Many scholars have noted the similarities between the secular turn in our modern world and the ancient pagan world. In his new book, “Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World life the Early Church,” Stephen Presley considers how the early church engaged a pagan world and what we can learn from them.

The following excerpt considers one feature of the early church’s public life, their outward expressions of compassion and mercy that demonstrated the goodness of the church for the world. This was a hallmark of the early church and I hope it’s something that will distinguish the church today.

The early church did not simply think in terms of distinctiveness and purity; it also turned outward in active mercy and compassion. The very work of social reform and positive social change amounted to a positive good. Its high standards of purity marked it as a community bent on serving and caring for the least of those inside and outside their community. For us, developing cultural discernment entails thinking about not merely how the church is distinct but also how it serves in the social sphere and encourages virtue to flourish.

The Roman economy around the early church was preindustrial; 80 to 90 percent of the population worked in agriculture. There was virtually no middle class, and poverty was widespread throughout both the cities and the countryside. Thus, while social status could be shaped by gender, ethnicity, family lineage, legal status, occupation, or education, “financial status was often the most influential factor in determining one’s place in the social economy.” Early Christians thus had to live out their faith in the midst of a social world that was often harsh and difficult for much of the population.

Within this economic and social context, early Christians argued first and foremost that the church contributed a positive good to the culture. They prized the visible social witness of a community of faith living in holiness and love for God and neighbor. The wealthy and learned often mocked these virtues as a weakness. For example, the pagan writer Lucian of Samosata, in his work The Passing of Peregrinus, deemed Christian compassion as naively merciful. Peregrinus was a recent convert who had converted under false pretenses; when he ended up in prison and the church came to support him, Lucian found this to be ridiculously stupid.

These gullible people believe that they are immortal and will go on living. Therefore, they do not fear dying, and many of them are willing to give themselves up to the authorities. In addition, their first leader persuaded them that they become brothers and sisters when they give up their Greek gods and worship him. … They have no concern for possessions and treat them as common property. … Any imposter could easily join them and become wealthy by capitalizing on their naivete.

Indeed, some did aim to deceive the church and take advantage of Christian generosity and compassion. Ironically, however, the church’s compassion was ultimately attractive to the nonscoffers who benefitted from their generosity.

Even Julian, the fourth-century pagan emperor, recognized the intrinsic value of Christian morality. In a letter to the pagan high priest of Galatia, Julian complained that the pagans had not matched the virtues of the Christians: “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [or Christianity]?” The pagan community “ought really and truly to practice every one of these virtues. And it is not enough for you alone to practice them, but so must all the priests in Galatia, without exception.” What Julian observed in the fourth century represented the culmination of a long struggle between the virtues of the Christian society and those of traditional Rome.

These kinds of practices had the double effect of supporting the community within the church and attracting those from without. As Greer writes, “The example of Christian community life was probably more persuasive to unbelievers than the proclamation of the Christian message. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that at one level the church grew rapidly more because its common life acted as a magnet attracting people than because the Christians were effective in the public preaching.” There is no doubt that the Christian vision of compassion, emanating from within the church out into virtuous living in the larger culture, conveyed to the world around them their animating virtues of hospitality, mercy, and compassion, enacted with prudence.

Christian compassion was first directed toward those inside the church. The church was a family, and the family took care of each other. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius described how the church at Rome in the second century had shown compassion to its members and relieved people in all kinds of distress. It “never abandoned the notion that the new humanity could be compatible with the family in the ordinary sense of the word.” Its family orientation meant that “Christians often cared for one another, not necessarily for those outside the faith.”

This applied especially to widows and the most vulnerable in the community. In Roman culture, widows were penalized if they did not remarry within two years, whereas in the church, they were encouraged in the opposite direction. Consequently, the early church often had a high percentage of females and worked hard to care for them as a community.

We can see this in the case of almsgiving. Besides clear examples of this in the New Testament (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–35), by the middle of the second century, the church was organizing its tithes to help those suffering in the community. Justin Martyr described this as a cross-class unity: “the wealthy come to the aid of the poor, and we are always together. Over all that we receive we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.” During worship, after Scripture reading and the Eucharist, there was a time of almsgiving when “those who prosper, and so wish, contribute what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the Ruler, who takes care of the orphans and widows, and those who, on account of sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers who are sojourners among us, and in a word [he] is the guardian of all those in need.” The idea here was to demonstrate the provision of God for his people and the way that membership within the church served as a means to support and provide for their spiritual and material needs.

While their emphasis on Christian compassion began in the church, “it clearly often extended to the unbelieving neighbor.” Giving was a “regular and central part of Christian practice” and could not be contained within the Christian community alone. Note the last clause in Justin Martyr’s statement: the alms collected are distributed not just to “the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want” within the church but also to “those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us.” The Christian community was notable for caring for its poor and sick, even the pagans. Tertullian describes the social activity of Christians, saying, “they support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.”

In sum, the Christian community offered to all people “a radical message of love and charity, flaunted the idea that even the foolish and uneducated could be wise, that the virtuous simpleton could outargue learned philosophers, that the rich should be generous to the poor, that the holy should care for the sick.” The church was a light in the midst of the surrounding darkness, and its vision for human flourishing was ultimately more satisfying and successful than that of any other religious or philosophical system in the ancient world.

Excerpted from “Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church” by Stephen O. Presley ©2024 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. It is available for sale on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Stephen O. Presley is senior fellow for religion and public life at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy (crcd.net), an initiative of First Liberty Institute and associate professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Presley is the author of a couple forthcoming books: Cultural Sanctification: engaging the world like the early church (Eerdmans) and Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church (Baker). Follow him on Instagram: @stopresley and X (formerly twitter): @sopresley