Between the Bible and me
The version of Christian history I grew up with hit fast-forward after John’s Revelation and held it until the late 20th century.
(Century illustration)
In the beginning there was God, Adam, Eve, and a snake. Then came the patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets. Then Mary, Jesus, the disciples, and Paul. And then? Then came me! That is, then came the present. Then came now.
This is the brief but spectacular version of Christian history I grew up with. It unapologetically pressed a fast-forward button after John the Divine’s colorful Revelation and held it down until, oh, the late 20th century. It was as if nothing of import or consequence happened in the intervening millennia—as if what we believe and practice now came directly from the first century.
My experience might be a bit extreme, but I don’t think it’s wholly unique in contemporary American Christianity. We are rather ahistorical creatures. Our lectionary cycles, our Sunday school curricula, our adult formation materials—these typically maintain the yawning 2,000-year gap between biblical times and our times. If we speak of our sacred past at all, we speak of Moses and Miriam, Peter and Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist and maybe Junia. We don’t speak nearly as often of Origen, Perpetua, Justin, or Ephrem. We have no idea how and why we are heirs of the debates and debacles that rocked the church in the fourth, eighth, 11th, or even 18th centuries. Unless we’re specialists, we don’t dig deep into the lives and loves of the saints, martyrs, heretics, monastics, philosophers, popes, reformers, rebels, poets, truth tellers, and naysayers who made us who we are now.
