Rebuilding the Christian Meeting Space

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

The story is told of a Friends Meeting Group. They decided they needed a new Meeting House. Their clerk recorded their “minutes:”

Minute one, that we need a new Meeting House.

Minute two, that we shall use the material from the old Meeting House.

Minute three, that we shall meet in the old Meeting House until we have the new Meeting House.

I also remember reading a novel by Robert Ruark. The book, "Something of Value," is based upon the African saying: “Don’t take something away from someone unless you replace it with something of value.”

I am attempting to help us develop a Digital Library for a Future of the United Methodist Church. The problem we have is like those Quakers in the story. We are trying to live in the old form of the church while we follow the injunction of the African proverb: don’t take something away unless we replace it with something new.

Putting it a different way, we need to look at whether we’ve got any material from our previous meeting houses lying around in our history to substitute for the pieces of our old meeting house that are broken or don’t work.

In reading "Transforming Mission" by David Bosch and "Foolishness to the Greeks" by Leslie Newbigin, we find building material from the past to use in our church of the future. I am just beginning to get into these two books in my writing. But to oversimplify, I would say the two books tell us what our purpose is when we are gathered and when we are scattered.

However, I want to put these books on hold while I explore what we do when we are gathered. What has caused me to do this was recently running across the monumental work that Dr. Tom Wadsworth has done in his exploration of the original words used in the scripture that point to what the translators of the Bible in English substituted the word “worship.” As you are aware, the writers of the Bible wrote in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years before the English language was created.

It isn’t just the one word, “worship” that was substituted for several Greek words and that the translators were happy to use only one English word. Clergy, do you remember how your New Testament professor in seminary pointed out that the translators used the one word in English for the three different kinds of words for “love” that the Greeks used.

What I want to do now is begin to give you a lens, bifocal at that, to look at what happened in the gatherings of the followers of Jesus in the first two plus centuries of the “church.” (Another English word that doesn’t adequately cover the Greek words the New Testament writers used.)

The first part of that bifocal lens with which we want to look at those early assemblies is Wadsworth’s word study. The second part of it will come from other biblical scholars, the so-called Greco-Roman Meals Study Group of the Society for Biblical Literature. In this article I want to share what they have written about in what they found in their research. Specifically, I want to point out a number of books that come out of what they found. I will return to develop Wadsworth’s thought in a later article as well as the contents of these books.

It began because two different scholars, one a German, one an American, looked at the social context of the early centuries. Independently they came to basically the same conclusion. It was that Jesus’ followers simply borrowed the common form of meeting structure that everyone used in those days. That will be the content of my next article. Here I want to list the reading materials in which that structure was described.

1. From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World by Dennis Smith 2002

Smith's central thesis is that the symposium–a formal evening meal for guests, with drinking, entertainment and conversation leisurely following the consumption of the food itself–proved so pervasive in Greek, Roman and Jewish culture from 300 B.C. to A.D. 300 that no single manifestation of this meal may be deemed the origin of the Christian Eucharist.

By far the most valuable chapters of Smith's work are those that survey the relevant customs in the cultures into which Christianity was birthed. Features of the Greco-Roman banquet in general included restricting invitations to intimate friends, reclining rather than merely sitting at table, a leisurely progression over several hours through the various courses of food and stages of the symposium, rules for orderly conversation (with frequent violations due to excessive drinking), and entertainment by flute girls and courtesans. Occasions for such celebrations included birthdays, weddings and funerals.  (From the Denver Journal of the Denver Seminary)

2. Community Meal and Meal Fellowship: sociology and liturgy of early Christian meal celebrations, Matthias Klinghardt  1996 (Eucharist and Fraternal Banquet)

(Gemeinschaftsmahl and Mahlgemeinschaft: Soziologie and Liturgie fruhchristlicher Mahlfeiern. Texte and Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter Matthias Klinghardt, 1996).

My German is not good enough so I have not read this book. I searched one seminary’s on-line catalogue (Perkins) and find it is in the Bridewell Library for instance. If someone out there can read German and would be willing to review the book for us, I will see it is published on Insight. If you are willing, please let me know. Email rev.bud@mac.com.

