Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

The book is Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. It was originally published in 2002 by Present Testimony Ministry. I read the Barna Books (a Tyndale House imprint) 2008 hardcover edition. I read it in November of 2024.  

The title refers to the thesis of this book which is that many aspects of the Christian church come from pagan practices. The claim being made is that most of the elements of Christianity as it is observed today have pagan origins and we should not practice them. The accusations are wild. Viola and Barca disparage the idea of a church building, they repudiate pastors, ordered Sunday service, even numbering chapters and verses in the Bible. It gets absurd. 

I want to say someone from Castle Hills gave me this book, if I’m remembering correctly. One of the youth leaders, I think, gave me this book to learn about church history. I remember they made a comment to ignore all the anti-church aspects of it. It’s been sitting on my shelf for years. I just finally got around to reading it. 

I read this book because I agree with the fact that there is no neutrality in the world. You are either pagan or you’re Christian. Also, we need to face the fact that all of us used to be pagan before we were saved. 

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

That “and such were some of you.” He’s talking about all of us. And there is an aspect of identity in this verse. You were once one thing, and now you are something different. A change has been made. We don’t take that new identity seriously enough. We are no longer that unrighteousness person. We are no longer pagans. Viola and Barna seem not to be so convinced. 

These authors’ message is that virtually everything we know Christianity to be is all wrong. Sunday morning service, sermons, pastors, church buildings, tithing, corporate singing, communion, seminaries, everything is all from our pagan roots and should be done away with. 

What puts me off on a visceral level, is their unbridled arrogance. They sneer at church fathers like Augustine and Luther. It’s the sheer lack of respect, like they’re not worth listening to at all. It’s childish. They sound like bratty teenage girls.

See how they toss aside the Puritans so flippantly. 

“the Puritans centered all of their church services around highly structured, methodical, logical, verse-by-verse expositions of Scripture. They stressed that Protestantism was a religion of “the Book.” (Ironically, “the Book” knows nothing of this type of sermon.)”

So that’s it. The Puritans got it all wrong. There is no nuance or deeper thinking about these issues.   

 The biggest mistake Viola and Barna make is the assertion that if the pagans did it then it’s wrong. Pagans held their meetings in buildings so it’s wrong for Christians to do so. Aristotle practiced dialectic-logic so we shouldn’t do that at all. 

In speaking against using logic, Viola writes the following. 

“Taking his cue from Aristotle, Abelard mastered the pagan philosophical art of dialectic-the logical disputation of truth. He applied this art to the Scriptures.’ Christian theological education never recovered from Abelard’s influence. Athens is still in its bloodstream. Aristotle, Abelard, and Aquinas all believed that reason was the gateway to divine truth. So from its beginnings, Western university education involved the fusion of pagan and Christian elements.” (p205) 

I will agree that we have a revelatory epistemology. We know the truth about God primarily because he has revealed them to us. But this does not mean that we cannot understand spiritual truths logically or rationally. Logic is not pagan any more than a tree or a sunset is pagan. All things belong to God but they get distorted by fallen man. 

Simply because our pagan ancestors used the elements of this world in a way that does not glorify God, does not mean those elements are sinful when used to glorify God. This is the largest flaw in Viola and Barna’s book. They pay no attention to context. 

Viola and Barna attack straw men. In their attack on the church building they say this. 

“Clement’s reference to “going to church” is not a reference to attending a special building for worship. It rather refers to a private home that the second-century Christians used for their meetings.” Christians did not erect special buildings for worship until the Constantinian era in the fourth century.” (p12) 

What Christian who has had any modicum of discipleship at all believes that “the church” is referring to a specific building? 

They make another straw man argument by completely ignoring the fact that most evangelical churches today have community groups or small groups that meet regularly during the week. These small groups usually meet in houses and provide a lot of the fellowship and “organic” discipleship and worship they’re talking about in their home church movement. This way you get the best of both worlds. You meet on Sunday for more structured corporate worship and then meet in houses for community and fellowship throughout the week. It’s not an issue of either/or but rather both/and. 

Viola claims the Bible only allows for home churches. I wonder if there were a large building with a cross on the front and pews inside if it would be acceptable to worship there if someone just so happened to sleep there at night. 

They claim that Constantine was the first to ever think of building church buildings and that this was only done as part of a propaganda campaign to legitimize Christianity. The Jews had their synagogues and the pagans had their temples. So why not have Christian church buildings so it would be taken seriously? The authors don’t consider at all whether or not having a designated meeting place for any sort of congregation is just what humans do in any circumstance. 

The religion of Christianity was born out of Judaism. Why wouldn’t they continue on the practical tradition of meeting in a designated building to worship God? There is nothing wrong with that. 

They admit that Stephen and Paul preached in a synagogue in Acts but they say that that was a special occasion. They were apostles so it was acceptable that they would preach and it was in the context of evangelism. But this assumes that the Sunday morning sermon in a Christian church building is not an opportunity for evangelism. A pastor preaching a sermon directly from God’s inspired scripture is no different than the apostles delivering God’s word. Viola and Barna are splitting hairs in effort to avoid a clear precedent for Christian preaching in a building. 

With this book Viola and Barna are trying to promote something they call “the organic church.” A hippy dippy free expression of spiritual insights. No leader. No order of events. Just a spiritual free-for-all. It’s basically the house church movement. Christians should meet in houses and sing random songs together (somehow everyone knows all the words?), then one person stands up and shares “what the Lord had showed her during the week.” They share skits and testimonies. It’s all spontaneous and chaotic. 

They bring up the question of what if someone shares something heretical in the meeting? This is their answer. 

“Like Paul, we should trust God’s people enough that if someone does share something amiss in a meeting, the church will take this as an opportunity to highlight and magnify the truth. The amazing thing is that when God’s people are properly equipped, they do just that.” (p252) 

How can the people highlight and magnify the truth if no one is discipling and leading? This sort of hippy commune way of doing church is just asking a wolf to come in and lead the sheep astray. They’re either not being honest and there really is some sort of authority structure or they’re being extremely naive to the predations of man. 

Viola and Barna sound like they have a bone to pick with the traditional Christian church. It’s stupid and irresponsible. 

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It’s not even written well. They offer a model of church that is actually dangerous and childish. The immaturity and willful naiveté from Viola and Barna is insufferable. 

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Notable Quotables 

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(An organic church is simply a church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic churches are characterized by Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership. This is in stark contrast to a clergy-led, institution-driven church.) (xix)  

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In Greco-Roman paganism, these three elements were also present: Pagans had their temples, their priests, and their sacrifices.* It was only the Christians who did away with all of these elements.’ It can be rightly said that Christianity was the first non-temple-based religion ever to emerge. In the minds of the early Christians, the people-not the architecture constituted a sacred space. The early Christians understood that they themselves-corporately-were the temple of God and the house of God.” (p11) 

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Clement’s reference to “going to church” is not a reference to attending a special building for worship. It rather refers to a private home that the second-century Christians used for their meetings.” Christians did not erect special buildings for worship until the Constantinian era in the fourth century. (p12) 

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In AD 312, Constantine became caesar of the Western Empire. By 324, he became emperor of the entire Roman Empire. Shortly afterward, he began ordering the construction of church buildings. He did so to promote the popularity and acceptance of Christianity. If the Christians had their own sacred buildings-as did the Jews and the pagans-their faith would be regarded as legitimate. (p18) 

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To put it bluntly, the church buildings of the Constantinian and post-Constantinian era essentially became holy shrines. The Christians embraced the concept of the physical temple. They imbibed the pagan idea that there exists a special place where God dwells in a special way. And that place is made “with hands.” (p26) 

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In a very real way, the church building throughout history reflects man’s quest to sense the divine with his physical senses. While being surrounded by beauty can certainly turn a person’s heart toward God, He desires so much more for His church than an aesthetic experience. (p30) 

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Yet making preaching the center of the church gathering has no biblical precedent.’ (p54) 

