Tragedy in the Sierra Nevada, Part III

Read Part I

Read Part II

ONWARD TO THE SIERRA NEVADA

George and Jacob Donner and their families had been several days ahead of the main caravan when the incident between Reed and Snyder occurred. When Reed caught up with them, they offered to let one of their drivers, Walter Herron, go with him to Sutter’s Fort.

The caravan continued westward, and yet another member of the party succumbed to the rigors of the journey. A certain Mr. Hardcoop, a Belgian who owned a farm near Cincinnati, Ohio, and who was apparently a teamster for the Keseberg family, was unable to keep up with the wagon train, walking on foot as many of them were by this time. Around October 8th, he was left behind to rest while the caravan moved forward. According to William Eddy in the account written by Quinn Thornton, they left him “sitting under a large bush of sage…exhausted and completely worn out…his feet had swollen until they burst.” That night, fires were lit to guide him to where the wagons had made camp. Hardcoop never came and no one was willing to return for him. He was never heard from again.

The fatigue of the journey and attacks by tribes of Indians continued to take a toll on the caravan. Oxen and pack animals died of exhaustion or were stolen or shot by Indians in the night, and wagons had to be abandoned every few days for lack of teams to pull them. The families continually combined their belongings into the ever dwindling wagons and most spent the majority of the time walking rather than riding.

Emotions and tempers continued to run high. Patrick Breen, one of the few pioneers who still had a horse, had refused several days earlier to go back for Mr. Hardcoop.

Patrick Breen

William Eddy, who had encouraged Breen and others to return for Hardcoop, was still fuming over the incident. A week or so later, Breen’s horse got stuck in a mud pit and he appealed to Eddy to help him free it. According to Eddy, he “referred [Breen] to poor Hardcoop and refused.” The horse died.

William Eddy

On October 15th, an Indian raiding party killed more than twenty head of cattle from the caravan. Among those who lost all their cattle in this raid was a German man by the name of Wolfinger, who was traveling with his wife. Hardly anything is known about this couple other than their German heritage. They appear to have been traveling with the Keseberg family, who were also German. In any case, Wolfinger decided to stay behind to cache his wagon since he no longer had cattle to pull it. The company, however, had no interest in waiting for him and continued on. Two other men of the group, Augustus Spitzer and Joseph Reinhardt, stayed behind to help Wolfinger finish the job. Not much is known of these two men either, although their names give away their obvious German heritage. Reinhardt appears to have been an associate of Wolfinger’s; Spitzer – though German like the other two – was apparently a hired hand for the Donners.

Like so many other events up to this point, it is unclear exactly what took place, and the later accounts vary, but several days after staying behind to help Wolfinger cache his wagon, Spitzer and Reinhardt rejoined the caravan without Wolfinger. They told the other emigrants that their little party had been attacked by Indians and Wolfinger, who was apparently quite wealthy, had been killed. Some members of the caravan were apparently suspicious of this story – least of all Wolfinger’s wife – but there was no time to investigate and the company continued on. The truth would not come to light until several months later.

Continuing westward, the party began breaking up into smaller and smaller groups. According to John Breen:

After leaving…the Humboldt [River], the company, as if by mutual consent, dissolved or gradually separated; some wanted to stop and rest their cattle; others…were in favor of pushing ahead as fast as possible, as provisions were getting short.

John Breen, son of Patrick. John was about fourteen years old in 1846.

On October 22nd, unbeknownst to the Donner Party, James Reed and his traveling companion Walter Herron met up with Charles Stanton in eastern California, having finally made their way across the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Stanton had visited Sutter’s Fort and was returning to the caravan with seven mules loaded with supplies and provisions of flour and meat. Sutter had also sent two Indian guides along with him, vaqueros named Luis and Salvadore. Stanton’s original traveling partner, William McCutchen, had stayed back in Sutter’s Fort due to illness. Reed vowed to continue on to the fort for more provisions, while Stanton and his vaqueros continued eastward back toward the Donner Party.

Walter Herron, the hired hand of the Donners who had traveled with Reed after his banishment, stayed on with another nearby wagon train due to fatigue from the difficult journey he’d had with Reed. He thus passed out of the story of the Donner Party, a convenient fact which he no doubt treasured in later life.

Meanwhile, the Donner Party had finally reached Truckee Meadows – modern day Reno, Nevada. Sitting at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, Truckee Meadows offered a good regrouping spot for the arduous mountain journey that marked the end of the California Trail.

The Sierra Nevada mountains, with Truckee Meadows (now Reno) situated in the valley.

Apparently feeling confident that their trek was almost over, and not overly concerned about the possibility of an early snow in the mountains, the caravan encamped in Truckee Meadows for the final two weeks of October, resting their remaining cattle and their understandably wearied bodies.

Around October 25th, another member of the caravan met an untimely end. The Murphy family was the largest single family traveling with the Donner Party. The widowed mother, Levinah Murphy, brought along seven children, two of whom were married with children of their own.

Levinah Murphy, matriarch of the Murphy family

These two Murphy daughters were married to men named William Pike and William Foster. The two Williams had apparently decided to head to Sutter’s Fort to gather provisions. At this point, no one knew what had become of Stanton and McCutchen or Reed and Herron, and the party was no doubt anxious about having enough provisions to get them through the mountain passes of the Sierra Nevada.

While Foster and Pike were cleaning their guns in preparation for setting out on their journey, one of the pistols misfired, shooting Pike through the back and killing him.

This picture was taken in later life. In 1846, Foster was 31.

Mary Murphy, their mutual sister-in-law, would later write: “He died in about one half hour, and in that time he suffered more than the tongue can tell.”

A portrait of Mary Murphy. She was fifteen in 1846.

Foster, apparently not wanting to travel alone and no doubt grieved at his brother-in-law’s death, remained in camp.

The Donner Party had now lost five of its members since its inception in Wyoming in late July. Most of the pioneers must have expected that the worst was over and that they would soon be settling in to new homes and towns in California.

Their expectations, of course, couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Read Part IV

Tragedy in the Sierra Nevada, Part II

Read Part I

HASTINGS CUTOFF

Heading southwest into Utah, the Donner Party found a note from Hastings stuck inside a bush along the trail. He advised them not to take the route his own party was taking – through the rocky Weber Canyon of the Wasatch Mountains in northeastern Utah. Reed and several others left the party and rode ahead to meet Hastings for advice. With the help of Hastings, Reed scouted out a slightly different course, then met back up with the Donner Party wagon train on August 10th, 1846.

The Wasatch Mountains

With James Reed piloting the group, the Donner Party made their way through the mountainous area east of the Great Salt Lake.

