Privatized Religions Thriving in Empire

"This dichotomy between the private and the public worlds is the central clue to the ideology that governs our culture. To accept it is to make the surrender the early church refused to make - at the cost of the blood of countless martyrs. A private religion of personal salvation that did not challenge the public ideology was perfectly safe under Roman law, as it is safe under ours. On these terms the church of the first three centuries could have flourished under the rule of Caesar precisely as this kind of evangelicalism flourishes under the protection of our kind of society. But the authentic gospel cannot accept this kind of relegation."


Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 132-133