his steadfast devotion to his faith and. “Thus, the trajectory of the white evangelical vote was uncertain in 1976. So was the future of the [Southern Baptist Convention], which was Carter’s denomination at the time. In fact, Carter’s presidency would become one of the chief catalysts of the SBC’s transformation into a uniformly conservative denomination. The SBC had been the nation’s largest Protestant group since the mid-20th century, and it was a surprisingly diverse organization, both theologically and politically. Despite his evangelical testimony and personal adherence to the Bible, Carter was part of a small but influential group of SBC moderates and liberals. These SBC progressives affirmed abortion rights in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, and they supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which sought to enshrine legal equality between the sexes in the Constitution. Carter’s SBC was ‘evangelical’ in the sense that it supported evangelism, Christian missions, and the special authority of the Bible, along with Baptist distinctives such as the baptism of Christian believers instead of infants. But SBC pastors and professors were not in agreement about the ‘inerrancy’ of scripture. Was the Bible entirely without error, whether of facts or morals? Southern Baptists gave a range of answers. Neither did SBC members agree about the role of women, especially in the home and in the church.” 

A Good Word

The Eaton fire that tore through parts of Los Angeles this week also destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, which had stood for more than a century. The story of how members there saved the synagogue’s Torah is well worth a read itself. But also fascinating is the story of the Iranian origin of that Torah, as Rob Eshman reports for Forward. “The Nehdar Torah’s survival and reemergence echoes the story of the synagogue that shelters it. In 1934, Samuel Nehdar, a leading importer in the Iranian port city of Khorramshahr, commissioned the Torah to mark the death of his first wife, the daughter of a famous rabbi in the region. Nehdar remarried and moved to Tehran, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1967. Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, fierce battles during the Iran-Iraq War destroyed Khorramshahr. The synagogue housing the Torah was ruined. Iran recaptured Khorramshahr in 1982, and someone — it’s unclear who — took the Torah to Tehran for safekeeping. By then, Nehdar was living in Pasadena. According to his son Raymond, Nehdar, who was a devout Jew, sent a 10-page letter directly to Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, to request ‘from one holy person to another’ the Torah that had been part of the family for so many years. … About six months later, the FBI notified Nehdar that a crate had arrived at the port of San Pedro from the Islamic Republic of Iran, addressed to him. Who mailed the crate remains another mystery. When the crate made its way to his home, Nehdar opened it and found the Torah carefully wrapped inside. There was also a letter from the Ayatollah confirming that he did study Hebrew as part of his religious training.” Now the Nedhar Torah will be an integral part of the congregation’s efforts to rebuild after a devastating fire—and probably not for the first time. “But while houses and temple buildings are gone, the community persists. This Shabbat the rabbi will open the ark to reveal the Torahs, though the Nehdar Torah will remain in storage for safekeeping during the transition. Still, its shiny silver cylinder belies an important, telling part of its story. When the Nehdars first unwrapped the Torah after its long journey from Iran, they found the silver case covered in black soot and ash — a sure sign it had once survived a devastating fire.”