James Reed

James’s daughter Virginia, who was about twelve years old at the time, later said:

Only those who have passed through this country on horseback can appreciate the situation. There was absolutely no road, not even a trail…Heavy underbrush had to be cut away and used for making a road bed.

It was during the early part of August that the Graves family joined the Donner Party. Until this time, they had been part of a different wagon train several weeks behind. With the Donner Party slowed down in the mountains of Utah, the Graves’ caught up with them, swelling the numbers of the group to well over 80.

On August 22nd, after a final grueling ascent across a hill now famously known as Donner Hill, the Donner Party came into the Salt Lake valley, to the place where Brigham Young and his Mormons would plant their new holy city just a year later.

A plaque at the base of Donner Hill, near Salt Lake City

The members of the Donner Party were justifiably glad to be through the mountains, but the detour had taken a toll on the group’s unanimity. Already Hastings Cutoff was taking longer than expected, and the detour to avoid the tortuous Weber Canyon – as advised by Hastings and agreed upon by Reed – had ultimately taken the Donner Party longer to navigate, and had required extremely hard, backbreaking work.

On August 25th, a few days after reaching the flatter, desert area west of the Wasatch Mountains, the Donner Party suffered its first loss (the death of James Reed’s mother-in-law several months earlier had occurred well before the Donner Party was officially organized in Fort Bridger). Luke Halloran, a young man about whom very little is known, succumbed to tuberculosis. He had been traveling with a different group to California in hopes of finding the climate better suited to his condition. He fell ill along the way, however, and was abandoned by the group he was traveling with. George Donner had taken him in, allowing him to ride in the Donner wagons.

Continuing westward, the Donner Party trundled across the desert in the scorching heat of late August.

Satellite image of the Great Salt Lake. The Wasatch range is to the lower right of the picture. The Great Salt Desert extends along the left side of the picture.

Virginia Reed and Charles Stanton both wrote letters referring to temperatures consistently above 100 degrees. At the end of August, the party reached an area abundant with clean water, which they dubbed “Twenty Wells.” Camping there for a few days and stocking up as much as possible, they began a long, arduous trek through the waterless Salt Desert – west of modern day Salt Lake City.

The Great Salt Desert

They expected this journey to last two days. It ended up taking about ten.

Several days into the journey across the Salt Desert, the party began to run low on water and it became apparent that the cattle would have to be taken ahead to the watering holes known to exist on the other side of the salt pans. Leaving the wagons behind, the teamsters took the oxen and other cattle on ahead. The rest of the party waited for several days for them to return. When they didn’t come back, James Reed and several others went ahead to search for them. They discovered that many of the cattle had bolted upon smelling fresh water, and the teamsters had lost complete control over them. For nearly a full week the party searched for their cattle; many oxen and cows were recovered, but far more were lost. The Reed family lost more than anyone else, recovering only a single cow and a single ox. Reed was forced to abandon two of his wagons, piling necessities into the one remaining vehicle and distributing the rest among the other families. Virginia Reed would later write:

Our provisions were divided among the company. Before leaving the desert camp, an inventory of provisions on hand was taken, and it was found that the supply was not sufficient to last us through to California.

George Donner and another pioneer named Louis Keseberg were also forced to abandon a wagon each. These four wagons, left sitting in the sun in the Salt Desert, would remain there until rediscovered in the 1920’s.

Donner Party wagon remains photographed in the 1920's

After regrouping, the party finally came out of the Salt Desert, resting several days at the foot of Pilot Peak, at a spring now known as Donner Spring in northwest Utah.

Donner Spring

On September 10th, the caravan headed west again into Nevada, passing south of Pilot Peak and trundling across Nevada to intercept the California Trail that they had abandoned in Wyoming. Realizing, however, that their provisions were running low, the company decided to send two men ahead to Sutter’s Fort to gather the provisions the company would need to finish its journey. The two men who volunteered were Charles Stanton – the aforementioned Chicago bachelor who was traveling with the Donners – and Kentuckian William McCutchen, who left his wife and young daughter in the care of the Reeds.

With Stanton and McCutchen riding ahead, the caravan traveled across Nevada for the next two weeks, finally reaching the junction with the California Trail on September 26th. In a letter in July, as noted earlier, Reed had expected to reach Sutter’s Fort by the end of September. Instead, it took that long just to complete the Hastings Cutoff – a “shortcut.” It had taken the Donner Party about two weeks longer to complete the trek than the party led by Hastings, and compared to the time most parties took to follow the original route through Idaho, the Donner Party’s “shortcut” cost them a whole month.

This delay, of course, would ultimately lead to tragic consequences.

“THE MEN WERE IRRITABLE AND IMPATIENT”

Continuing now along the California Trail, the party followed Mary’s River (now called the Humboldt River) through central and western Nevada.

The Humboldt River

They were raided several times in the night by small bands of Indians, who stole cattle and oxen. Already short of these precious commodities, the company was slowed down even further, with many members now walking much of the time to relieve the burden on the depleted cattle teams.

By now, the Donner Party was understandably beginning to show signs of emotional as well as physical fatigue. John Breen, one of the children of the Breen family, would later write that “the men were irritable and impatient.”

John Breen

Because of poor decisions and some bad luck, they had already endured more hardships than the average wagon train heading along the California Trail. They were already several weeks beyond their hoped-for arrival date, and still had several hundred miles and a major mountain range to pass through before reaching Sutter’s Fort.

The first glimpse of a true breakdown in emotions occurred on October 5th, 1846. The events of that day are not entirely clear, but an argument broke out between the driver of the Reed’s wagon, Milt Elliot of Cynthiana, Kentucky, and the driver of the Graves’ wagon, John Snyder of Ohio. While ascending a particularly steep hill, Elliot’s cattle team became entangled with the team driven by John Snyder. This led to an argument which James Reed intervened in.

According to an early biography by writer Quinn Thornton – who wrote his story of the Donner Party primarily from interviews with survivor William Eddy – Snyder threatened to lash Reed with his whip, which caused Reed to produce a knife. Thornton stated:

[Reed] told Snyder that he did not wish to have any difficulty with him. Snyder told him that he would whip him “anyhow;” and turning the butt of his whip, gave Mr. Reed a severe blow upon the head, which cut it very much.

Reed responded by stabbing Snyder near the collarbone, puncturing a lung. According to Thornton’s account (as related by William Eddy), Snyder lashed Reed twice more, bringing Reed to the ground, but the damage to Snyder was already done. He died “in about fifteen minutes.”

