Sometime in the early 50s AD, the ever trouble-prone Apostle Paul found himself jailed in the Macedonian city of Philippi. Originally named after Philip II, the great Macedonian conqueror of Greece and father of Alexander the Great, by Paul’s time the city was best remembered as the site of a major battle. Almost a century earlier here, in 42 BC, the armies of the Second Triumvirate, led by Octavian and Marc Antony, decisively defeated the forces of Julius Caesar’s assassins. It proved one of the final death knells for the Roman Republic. Perhaps this political history was of no import for Paul, but for the thoroughly Roman culture of the town it certainly mattered.
What was this pre-Christian Roman culture like? We forget, living in a world inescapably shaped by two-thousand years of Christianity, that many of the gentler aspects of the West have resulted from the slow but steady Christianization of culture. In particular, Christianity is how we learned to hate genocide, to treasure human life, to respect the dignity of all persons, and to abhor the casual cruelty towards the weak so common in the ancient world. It’s impossible read about the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Caesar’s Gallic Wars, a classic of Western history, and not recognize the stark difference between cultures that affirm the value of all persons according to the imago Dei and ones that do not.
The latter view was a defining contrast between early Christianity and pagan religious practice, difficult to us in 2024 to fathom. Pagan gods most certainly did not love human beings, as a casual perusal of Greco-Roman mythology reminds. Much of the time they didn’t even like them, plotting their abuse and destruction in various ways. By contrast, according to Christianity, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Paul’s sojourn in Philippi is illustrative of the revolutionary nature of Christian thought in the world of antiquity. Spending his night in jail worshiping God, Paul does not rail against the injustice of his arrest and the oppressive power of the empire. Instead, he remains steadfast in his faith, ultimately converting and baptizing the jailer and his family. He teaches him the gospel and equips him to start a local church, one that grows into a flourishing congregation—as Paul’s own letter to the Philippians a decade later attests.
In other words, instead of keeping to himself in the Philippian jail, Paul used this opportunity to reach local leaders. In the process, he sanctified local culture, bringing Christianity into this outpost of the Roman world. This story seems extraordinary, but it was, if we look closely, rather common, even if not always as dramatic as Paul’s time in Philippi.
In his new book, Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church, historian Stephen O. Presley draws on the Bible and an extensive array of early church primary sources to tell stories of Christians (including Paul) engaging their pagan neighbors wherever and whenever they could. Faced with a hostile culture, the natural reaction would have been to hide—and early Christian communities did plenty of that. But more often, Christians reached out to others, sometimes at great personal cost, owing to their conviction that the gospel was a matter of life or death. In the process, Christianity spread—as did its sanctifying effect on the ambient culture.
While this is a timeless truth of Christianity, Presley argues that it resonates particularly in Anno Domino 2024. First and foremost, he notes, it is because “we are the ancients”: Dechurching continues apace, and our culture is not just hostile to Christianity, but also moving fast to a post-Christian world—one bearing an alarming resemblance to the pre-Christian one. The transition to neopagan morality is borne out in the all-too-familiar culture wars of the last few generations. Present circumstances present believers with a number of questions dealing with identity, engagement with broader culture, and the relationship between church and state.
Engaging these questions, Presley encourages Christians to take a Pauline approach thorough the discipleship of all believers. Why? Because unless we cultivate the evangelical mind, encouraging believers to obtain a thorough education in the Bible, theology, and in church history, our faith will be deracinated and uncertain. We are consistently being formed by something, the adage goes. And if not by catechesis, then by the world. Finally, unless we understand who we are as Christians, we cannot begin to engage other people and the culture around us as believers.
This last one—Christians engaging everyone around as Christians—is, perhaps, the most significant takeaway from this book. Quite often, modern secular life encourages what Presley terms bifurcation: we can be one person in one setting, someone else in another. The default of such thinking is why Christian colleges (rightly) place such emphasis on the integration of faith and learning. This integration does not come naturally to us moderns. And yet, thinking theologically in all areas of life is essential to the renewal of Christian culture so many of us desire.
Particularly as another presidential election cycle nears its conclusion, we would do well to recall that our citizenship is ultimately in heaven and that the greatest battle has already been won. Presley reflects, in this regard: “Significantly, in our democratic republic, we have a greater degree of influence over the political systems than did Christians in ancient Rome. Christian citizens, whether then or now, recognize that civil leaders and emperors, no matter how brutal and wicked, have been appointed by God for divine purposes. Politics thus is not the problem, nor is it the solution.” We are to be, in other words, in the world but not of it. Haven’t we heard it all along?
Presley’s mastery of the primary sources is undeniable. No less significant is his modeling of how we can still be, as Jesus calls us, wise as serpents and gentle as doves. In this age of culture wars, which some (on all sides) wage all too loudly and ungracefully, Presley’s exhortation stands out—for Christians to be more like Justin Martyr, Cyprian, and the nameless multitudes who focused on loving God, living holy lives, and influencing the culture through quiet evangelism rather than fiery rhetoric on social media. In attempting to sanctify the culture, our personal witness matters.
We can—and should—mourn the decline of Christianity in the West. It is never easy to live in a climate of hostility, whether from the culture at large or members of our community. But God is still giving us the same call He gave to the early Christians: Beloved, be salt and light.