All I can add to that is from Dennis Smith’s book, where he writes:

"A similar thesis has now been advanced by Matthias Klinghardt, His study parallels mine in many respects and independently confirms the principal thesis here advanced, that the Greco-Roman banquet was a single social institution found throughout the Greco-Roman world andwas adapted for use in different contexts.  – Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist

3. In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation & Early Christian Identity by Hal Taussig 2009

What were the origins of the Eucharist? Taussig, a founding member of the SBL Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, brings a wealth of scholarship to bear on the question of Christian origins. He shows that in the Augustan age, common meals became the sites of dramatic experimentation and innovation regarding social roles and relationships, challenging expectations regarding gender, class, and status. Rich comparative material and rigorous ritual analysis reveal that it was in just such a swirl of experimentation that the early Christian assemblies, with their "love feasts" and "supper of the Lord," were born. This cutting-edge monograph sheds new light on the social context of early Christian gatherings, illuminating the origins of the Eucharist and of Christianity itself. Taussig draws important implications for the practice of Christian community today. (From publisher on Amazon)

4. The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries by Valeriy A. Alikin 2010

  1. The origin of the weekly gathering in the early church
  2. The gatherings of Christians in the morning
  3. The Lord's supper in the early church
  4. The reading of scripture in the gathering of the early church
  5. Preaching in the gathering of the early church
  6. Singing and prayer in the gathering of the early church
  7. Other ritual actions in the gatherings of the early church
  8. General conclusions

5. Christ’s Associations: Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient City by John Kloppenborg 2019

A groundbreaking investigation of early Christ groups in the ancient Mediterranean

As an urban movement, the early groups of Christ followers came into contact with the many small groups in Greek and Roman antiquity. Organized around the workplace, a deity, a diasporic identity, or a neighborhood, these associations gathered in small face-to-face meetings and provided the principal context for cultic and social interactions for their members. Unlike most other groups, however, about which we have data on their rules of membership, financial management, and organizational hierarchy, we have very little information about early Christ groups.

Drawing on data about associative practices throughout the ancient world, this innovative study offers new insight into the structure and mission of the early Christ groups. John S. Kloppenborg situates the Christ associations within the broader historical context of the ancient Mediterranean and reveals that they were probably smaller than previously believed and did not have a uniform system of governance, and that the attraction of Christ groups was based more on practice than theological belief. (From publisher on Amazon)

6. After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Vearncombe, Scott, Taussig, and the Westar Institute 2021

This book is the result of the Early Christianity Seminar by the Westar Institute. The Institute is a group of biblical scholars who work collaboratively. The book includes more than just the question of the nature of the early Christian gathering, which topic is covered in Part 2 BELONGING AND COMMUNITY with chapters:

  •  7. Testing Gender, Testing Boundaries
  •  8. Forming New Identities Through Gender
  •  9. Belonging to Israel
  • 10. Experimental Families
  • 11. Join the Club
  • 12. Feasting and Bathing

Other Books written on the early gatherings include:

  • Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective, Andrew B. McGowan 2015
  • Reconstructing Early Christian Worship, Paul Bradshaw  2016
  • Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church, Paul Louis Metzger 2016
  • From Tablet to Table: Where Community Is Found and Identity Is Formed, Leonard Sweet 2015
  • Hospitality and Community After Christendom, Andrew Francis 2016
  • A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, Tim Chester 2016
  • Meals in Early Judaism: Social Formation at the Table, Susan Marks and Hal Taussig 2015
  • Meals in the Early Christian World: Social Formation Experimentation, and Conflict at the Table, Dennis E.Smith and Hal Taussig 2015
  • Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, John Kloppenborg 2016
  • Subversive Meals: An Analysis of the Lord's Supper under Roman Domination during the First Century, R. Alan Streett 2014

My next couple of articles will be a closer look at the insights found in Wadsworth’s videos to be followed by exploring what the books in this article also tell us about the early gatherings.

The Rev. H. A. “Bud” Tillinghast is a retired clergy member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.

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