Other accounts differ, however. Those whose sympathies lay with Snyder depicted the event as one entirely caused by Reed, who tried to cut his team in ahead of Snyder’s. William Graves, seventeen at the time and the son of Franklin Graves, for whom Snyder worked, later said:

Reed, at this time, was on the opposite side of the oxen from Snyder, and said to Snyder, “You have no business here in the way;” Snyder said, “It is my place.” Reed started toward him, and jumping over the wagon tongue, said, “You are a damned liar, and I’ll cut your heart out!” Snyder pulled his clothes open on his breast and said, “Cut away.” Reed ran to him and stuck a large six-inch butcher’s knife into his heart and cut off two ribs.

That account, of course, sounds unrealistic and melodramatic. What seems clear is that the two men got into an altercation of some sort, Snyder whipped Reed several times, Reed struck back, and Snyder ended up being mortally wounded. Other accounts from the day also suggest that Reed’s wife, Margaret, tried to stop the fight and was herself lashed by Snyder; whether on purpose or on accident is unclear.

Margaret Reed

Though he wrote often of the events of 1846-1847, Reed never gave his side of the story publically. It was apparently a touchy and difficult subject over which he must have felt enormous guilt. Writer Quinn Thornton confirmed this when he stated:

Mr. Reed, although the blood was running down over his face and shoulders from his own wounds, manifested great anguish of spirit, and threw the knife away from him and into the river.

Regardless of who was at fault or whether the killing was done in self-defense, it caused great trouble among the members of the Donner Party. Members of the Graves’ clan called for Reed to be hanged on the spot. Others acted with more moderation, assuring the Graves’ that Reed would be brought to trial upon the caravan’s arrival in California. In any case, Reed’s continued presence with the group promised to create unwanted friction, so the party voted to banish him from the caravan. Reed seems to have taken the decision with equanimity, helping first to bury the deceased Snyder, then heading off on horseback, promising to find Stanton and McCutchen –the two who had gone ahead for provisions and who had now been gone for about a month.

In the end, despite the party’s belief that Reed would stand trial for the death of Snyder, Reed was never charged or tried for any crime. This is no doubt the result of at least two reasons. First, with conflicting eyewitness accounts, it was never clear whether Reed had actually done anything other than justifiably defend himself against an attack. Secondly, after the unthinkable tragedies that would eventually befall the Donner Party, trying anyone for a crime afterward must have seemed rather silly.

Read Part III

Tragedy in the Sierra Nevada, Part I

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A more shocking scene cannot be imagined than that witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in the California Mountains. The bones of those who had died and been devoured by the miserable ones that still survived were lying around their tents and cabins. Bodies of men, women and children, with half the flesh torn from them, lay on every side.

DEPARTURE

On the morning of April 14th, 1846, three families from Springfield, Illinois trundled out of town in a train of nine wagons, following the California Trail. There were thirty-three people in all, including a number of teamsters hired to drive wagons and tend cattle. The group consisted of the brothers George and Jacob Donner and their families, along with the family of James Reed. Children accounted for nearly half of the thirty-three people in the group. One of those children, Virginia Reed, would later write:

Never can I forget the morning when we bade farewell to kindred and friends. The Donners were there, having driven in the evening before with their families, so that we might get an early start.



Not much is known about specific reasons why these families decided to head west, but the 1840’s were characterized by mass emigrations across the American frontier, and the Reed and Donner families no doubt had the same plans as the thousands of others who came before and after them: to find a better life in California.

Neither is much known about how the Donner families and the Reed family came to be traveling together. It has long been assumed that James Reed and George and/or Jacob Donner were friends, but there is nothing in the historical record to explicitly suggest this. Their decision to travel together may simply have been a practical one: safety in numbers.

Each of the three families took three wagons apiece – one for the family to live in, and two others loaded with provisions. These provisions would have included everything the family owned – clothes, blankets, dishes, pots and pans, toys, and six months’ worth of food – enough to get them to California. Virginia Reed mentioned that one of the Reed wagons even contained a brand new wood-burning stove. Additionally, each wagon was pulled by six to eight oxen, meaning there was a herd of over sixty animals.

The first leg of the journey brought the wagon train to Independence, Missouri, where they met up with a much larger group headed by Lexington, Kentucky native William Henry Russell. The Reeds and Donners attached themselves to this group. The Russell Party may have included as many as 1500 emigrants. They set out on the California Trail in about 250 wagons on May 12th, 1846.

THE CALIFORNIA TRAIL

Heading northwest out of Independence, the Donners and Reeds suffered their first loss when James Reed’s mother-in-law, Sara Keyes, died near Alcove Springs, Kansas.

“I am afraid your mother will not stand it many weeks, or indeed days, if there is not a quick change.”

James Reed wrote those words to his brother-in-law on May 20th, 1846, about a week or so before she died. Virginia Reed later wrote that her grandmother had been very ill before making the journey, and her other children encouraged her to remain in Illinois, but she was determined to see California before she died.

Sarah Keyes was buried with a short ceremony in Alcove Springs, and one of the teamsters – an Englishman named John Denton – carved a small gravestone for her.

A Kentuckian of Russell’s party, Edwin Bryant, wrote the following:

At 2 o’clock, p.m., a funeral procession was formed, in which nearly every man, woman, and child of the company united, and the corpse of the deceased lady was conveyed to its last resting place, in this desolate but beautiful wilderness…the grave was then closed and carefully sodded with the green turf of the prairie, from whence annually will spring and bloom its brilliant and many-colored flowers.

The wagon train of the Russell Party continued slowly across Kansas and Nebraska, following the Platte River. Around June 26th, the company arrived in Fort Laramie, in the southeastern corner of Wyoming. George Donner wrote in a letter home:

We arrived here yesterday without meeting any serious accident. Our company are in good health…Our provisions are in good order, and we feel satisfied with our preparations for the trip.

For some time, Reed had been discussing with the Donner brothers the possibility of taking an alternate route to California. Normally, the California Trail headed northward into Idaho, then back towards the southwest, through Nevada and into California. The previous year, however, a pioneer named Lansford Hastings had written a book about emigrations to Oregon and California, wherein he suggested an alternate route: cutting southward around the Great Salt Lake (through present day Salt Lake City), and reconnecting with the California Trail in Nevada.

Lansford Hastings

This became known as the Hastings Cutoff, and was believed to save some 300 miles – perhaps a month of traveling – over the normal route.



While in Fort Laramie, Reed and the Donner brothers met up with an acquaintance named James Clyman, who had just returned from California. He had traveled there earlier in the year with Lansford Hastings, and they had used Hastings’ proposed southern shortcut. Clyman advised Reed and the Donners not to use it, as it had proven to be fraught with difficulties and long desert stretches with little or no water.

