Kreider, Alan | Patient Ferment of the Early Church

The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire
Alan Kreider

Paperback: Baker Academic, 2016, 321pp.

Introduction 

In his important book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Alan Krieder makes the case that pagans were attracted to the habitus of the early Christians, the ways in which their convictions were deeply embodied in the shape of their shared life. He argues that churches in the earliest centuries were not content simply to read and discuss the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, but they earnestly strived to be communities that lived out these teachings in their everyday lives. He highlights patience as the one defining characteristic of Christianity in its first three centuries: “Christians believed that God is patient and that Jesus visibly embodied patience. And they concluded that they, trusting in God, should be patient – not controlling events, not anxious or in a hurry, and never using force to achieve their ends” (1). The habitus of the Early Christians was cultivated slowly over time through distinctive practices of the churches, including radical kinship, table fellowship, and participatory worship.

Radical Kinship

“Nothing did more to make the Christian communities distinctive than their sheer heterogeneity,” writes Kreider, “Not only were women and men together; so also were children and old people” (102). Pagan writers of the era were quick to criticize Christians for their radical inclusion of people on the margins of society. Kreider also notes that the early churches were distinctive in their inclusion of and caring for the poor – a work that was often led by the women of the churches. The bonds of this radical kinship were forged by the frequency and intensity of their gatherings (at least weekly, and often much more frequently than that). The church father Justin, for instance, wrote of his congregation in Rome in the second century, “We are constantly together.”

Table Worship-Fellowship

What did these early Christians do as they gathered together? “At the heart of early Christian worship,” notes Kreider, “was table fellowship.” The Pauline model of table fellowship, “an evening meal providing real sustenance and also in remembering Jesus … was still present 150 years later in Tertullian’s community in Carthage” (186-187). Tertullian gives an account of these meals: “[they] were real meals in which participants ate ordinary, nontoken food in modest quantities according to circumstance and in order to meet need. … Before the meal was a prayer of blessing, and after the meal there was a time of spontaneous worship that may have been a Christian adaptation of the Roman after-dinner symposium”(59).

Participatory Worship

Kreider also emphasizes the participatory nature of the early Christian gatherings. “In this face-to-face setting (of the early Christian gathering),” writes Kreider, “the Spirit might empower any member to contribute to the upbuilding of the entire community regardless of their education or wealth. This multivoiced participation intensified the sense of family identity and gave substance to the notion that the community was a family of ‘brothers’”(59). Their gatherings included: “a time of free worship – singing, speaking, drawing from their own hearts as well as possibly from the Scriptures. This may be the time when community members utter testimonies and prophecies; it is likely when they memorize Scriptures and learn and repeat the ‘precepts’ that inform their unusual behavior” (187-188).

Cultivating Patience

Kreider asserts that the habitus of the early Christians that was cultivated in their regular practices of gathering was characterized by what he calls patient ferment. Their patience stemmed from their convictions about the loving character of God, and how God has been revealed to us in the incarnation of Jesus. The early Christians, however, had a much more robust understanding of patience than what is common today, even among Christians. For them: “Patience is unconventional[.] It reconfigures behavior according to Jesus’s teachings in many areas, especially wealth, sex, and power” (35). Patience also was understood as hopeful, resting in God’s sovereignty that ultimately will reconcile all creation, and thus, it empowered Christians to resist the use of violent force and to accept religious freedom. Kreider describes the posture with which the early Christians embodied the virtue of patience as ferment: “[Fermentation] is gradual. Except for a stray bubble that emerges now and then, nothing seems to be happening. Until late in its operation, it is unimpressive. And yet it has a cumulative power that creates and transforms” (73).

“[The early Christians] believed that when the habitus was healthy,” Kreider notes, “the churches would grow.” (74) Ferment, then, is characterized among the early Christians not by their talking about and strategizing for growth, but rather by their commitment to live as faithfully as possible to the patient way of Jesus with one another and with their neighbors. Although Kreider acknowledges that the twelve apostles did play a significant role in the growth of the church, he believes the key to the church’s growth was ordinary Christians, and especially women, who Kreider believes comprised the majority of early churches, and whose “energetic involvement as community builders, providers of service, and practitioners of humble evangelism … inspired the entire Christian movement” (83). 

Wisdom for Our Accelerating Times

Why is The Patient Ferment of the Early Church a significant work for churches today? The pace of life in North America has been rapidly accelerating over the last century. Sociologist George Ritzer has observed that “the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more of American society as well as the rest of the world.” This acceleration should be deeply unsettling for us in the Christian tradition, within which patience is a defining virtue.

As an academic work of history, however, this book offers almost no reflection on the significance of its narrative for contemporary Christian faithfulness. Kreider does tack a one-page sketch on “the future of patient ferment,” to the end of the book’s final chapter. There are, however, some cleverly framed parts of the book in which the contrast of the early Christian communities with the broader pagan culture also parallels their contrast with Christian life today. The social dynamics of formation within a particular Christian community, for example, stands in contrast to the prevailing individualism within modern Christian life. 

In its explorations of Christianity’s growth in its earliest centuries, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church is an important historical contribution, but more importantly, in highlighting the patient faithfulness of the early Christians, Alan Kreider offers us wisdom for our own Christian faithfulness in accelerating times.