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The sermon reached its zenith with the American Puritans. They felt it was almost supernatural, since they saw it as God’s primary means of speaking to His people. And they punished church members who missed the Sunday morning sermon. New England residents who failed to attend Sunday worship were fined or put in stocks.” (Next time your pastor threatens you with God’s unbridled wrath for missing “church,” be sure to thank the Puritans.) (p62) 

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First, the Frontier-Revivalists changed the goal of preaching. They preached exclusively with one aim: to convert lost souls. To the mind of a Frontier-Revivalist, nothing beyond salvation was involved in God’s plan.  (p64) 

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Where is the freedom for our Lord Jesus to speak through His body at will? Where in the liturgy may God give a brother or a sister a word to share with the whole congregation? The order of worship allows for no such thing. Jesus Christ has no freedom to express Himself through His body at His discretion. He too is rendered a passive spectator. 

The Lord is stifled from manifesting Himself through the other members of the body. (p76) 

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About thirty of us gathered together in a home and greeted one another. Some of us stepped into the center of the living room and began singing a capella. Quickly, the entire church was singing in unison, arms around one another. Someone else began another song, and we all joined in. Between each song, prayers were uttered by different people. 

a woman stood and began explaining what the Lord had showed her during the week. She spoke for about three minutes. 

Another woman stood and read a poem that the Lord had given her during the week… and it meshed perfectly with what the others had shared up to that point. 

One by one, brothers and sisters in Christ stood up to tell us what they had experienced in their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that week. Exhortations, teaching, encouragements, poems, songs, and testimonies all followed one right after the other. And a common theme, one that revealed the glories of Jesus Christ, emerged. 

He in fact is alive… alive enough to direct His church (p78-79) 

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And let’s suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ puts something on our hearts to share with the rest of His body. Would we have the freedom to do so spontaneously? 

Jesus Christ is not speechless like the idols the Corinthians once worshipped. And through whom does Christ speak? He speaks through His body using the various gifts and ministries granted by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12). 

“ye may all prophesy one by one” (1 Corinthians 14). (p82) 

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Didn’t the early church hold their services in the synagogues? I remember reading that the apostles went to the synagogues to preach. And didn’t Paul and Peter preach to a passive audience? 

The apostles, as well as gifted people like Stephen, visited the synagogues for evangelistic purposes. But these meetings were not church meetings. They were not for believers. Rather, they were opportunities for the apostles to preach the gospel to the Jews. (In that day, a visitor could visit a synagogue and preach to the audience.) Yes, Paul and Peter preached in certain settings, but again, these were not at church meetings. They preached at apostolic meetings designed to evangelize the lost or to equip and encourage an existing church. Apostolic and evangelistic meetings were temporary and sporadic, while church meetings were normative and ongoing. (p83) 

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The Christian sermon was borrowed from the pagan pool of Greek culture! To find the headwaters of the sermon, we must go back to the fifth century BC and a group of wandering teachers called sophists. The sophists are credited for inventing rhetoric (the art of persuasive speaking). They recruited disciples and demanded payment for delivering their orations.  (p89) 

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many pagan orators and philosophers were becoming Christians. As a result, pagan philosophical ideas unwittingly made their way into the Christian community.” Many of these men became the theologians and leaders of the early Christian church. (p91) 

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the Puritans centered all of their church services around highly structured, methodical, logical, verse-by-verse expositions of Scripture. They stressed that Protestantism was a religion of “the Book.” (Ironically, “the Book” knows nothing of this type of sermon.) 

the sermon often stalemates spiritual growth. Because it is a one-way affair, it encourages passivity. The sermon prevents the church from functioning as intended. It suffocates mutual ministry It smothers open participation. This causes the spiritual growth of God’s people to take a nosedive.” (p97) 

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The point of our argument is that the sermon originated from Greco-Roman paganism rather than from Jesus or the apostles. It is for the reader to decide whether or not the Greco-Roman sermon is wrong or right (p103) 

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Pastor, then, is a metaphor to describe a particular function in the church. It is not an office or a title.* A first-century shepherd had nothing to do with the specialized and professional sense it has come to have in contemporary Christianity. Therefore, Ephesians 4:11 does not envision a pastoral office, but merely one of many functions in the church. Shepherds are those who naturally provide nurture and care for God’s sheep. It is a profound error, therefore, to confuse shepherds with an office or title as is commonly conceived today. (p107) 

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Leaders were organic, untitled, and were recognized by their service and spiritual maturity rather than by a title or an office. 