The wagon train continued westward from Fort Laramie, reaching the Great Divide around the middle of July. Charles Stanton, a bachelor from Chicago who had joined up with the Donners in Missouri, wrote:

Dreams of my youth and of my riper years is accomplished. I have seen the Rocky Mountains – have crossed the Rubicon, an am now on the waters that flow to the Pacific! Should the remainder of my journey be as interesting, I shall be abundantly repaid for the toils and hardships of this arduous trip.

Charles Stanton

By the time the party reached Fort Bridger, in southwest Wyoming, Reed and the Donner brothers had decided to take the Hastings Cutoff, despite the warnings against it. Several other groups from the Russell Party had already taken the Cutoff, leading Reed to believe that a nice road would be opened for them. These travelers, numbering as many as sixty wagons, were being led by Hastings himself. Reed wrote:

Mr. Bridger informs me that the route we design to take is a fine level road, with plenty of water and grass…It is estimated that 700 miles will take us to Capt. Suter’s Fort, which we hope to make in seven weeks from this day.

Captain “Suter’s” Fort is a reference to John Sutter, already famous in California in the mid-1840’s, but destined to become famous across the country in 1848 when gold was discovered at his mill. Sutter’s Fort, located in modern day Sacramento, marked the end of the California Trail. Reed expected to reach it by the end of September.



His only concern was a waterless stretch of about forty miles along the shortcut through the desert. He seemed certain, however, that water would be found by the dozens of wagons that were already ahead of him on the trail. He wrote: “Hastings and his party are out ahead examining for water, or for a route to avoid this stretch.”

On July 31st, a group lead by Reed and the Donner brothers, and now including a number of other folks who had joined them from the original Russell Party, headed south, following the Hastings Cutoff. Among the people joining the caravan were families by the name of McCutchen, Keseberg, Murphy, and Breen. There were about seventy-five people in all, inside twenty wagons, and they had elected George Donner as the captain of the expedition.

Thus, it was in Fort Bridger, at the Little Sandy River, at the end of July, 1846, that the Donner Party was officially established.

Read Part II

Mini-Series Coming Soon

Just a quick update to let all my thousands of readers (ha) know that I haven't forgotten you. I know you are out there, just waiting for my words of wisdom, and I assure you that I will not let you down.

Seriously though, I've been working on a "historical account" that has taken me much longer than originally planned.

I started it early last week, expecting it to take me a couple of nights' work, like most of my essays. But I quickly discovered that it was going to be much longer and more in depth that I had thought, and now it has expanded into what is essentially a short novella. (A novella is officially describe as being between 17,500 words and 40,000 words. The first draft of my current project is about 20,000 words. "Novella" typically describes fiction; my current project is non-fiction, of course.)

So anyway, it's long and detailed, which means I am going to make it into a sort of "mini-series." It'll definitely be the longest single account that I've ever posted on my blog, but I hope by breaking it up it'll make it easier to read and more likely that people will actually read it.

In order to build the suspense and excitement for all my thousands of readers (ha), I'm going to refrain from saying what it is about, other than to mention that it has nothing to do with religion or theology, and it centers on a major historical event of the 19th century, and includes all sorts of action and adventure and blood and guts and death. And no, it has nothing to do with the Civil War.

Hope you enjoy!

A New Take on Mellencamp's "Scarecrow"

Recently, my local rock station has inserted John Mellencamp’s song “Scarecrow” into its daily rotation. This is a song I have long been familiar with, having heard it often growing up in the 1980’s. It is the title track from his 1985 album – a record that my family and I listened to frequently.



If you are familiar with this song and its lyrics, you’ll realize that it doesn’t take a musical or literary genius to figure out what he’s talking about. It’s a song discussing the plight of Indiana farmers in the early 1980’s, when crop failures and rising prices led to the bankruptcy of a number of farms, not just in Indiana but throughout the Midwest.

The song gives a gut-wrenching and intimate look at that agricultural crisis from the perspective of those who were victims of it. The accompanying music video begins with an interview of three real farmers who were suffering through the difficult times.

As I listen to this song now, so many years down the line, it has taken on a profound and provocative new meaning for me. As strange as it will no doubt sound to my readers, I hear the echoes of Jesus’ life in 1st century Galilee reflected in this song about 1980’s American farmers.

If you’re so inclined, I invite you to read the lyrics along with me and consider a few things:

Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn.
Four-hundred empty acres that used to be my farm.

This opening verse provides a beautifully stark image of what has befallen the narrator’s livelihood. A farm that used to belong to him, now abandoned, owned by someone in a corporate office somewhere a thousand miles away, an old scarecrow still watching over the forlorn and empty fields, a lone blackbird roosting in the vacant barn. If you read with the heart, you can hear the narrator’s resentment echoed in that second line – four hundred acres that used to be my farm.

Similar situations had befallen countless rural Jews in 1st century Galilee. In the previous decades, Roman commercialism had spread across the Jewish homeland like poison ivy. In the first 20 years or so of Jesus’ life, the Roman cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias had been built in Galilee, right in Jesus’ backyard. Historical texts show that these towns spread Roman commercial influence deep into the heart of rural Galilee. Lands that had once been farmed by Jewish peasant landowners were overtaken by wealthy Romans and their urban Jewish accomplices. These Jewish peasants, once landowners, were now dispossessed of their ancestral land. In the best cases, these Jews worked as common laborers on the lands they once owned. In the worst cases, they were forced into beggary and banditry.

One can imagine that their feelings of resentment towards the Roman commercialism that had destroyed their livelihoods would have been every bit as profound as that expressed by Mellencamp as the narrator of this song.

I grew up like my daddy did, my grandpa cleared this land.
When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand.

In this second half of the first verse, Mellencamp provides a stark glimpse at the reason for the narrator’s deep resentment. This land is not just the narrator’s possession – like a kitchen table bought from the local furniture store – to be bought and sold; this is his ancestral land, land cleared and worked and made into a viable farm by his grandfather and father before him. This land is as much a part of the narrator’s personal identity as his own name. As a child, he even helped pace out the fence line with his grandfather – pacing out, as it were, the borders of this property that was not just fields of corn and wheat, but home and identity.

The connection here to the dispossessed Jews of 1st century Galilee is blatant to any student of Jewish history. To these ancient Jews, land and God were two sides of the same coin. The Jewish homeland, the Promised Land of the Jewish scriptures, was God’s land, entrusted to the Jews as caretakers. They felt a deep and profound and even esoteric connection with this land. Their entire theological worldview was tied up in their rights to the land they inhabited. Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last 50 years would see that this connection to land still pervades even modern Jewish identity. The Jewish people, then and now, were people of the land.

