So Iâ??ve been reading historian Robert Louis Wilkenâ??s terrific book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, with the intention of learning how the early church lived and taught and thrived in a culture that was not yet Christian. This, to inform my thinking about the Benedict Option for my next book.
What I know about the early church is very, very little, so Wilkenâ??s book is, no kidding, a real page-turner. (It helps that heâ??s a marvelous writer.) One thing that surprises and delights me is how stunningly close the way we worship in our little Orthodox mission here on the bayou is to the way the early church worships. I generally knew this was the case, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty, a believer from the fourth century could walk in to our liturgy and know exactly what was going on. That is a humbling thought, at least to me.
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