Make Christianity Strange Again

The Benedict Option takes its name from Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who left the crumbling Roman Empire to found the monastic community we now call the Benedictine Order. There is certainly much to be learned from that era. But we can go further back, and learn from Christians who lived before Benedict, and before Constantine’s fateful vision of a cross ablaze in the sky. There was a time when Christianity flourished even though emperors regularly cracked down on the “strange religion” that spread like a great conflagration across the Roman Empire. This is the Christianity that Nijay K. Gupta, a professor of New Testament studies at Northern Seminary, applies his anthropological eye to in his new book, Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling.