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The situation of the ancient and modern church seems strikingly similar: both are minorities in predominantly pagan cultures. The early church, of course, was eventually successful at converting its culture. So the natural question is, Are there any lessons we can learn to help us convert our culture?

We posed this and other questions to Robert Wilken, professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books on the early church, including Remembering the Christian Past (1995), and he is an editorial adviser to First Things, a journal that examines religion and modern culture.

Are the worlds of ancient Rome and the modern West parallel?

In some ways, yes: this culture is no longer our culture. It still has many Christian elements in it: the calendar (with major holidays like Christmas and Easter—though even they have been denuded), church architecture, choral music (much of which is Christian), art, and the like. But with the passing of each generation, the sensibility of the culture is less Christian. The feeling of being a distinct minority was very much the experience of early Christians.

But our situations are different in one key respect: today we in the West live in a post-Christian world, in an aggressive secular culture. This culture has known Christianity, and it is bitter toward Christianity; the culture is in revolt against what existed before. Ancient paganism did not have that kind of bitterness. It was curious about Christianity, even incredulous.

But what about the persecutions?

By the time you get to Decius in the middle of the third century, some Romans believed Christianity was a formidable foe. But Porphyry, the most thoughtful critic of Christianity in that period, recognized that Jesus was an extraordinary man. He just didn't want to admit he was the Son of God. He tried to fit Jesus into the divine pantheon of the Roman Empire.

In this issue, we've examined the role of apologetics, martyrdoms, and everyday evangelism. Are there other, often overlooked, reasons the early church grew in this environment?

Two lesser-known factors come to mind. First, Christians created a tightly knit community. There was strong leadership in the role of the bishop as the priest, the teacher, and the overseer (the person who presided over the life of the community). This is a wholly unprecedented kind of office.

Jews had the rabbi, who was a teacher and a scholar, but he didn't have priestly or administrative roles. Priests, Jewish and pagan, were generally not teachers or community administrators. Furthermore, no religion had tried to organize itself across the empire. But Christian bishops of different regions worked with one another. There are no real parallels to this in the ancient world.

Second, Christians had the Bible, a rich book of historical scope and literary diversity. In the Old Testament alone you have creation stories, history, poems and prayers, proverbs, and prophecy. In the New Testament, you have stories about Christ and books of theological interpretation. In the ancient world, there was nothing like it.

But the ancient world had stories of their gods, many of which are so interesting we preserve them to this day.

Yes, but in Christian teaching, you have a person who is human and more than human, who died and rose again—and all this is grounded in history, not myth. The ancient world had stories of gods coming back to life and miraculous happenings. But to talk about such things as if they happened in history, to have a good historical record of such things, that was unparalleled.

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