For 1st century Jews, unlike for the narrator of “Scarecrow,” it wasn’t just their father and grandfather who had shared this land, but many countless generations of Jews before them. To see it overrun by Roman commercialism – to see God’s land raped, as it were, by invaders, must have seemed like the worst sort of tragedy.

Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.
This land fed a nation, this land made me proud.
And, son, I’m just sorry there’s no legacy for you now.

This is the chorus of the song, reflecting the narrator’s deeply felt pride in the land he owned and worked. Again, this wasn’t just a possession. Nor was it even just an ancestral holding. It helped feed a nation. Without this farm and others like it, nothing else would much matter, because if you can’t eat, you can’t do much of anything.

The sense of pride felt by the Jews of the 1st century in their land would have been no less – and in fact, probably far more – deeply felt. The land had been entrusted to them by God. They were proud of it. They felt a deep affinity with it. The loss of this legacy – a legacy that defined their entire cultural identity – would have been devastating. And to see other Jews – urban Jews of Jerusalem – collaborating with this systemic evil of commercialism would have created an enormous level of resentment and contempt within the Jews – like Jesus – of 1st century Galilee.

The crops we grew last summer weren’t enough to pay the loans.
Couldn’t buy the seed to plant this spring and the Farmers Bank foreclosed.
Called my old friend Schepman up to auction off the land.
He said John it’s just my job and I hope you understand.
Hey, calling it your job, ol’ hoss, sure don’t make it right,
But if you want me to I’ll say a prayer for your soul tonight.
And grandma’s on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand.
Sometimes I hear her singing “Take me to the Promised Land.”
When you take away a man’s dignity, he can’t work his fields and cows.

There’ll be blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.
Blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.

In this second verse and chorus, the anger of the narrator becomes more apparent. The auctioneer attempts to deflect responsibility, but the narrator calls him on it – just because it’s your “job” doesn’t make it right. The whole enterprise, the narrator is saying, is a systemic evil, and you are a part of it.

The reaction Jesus had to the systemic evil he saw around him must have been similar. Like the grandmother who imagines the Promised Land, Jesus began to envision the kingdom of God overcoming the broken world. And he became convinced that if you were not part of the solution – part of God’s kingdom – then you were part of the problem.

The last line of this verse is especially powerful. When you take away a man’s dignity, what can you possibly expect the result to be? The Romans and their urban Jewish collaborators of the 1st century had taken away the dignity of the Jews of Galilee. They had beggared them. They had shed their metaphorical blood, leaving “blood on the scarecrow” and “blood on the plow.

To put it bluntly, the Galilean Jews were justifiably pissed. Jesus came from within that victimized world, voicing the frustrations and resentments of his people, and conceptualizing the kingdom of God, a kingdom of love, acceptance, compassion, and radical equality.

It is not hard to understand, within this context, Jesus’ famous actions in the Temple, where he is said to have “overturned the tables of the moneychangers.” The Romans and their urban Jewish collaborators had commercialized God’s land; they had taken this divinely given land away from its rightful owners so that they could turn a buck. Jesus’ actions in the Temple were symbolic to a great degree, but they no doubt also represented the “boiling over point” for Jesus. It was bad enough that they had taken the land; now they were commercializing the Temple – God’s very own house – too.

Well there’s ninety-seven crosses planted in the courthouse yard.
For ninety-seven families who lost ninety-seven farms.
I think about my grandpa, my neighbors and my name,
And some nights I feel like dying, like that scarecrow in the rain.

For me, this is the climax of the song. Mellencamp sings these words in such a way that the narrator’s anger and resentment is truly palpable. You can feel the resentment yourself, and you can understand it. At the risk of sounding like a “bleeding heart,” I’ll admit that this part of the song has, at times, brought tears to my eyes.

For Jesus, it was far more than 97 farms and 97 families. It was thousands upon thousands of Galilean Jews victimized by systemic evils. And when Jesus thought about his ancestors, and his collective Jewish name, he no doubt felt the same helplessness and bitterness that the narrator feels here.

These are the sociopolitical contexts that Jesus of Nazareth came from. Systemic evils. Hard-working people victimized and beggared by the politics and culture of empire.

I hope the irony of the image of a “scarecrow on a wooden cross” dying in the rain is not lost on anyone.

As “Scarecrow” shows us, these systemic evils are still around. Things haven’t changed all that much. I’m particularly reminded of a recent phenomenon: foreclosed homes being auctioned off by the thousands to real estate investors. Earlier this year, I heard of a foreclosed home in my neighborhood being sold “as is” for an especially low price. In anger, the homeowner had apparently spray-painted graffiti all over the walls of the house. In the news and in conversation, I’ve heard plenty of folks defend buying these homes at auction or through real estate agents: “Well, the house has already been foreclosed on. I can’t change that and didn’t have any involvement in that. As a real estate investor, it’s my job to buy and sell houses.”

Calling it your job, ol’ hoss, sure don’t make it right.

Systemic evil is still all around us. We can either live as part of the problem or part of the solution. For Christians, that means living reconciled to the world or reconciled to the kingdom of God.

Although written as a secular song discussing sociopolitical issues, “Scarecrow” is, for me, a deeply religious song, connecting me to the context of Jesus’ life and urging me to think deeply on his message and his call to love one another and fight injustice.

Here is the song and video, from youtube. I hope you’ll listen to the lyrics, and consider them through the lens I have just illustrated.

Early Christian Practice

Caught up as we often in are in our daily lives, routines, and little corners of the world, we frequently fail to take the time to reflect much on our own religious practices. This is especially true for those Christians like me who have been associated with one denomination, and therefore one denominational tradition, throughout their lives.

Whatever our personal denominational preference is, we tend to think of those worship traditions as the norm. While many of us realize that these worship traditions had some starting point in the past and haven’t just existed for all time, we tend to go through life as though they did. We may fail to recognize that for the first three or four centuries of Christian history, there was basically no organized and institutionalized form of Christian practice. There were no Protestants at all, and those who would become “Catholics” represented only a small subset of the greater Christian world. Catholicism as we know it today did not come to control Christianity in principle until the mid 300’s C.E. and in practice until the 400’s C.E. That means that for the first 350 years or so of Christian history, Christianity looked remarkably different than any form of Christianity that exists today.

It might be easy to gloss that over, and we frequently do just that. When discussing ancient history, to sum up an entire block of several hundred years with just a word or two is common. Yet 400 years is a very long time. Imagine trying to sum up American history with just a sentence or two - and U.S. history only goes back about 250 years. The period of early Christianity at issue here is nearly twice that long. To those countless generations of Christians who lived during that very long period of time, their lives, beliefs, and practices certainly were not reducible to a footnote of history.