Among the flock were the elders (shepherds or overseers). These men all had equal standing. There was no hierarchy among them. (p110) 

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In the words of Will Durant: “While Christianity converted the world; the world converted Christianity, and displayed the natural paganism of mankind.”

As we have seen in chapter 3, the practices of the mystery religions began to be employed in the church’s worship. And the pagan notion of the dichotomy between the sacred and profane found its way into the Christian mind-set.”‘ It can be rightfully said that the clergy/laity class distinction grew out of this very dichotomy. The Christian life was now being divided into two parts: secular and spiritual—profane and sacred. (p122) 

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Elders were acknowledged in the churches in Galatia (Acts 14:23). Paul had Timothy acknowledge elders in Ephesus (1 Timothy 3:1ff.). He also told Titus to recognize them in the churches in Crete (Titus 1:5 ff.). The word ordain (KJV) in these passages does not mean to place into office. It rather carries the idea of endorsing, affirming, and showing forth what has already been happening. ‘ It also conveys the thought of blessing. Public recognition of elders and other ministries was typically accompanied by the laying on of hands by apostolic workers. (In the case of workers being sent out, this was done by the church or the elders.)”

In the first century, the laying on of hands merely meant the endorsement or affirmation of a function, not the installment into an office or the giving of special status. Regrettably, it came to mean the latter in the late second and early third centuries.  (p124) 

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What the Reformers failed to do was to recover the corporate dimension of the believing priesthood. They restored the doctrine of the believing priesthood soteriologically—i.e., as it related to salvation. But they failed to restore it ecclesiologically—i.e., as it related to the church. 

So after the smoke cleared from the Reformation, we ended up with the same thing that the Catholics gave us—a selective priesthood! 

Like the Catholic priest, the Reformed minister was viewed by the church as the “man of God” —the paid mediator between God and His people.’ He was not a mediator to forgive sins, but a mediator to communicate the divine will. So in Protestantism an old problem took on a new form. (p128-129) 

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Trained choirs, trained singers, and the end of congregational singing all reflected the cultural mind-set of the Greeks. Much like oratory (professional speaking), the Greek culture was built around an audience-performer dynamic. Tragically, this trait was carried over from the temples of Diana and the Greek dramas straight into the Christian church. (p160) 

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However, many Christians feel that it robs God’s people of a vital function: to select and lead their own singing in the meetings—to have divine worship in their own hands—to allow Jesus Christ to direct the singing of His church rather than have it led by a human facilitator. Singing in the early church was marked by these very features. (p166) 

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Strikingly, 1 Timothy 5:17-18 and Acts 20:33-35 were addressed to the same group of people— the elders in Ephesus. Thus there is no contradiction. Because the elders were local men, they were not biblically sanctioned to receive full financial support like itinerant apostles who traveled from region to region to plant churches (1 Corinthians 9:1-18). 

Paul was an itinerant apostolic worker. Therefore, he had a legitimate right to receive full financial support from the Lord’s people (see 1 Corinthians 9). But he intentionally waived that right whenever he worked with a group of Christians (1 Corinthians 9:14-18; 2 Corinthians 11:7-9; 12:13-18; 1 Thessalonians 2:6-9; 2 Thessalonians 3:8-9). We wonder what would happen if more ministers today would follow in the steps of Paul. 

