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 In his article "Learning From 'The Final Pagan Generation'," Rod Dreher writes - "I’ve been re-reading today The Final Pagan Generation, a history book by Edward Watts. What follows are notes I made from my reading. Stay with me, because there’s a major point I want to make from all this. In it, Watts focuses on the final generation of Romans born into a world in which paganism was uncontested as society’s dominant religion — that is, those born in the early 4th century. By the time they died, the Empire was officially Christian, and paganism was fast rapidly declining, though Watts says we have evidence for active pagans as late as the 7th century. "The world of childhood for the final pagan generation was a world in which the gods were intimately woven into everyday life. You couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t always be there. Children were initiated into the pagan life by household rituals that made religion part of the wallpaper. Reading this early part of the book was a challenge to me. In reading other historians of the early Church, as well as cultural anthropologists, I learned that a religion has to have strong cultural and social expression to last. Paganism certainly had this early in the Christian era. But it wasn’t enough. Why not?" Just like the final pagan generation, we believers who belong to the final Christian generation are largely oblivious to the changes going on in the larger society around us. We assume (wrongly) that life will go on and on as it always has in the past, that we will continue to live in a semi-Christian culture that at least tolerates our beliefs and moral standards. But in today's "liquid modernity" nothing is stable and permanent, everything is up for grabs. We need to form strong communities that can withstand the flood: we need to Build the ARC - Agape Restoration Communities! Get the whole story: read the full article & get our free weekly newsletter: subscribe below! |