So let’s take a look at what those early forms of Christianity looked like.

FIRST CENTURY

Most of our texts in the New Testament come from the 1st century. Assuming Jesus died in roughly 30 C.E., that means the 1st century represents the first 70 years or so of Christian history. How did Christian practice look during that earliest era?

The Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, appears to have been a ritual practiced among Christians from a very early time. It is discussed by the apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, written in the 50’s C.E. His words on this are familiar to many Christians, as they are routinely spoken liturgically during Lord’s Supper celebrations.

But while the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist today consists of a simple ritualistic ceremony – performed in some churches each week, in other churches only once per month – for early Christians, it was an entire ritual meal. Paul says:

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.

While this passage gives an interesting glimpse into a problem at the Corinthian church, in a more general sense it allows us to see what the Lord’s Supper ritual was like. It was a full meal of food and drink that the Church ate together. It was, essentially, a 1st century potluck, only with much more liturgical, ritualistic, and theological purpose.

How often did they eat this ritualistic complete meal? There is no indisputable answer, but it was almost certainly at least once a week. In the book of Acts, from roughly 90 C.E., the writer mentions that he and his companions “broke bread” on the first day of the week (Sunday). Other 1st century texts, such as the teaching text called the Didache, imply that it was a meal eaten at every gathering. The Didache calls it the “Thanksgiving meal,” and provides instructions on prayers that should accompany it. It says that Christians should gather together “every day” and “eat a meal,” giving thanks and confessing sins in the process. This same text asserts that only those who have been “baptized” can take part in this most holy of meals.

Baptism, of course, seems also to have been one of the earliest Christian rituals. The Didache instructs its congregation to baptize in cold, “living” water. “Living” water was a euphemism for running water (such as a stream or river). It conceded, however, that the still waters of a pond or lake would suffice if no living water was available. It even went so far as to permit pouring three jugs of water on a person’s head, if neither living nor still water could be found. It also asserted that both the “overseer” performing the ritual, and the new convert receiving it, should fast for “one or two days” prior to the baptism.

For the community that produced the Gospel of John, baptism was so important that Jesus is found to say: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit.” For those 1st century Christians, baptism was an integral part of receiving the Holy Spirit. Luke makes this explicit when he has Jesus say, in Acts, that John the Baptist baptized with water, but Christians will be “baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The writer of 1 Peter promises that baptism is a pledge to God and part of the path of salvation.

Another aspect of 1st century Christian practice was communal living. The writer of Acts says explicitly that the earliest communities of Christians “would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” The Didache agrees: “Share all things with your brother, and never say that your possessions are exclusively your own, because if you share in eternal things, how much more in things that are temporary?”

For that same Didache community, fasting was an integral part of Christian life. The Didache instructs its listeners to fast on Wednesday and Friday of each week (explicitly saying not to fast on Monday and Thursday, since this is when “hypocrites” fast).

Prophecy and speaking in tongues is yet another early aspect of Christian practice. Paul and other New Testament writers talk about this phenomenon as part of regular worship services, as does the Didache. The Didache even gives explicit instructions about how to know true prophecy from false prophecy.

SECOND CENTURY

As we move into the second century, we have more history to work from in terms of understanding what early Christian communities looked like. It was during the second century that Gnostic forms of Christianity began to flourish, and thanks to a number of archaeological discoveries of the last 100 years or so, much of their literature is known to modern scholarship.

First, it is apparent that 2nd century Christian groups propagated a lot of “secret knowledge.” To use a modern euphemism, they were big on divine secrets. These secrets, of course, were frequently attributed to teachings Jesus had given one-on-one to various apostles. In a letter that Clement, bishop of Alexandria, wrote to a man named Theodore in the mid-2nd century, there is a discussion of what has come to be known as the “Secret Gospel of Mark.” Clement says that Mark wrote down his Gospel – presumably an early form of the one we know today – but that after Peter died, Mark came to the church in Alexandria and expanded on his book, adding in secret stories and accounts. This “secret” version of Mark was fiercely protected by the Alexandrian church, its content given only to initiates deemed spiritually worthy of receiving it.

According to Clement’s letter, however, their secret text got stolen by an opposing group of Christians called the Carpocratians. This group, in turn, corrupted the teachings of the secret text and began using it to assert ideas that Clement found highly offensive. One of these ideas was, apparently, that Jesus initiated secret teachings to his male followers in rituals that included homosexual sex.

This same group of Christians, according to a later Christian writer, had a painting of Jesus that they claimed had been made by Pontius Pilate, and which they used as part of their religious rites and celebrations.

Not all Gnostic groups were quite as bizarre as that. In the 2nd century, in fact, many scholars assert that most forms of Christian practice were essentially Gnostic. Catholic or “orthodox” Christianity certainly existed in the 2nd century, but it was not yet institutionalized and it was not the “mainstream” form of Christian practice.

Gnostics believed that the Hebrew god of the Old Testament was actually a lesser, evil god. He had created this world of sin and depravity, and now the one true God of the universe – a being completely unknowable – had sent his light into the world through Jesus so that Christians could figure out the secret, mysterious way of escaping this world of sin and returning to the ground of their perfect being. Gnosticism was an inherently “internal” religion of self-discovery leading to salvation. God is within you. It contrasted the “orthodox” view that salvation was attained through faith. God is outside of you.

Fasting continued to be a common practice among Christians of the 2nd century. The Christian leader Ptolemy, writing in the mid-2nd century, says: “Among us, external fasting is also observed, since it can be advantageous to the soul if it is done reasonably, not for imitating others or from habit or because of a special day appointed for this purpose.” This indicates that while fasting was still a common ritual, the group represented by Ptolemy did not care much for strict rules regulating days of fasting, as we saw in the Didache.

Other Christian groups of the 2nd century followed extreme forms of hedonism. Iranaeus, bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd century, writes of Christian groups that took the issue of faith and works to the extreme. These groups agreed so strongly with the notion that salvation comes solely from faith, apart from works, that they felt no compunction to follow moralistic codes. Of course, these forms of “hedonism” would seem mild to us today: eating food sacrificed to idols (a big no-no for folks like Iranaeus), sex outside of marriage, and groups of women and men living together in the same home (which Iranaeus took to mean they were obviously engaging in orgies).

Other groups took it further, however. The Cainites, who were especially enamored with Adam’s son Cain, believed so strongly that the body was a shell of evil that they pursued worldly pleasures to the full, in order to defile the sinful body and essentially destroy it.