Paul’s argument in 1 Timothy 5:17-18 is simply this: Just as the working ox deserves food and the working employee deserves payment, the elders who serve well should receive double respect. (In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul uses this same analogy. In that text, however, Paul is speaking of apostolic workers rather than local elders, and he makes it clear that finances rather than honor are in view.) (p185) 

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Congregants are told by the pastor that they must examine themselves with regard to sin before they partake of the elements, a practice that came from John Calvin. (p196) 

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Taking his cue from Aristotle, Abelard mastered the pagan philosophical art of dialectic-the logical disputation of truth. He applied this art to the Scriptures.’ Christian theological education never recovered from Abelard’s influence. Athens is still in its bloodstream. Aristotle, Abelard, and Aquinas all believed that reason was the gateway to divine truth. So from its beginnings, Western university education involved the fusion of pagan and Christian elements. (p205) 

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In 1905, G. Stanley Hall popularized the concept of the “adolescent” as distinct from the young adult and the older child.” 

Then in the 1940s, the term teenager was born. And for the first time a distinct youth subculture was created. People ages thirteen to nineteen were no longer simply “youths.” They were now “teenagers. 

With new understanding and concern for the “teenagers,” the idea that someone needed to be employed to work with them emerged. Thus was born the professional youth minister. The youth pastor began working in large urban churches in the 1930s and 1940s.* Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan had one of the very first youth pastors. Moody Monthly magazine wrote about him in the late 1930s. (p214) 

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What are your recommendations on how the church should instruct our children and youth? The New Testament is absolutely silent on this question, though it seems to suggest that the responsibility for the moral teaching of children falls on the shoulders of the parents (see Ephesians 6:4 and 2 Timothy 1:5, 3:15). 

That said, our suggestion is to let the creative juices of each local assembly discover new and effective ways to minister to the young ones. (p219) 

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Greek, the “Great Commission” reads: “Having gone on your way …” Therefore, it is a prophecy (“having gone”), not a command (“Go”).24 The Lord did not command the apostles to “go.” He told them that they would be going. There is a valuable point here. 

Unlike Christians today, the early Christians did not share Christ out of guilt, command, or duty. They shared Him because He was pouring out of them, and they could not help it! It was a spontaneous, organic thing —born out of life, not guilt. (p237) 

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In Jesus, we have a man who refused to bow to the pressures of religious conformity. A man who preached a revolution. A man who would not tolerate hypocrisy. A man who was not afraid to provoke those who suppressed the liberating gospel He brought to set men free. 

Behold your Lord, the Revolutionary! (p245-246) 

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The early church meetings were not religious “services.” They were informal gatherings that were permeated with an atmosphere of freedom, spontaneity, and joy. 

Christians gathered in homes. On special occasions, Christian workers would sometimes make use of larger facilities (like Solomon’s Porch John 10:23, Acts 3:11] and the Hall of Tyrannus [Acts 19:9]). (p247) 

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Every Christian possessed different gifts and different functions, but only Jesus Christ had the exclusive right to exercise authority over His people. No man had that right. Eldering and shepherding were just two of those gifts. Elders and shepherds were ordinary Christians with certain gifts. They were not special offices. (p248) 

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The New Testament church was organic, not organizational. It was not welded together by putting people into offices, creating programs, constructing rituals, and developing a topdown hierarchy or chain-of-command structure. The church was a living, breathing organism. It was born, it would grow, and it naturally produced all of what was in its DNA. (p248) 

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In addition, the fear that someone will say something “false” in a meeting should never compel us to replace open participatory meetings with services directed by someone from the clergy. Like Paul, we should trust God’s people enough that if someone does share something amiss in a meeting, the church will take this as an opportunity to highlight and magnify the truth. The amazing thing is that when God’s people are properly equipped, they do just that. (p252) 

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they do not plan a specific order of worship. Instead, everyone is free to function, share, participate, and minister spiritually during gatherings, so the creativity expressed in them is endless. 

Participants do not know who will stand up and share next nor what they will share. There might be skits; there might be poems read; there might be new songs introduced and sung; there might be exhortations, testimonies, short teachings, revelations, and prophetic words. Because everyone is involved and people contribute spontaneously, boredom is not a problem. (p261) 

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Should we follow a model of church that is rooted in New Testament principle and example, or should we follow one that finds its origins in pagan traditions? That is the ultimate question that this book should lead us to address. (p264)