From the Gospel of Phillip in the middle of the 2nd century, we find that the group who produced this text used three “temples” in its ritual practice. The first was called the “baptism,” the second “redemption,” and the third the “bridal chamber.” It is not clear whether the ritual in the bridal chamber included ritual sex, although this was certainly suspected by other Christians of the era. Iranaeus gives us a description of what took place there:

A few of them prepare a bridal chamber and in it go through a form of consecration, employing certain fixed formulae, which are repeated over the person to be initiated, and stating that a spiritual marriage is to be performed after the pattern of the higher [celestial beings].

These higher celestial beings were called “aeons,” and were believed to be emanations of God into the world. The bridal chamber, then, re-enacted the sexual union of these Godly emanations. The community that produced the Gospel of Phillip was probably the Valentinian community. The Valentinians were “mainstream” Gnostics who followed the hierarchies of priest and bishop, and who practiced the doctrines and dogmas of the emerging Church, but who taught a path of spiritual enlightenment beyond those organized structures. Just as Buddhist teachings are frequently likened to a raft that gets the practitioner to the other side and is then abandoned, so the doctrines and dogmas and structures of Christianity were there only for the novice. Once spiritual enlightenment had been attained, those rules and regulations could be left behind because they were no longer valuable or necessary.

During the early part of the 2nd century, we also begin to see descriptions of Christians from outside Christianity. In a series of letters sent between Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia and the emperor Trajan, we get our first “Roman” discussion of Christianity. Pliny has had some run-ins with Christians in his region, and has put them on trial. He gives us a nice glimpse at what Christian practice looked like in his region in the first decade of the 2nd century:

[Christians] were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath…When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food.

Pliny goes on to mention “two female slaves” who he refers to as “deaconesses” among the Christians.

Later in the 2nd century, we have another Roman perspective, this time from the philosopher Fronto: “They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another…They call one another…brothers and sisters.” He goes on to accuse these Christians of “loving the head of a donkey” and of being obsessed with the genitalia of their priests and bishops. These are no doubt vicious rumors he has heard, and he concedes this by saying: “I know not whether these things are false.” Whether true or not, he says, suspicion of such things is fairly aroused because of Christianity’s tendency to engage in “secret and nocturnal rites.”

Fronto doesn’t stop there, however. He recounts an initiation rite of novice Christians that he says is “well known.”

An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily – O horror! – they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together…

Might Christian groups of the 2nd century actually have practiced such things? It is difficult to say with any certainty, but the later Christian writer who quotes these passages from Fronto certainly didn’t think so.

Fronto also speaks of the meal tradition of Christianity. Like the initiation rite of child murder that he says is well known, he says their tradition of meal sharing is spoken of by people “everywhere.”

On a solemn day they assemble at the feast, with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and of every age. There, after much feasting, when the fellowship has grown warm, and the fervor of incestuous lust has grown hot with drunkenness, a dog that has been tied to the chandelier is provoked to rush and spring, by throwing a small piece of offal beyond the length of a line by which he is bound; and thus the conscious light being overturned and extinguished in the shameless darkness, the connections of abominable lust involve them in the uncertainty of fate.

Again, is it possible that some Christian groups topped off the Lord’s Supper celebration with a good old fashioned orgy? It’s possible, I suppose, but Fronto’s words sound more polemical than historical. In either case, it is clear that Christian rituals, carried on in secret and with esoteric liturgies and mysterious language, aroused suspicion in mainstream culture, and gave rise to all manner of rumor and speculation.

If we can separate polemics from history, these comments from Fronto may allow us to speculate about how some Christian groups practiced their faith in the 2nd century. Take, for instance, Fronto’s comment that Christians “loved the head of a donkey.” One might imagine Christian groups of the 2nd century re-enacting Palm Sunday as part of the Easter celebrations. That re-enactment would no doubt have included ritually riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, as Jesus is said to have done in the Gospels. Perhaps this led Christians to be associated with donkeys – that most Jewish of animals.

As for obsessions with the genitals of priests, it is not out of the question to assume that some Christian groups may have fused ancient fertility cults with Christian practice. As outlined above, this was a charge made against some Christian groups by other Christian groups. Fertility cults, of course, typically engaged in various forms of ritual sex. The erect penis is known as a symbol of fertility cults from across antiquity. Fronto, with his “modern” Roman values, was righteously indignant over such superstition and ancient tribalism, much like we would be today if faced with a similar situation. In that sense, he shared the feelings of Christians like Iranaeus and other “heresy hunters” of the early Christian era.

As for the charge of cannibalism, this was, no doubt, related to the ritual of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. Perhaps Fronto’s account of cannibalism, mixed with infanticide, is a polemical fusion of the Eucharist, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac in the Old Testament. It’s difficult to imagine a Christian group (or any group, for that matter) enacting such a ritual, but Fronto is not the only one who suggests it. Church fathers writing as late as the 4th century made similar charges against some Christian groups, as we will see below.

Finally, we get an intimate glimpse at the lifestyle of some 2nd century Christians from the Christian writer Justin Martyr. Justin wrote around 150 C.E., and he is the earliest of the “Church fathers” for whom we have a significant amount of existing writings. He said the following:

We, who once took pleasure in fornication, now embrace self-control. We, who valued the acquisition of wealth and possessions above everything else, now put what we have into a common fund, and share with everyone in need. We, who hated and killed one another, and would not share our lives with certain people because of their ethnic differences from us, now live intimately with them.

Clearly as late as the mid-2nd century, many Christian groups were still living in the communal style of the earliest Christians a century earlier.

THIRD CENTURY AND LATER

Christian practice through these centuries seems to have mirrored much of the previous eras, though with an increase in regulation and institutionalism. Fringe groups tended to die out (especially those that condemned procreation) and mainstream groups tended to strengthen in numbers, leading to tighter structure and unity.

Discussion raged during these centuries of the nature of Jesus. While some groups insisted Jesus was equal to God, others claimed Jesus was divine in his own right, but still subject to God. Jesus’ humanity, especially, was at issue during this time. Some said Jesus was both fully human and fully God. Others asserted that Jesus was not human at all, but only appeared to be human, because God can’t suffer and die like Jesus did on the cross. Still others argued that Jesus was only human, with God simply working through him in a unique and mysterious way.

It was during this time in the 3rd and 4th centuries that Christians began using the familiar “sign of the cross” – a hand movement meant to symbolize the cross of Christ. It differed, however, from the familiar four-point movement known to Catholicism today. Tertullian, writing in the early part of the 3rd century, says:

In all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross.

This ritual movement crossed only the forehead, not the whole body, and instead of using three fingers, only the thumb was used. Furthermore, the sign consisted of only three points, not four – it mimicked the Greek letter tau, which is known to us as T.

In regards to baptismal rites in the 3rd century, early Christian writers left rather detailed accounts of how this ritual was carried out. Prayer and fasting would precede the day of baptism. The baptism itself would typically take place on Easter, with all new initiates of the previous year being baptized together. The overseer would ask the initiate if he or she renounced the devil and his angels. The initiate would respond three times in the affirmative. After that, the initiates would step naked into the water, up to their necks. The overseer would then ritually call down the spirit of God on those being baptized, and the initiates – having now received the Holy Spirit – would emerge from the water to be clothed in a robe of white linen. They would also be given ritual food – milk and honey – which not only symbolized the food of the Promised Land from Jewish scriptures, but, as scholar Elaine Pagels says, also symbolized “baby food” being given to these newborns in Christ.

During this era, we again see rather outrageous accusations against fringe Christian practice. Epiphanius, writing in the early 300’s, referred to a Christian sect he called the “Borborites” who replaced the bread and wine of the Eucharist with semen and menstrual blood, which they smeared on themselves and then consumed. This practice may have been an extreme form of a God/Wisdom duality, with menstrual blood representing female wisdom, and semen representing male divinity.

Epiphanius also accuses these Christians of infanticide and cannibalism, going so far as to say that they would kill and eat the babies created from their ritual sex acts. This sounds so similar to what we saw above from the pagan Fronto that one wonders if Epiphanius actually got the story from Fronto’s writings. That may be a possibility, but more than likely these sorts of rumors about the more fringe and secretive sects of Christianity were commonplace. It is difficult to know for certain whether they represent true ritual practices or mere rumor and polemics.

CONCLUSION

When we look at the earliest eras of Christianity – a time period spanning several hundred years – we find that Christian practice was as diverse then as it is now. Furthermore, hardly any of it resembles the rituals and liturgies that we take for granted in the modern church. We still baptize, we still eat the Lord’s Supper, and we still celebrate Easter, but our methods for enacting those ancient rituals share only the barest similarities with the earliest generations of Christians.

When I envision the earliest Christian communities – those communities for whom Jesus was only as “ancient” as Wilbur and Orville Wright are for us – I imagine a group of humble believers, separated from mainstream society, living communally and sharing all their possessions and profits with one another, meeting together at dawn on Sunday – the Lord’s Day – for prayer, prophecy, and teachings from scripture, sharing a ritual Eucharist meal each evening, greeting one another as brother and sister, crossing their foreheads in piety as they go about their daily activities, and viewing their entire existence as part of the in-breaking kingdom of God. For these earliest Christians, Christianity wasn’t just a profession of faith, it was an entire way of life, reconciled not to the world, but to God.

Christianity is a Verb

The title of this essay is a phrase I have been using recently in discussions about religion and the nature of Christianity. I have frequently said that I would like to write a book by that title. More than anything, however, I’d like to live my life in conjunction with it.

Christianity isn’t a title and most certainly isn’t an entitlement. “Christian” isn’t something you are; it’s something you do. Christianity isn’t the group you align yourself with; it’s the lifestyle you lead each and every day. Church isn’t an activity center; it’s a community outreach center.

In our earliest Christian writings, texts found both within the New Testament and outside the New Testament, we find that discussions like this – discussions about the very nature of Christianity and what it means to call one’s self a Christian – go back to the earliest days of Christianity. In New Testament theology, this discussion is one that goes by the more familiar theme of “faith vs. works.”

Faith was an integral part of early church life, much as it is today. For modern Christians, “faith” generally means trusting that God exists, that Jesus was his divine son, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again after three days.

For the earliest generation of Christians, however, “faith” was somewhat different. First, the question of God’s existence wasn’t one that generally concerned people. “Atheist” in the first century typically referred to someone who believed in a different god, not someone who had no faith in any gods. Someone who believed in no gods at all would likely have been called insane, rather than atheist.

Second, the earliest Christians didn’t think of Jesus as “divine,” the way that we do today. The idea that Jesus was literally God in the flesh did not come about in Christian circles until well after the first generations of Christians. The Trinity doctrine, for instance, wasn’t formulated and adopted until the 4th century C.E. For the earliest Christians, faith in Jesus meant faith that Jesus was a uniquely “God-inspired” person; a teacher and prophet through whom God worked directly; a human being through whom one could meet and engage the spirit of God. For a Jewish Christian in the 1st century, the very suggestion that Jesus had been God himself would have been seen as the worst kind of blasphemy. It would never have even crossed their minds. For Jews, God was so completely “other” that they didn’t even write his name. They used code words – abbreviations, essentially – to refer to God.

Third, while the idea of Jesus’ atonement and resurrection was an early development in Christian history, “resurrection” had a different meaning for those earliest Christians than it has for us today. Jewish tradition had conceived of resurrection as a physical event that happens to the body; you die, you are buried, and then your body comes back to life and you rise up out of your tomb. In Jewish theology, this was an event that was expected at the end of time, when God would finally reconcile the broken world to himself.

Jewish Christians, however, came to understand resurrection quite differently. Faced with the stark reality that their teacher had been brutally and unceremoniously executed by the Romans, they came to understand that, in death, Jesus had been exalted to the right hand of God. He had died for their sins, like the Passover lamb, and had been raised up to the heavenly realms. For these earliest Christians, Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension happened simultaneously. It wasn’t until later that Jesus’ resurrection and ascension was separated from his death. So when those early Christian texts talk about resurrection, they are talking about spiritual resurrection, not bodily resurrection. When they talk about the risen Jesus appearing to people, they are talking about spiritual apparitions and religious ecstasy, not a literally dead person literally coming back to life and re-entering society. That sort of literalistic understanding of early Jewish Christian scripture is a product of later centuries and later Christians unfamiliar with the unique religious worldview of 1st century Jewish Christians.

Some of my readers may find this last point particularly difficult to accept. I recognize that and am sensitive to it. My opinion is that it doesn’t matter whether one conceives of resurrection as spiritual or physical – it might have been either one. Ultimately, it is a faith proclamation in either case, because it’s also possible that it didn’t happen at all, that Jesus just died and was dead. What is far more important is what that faith proclamation means for us as Christians.

And that ultimate meaning brings us back to faith vs. works. The apostle Paul, in his many writings now extant in the New Testament, talks a lot about faith. In a cursory examination of the NIV translation, I counted exactly 100 repetitions of some form of the word “faith” within Paul’s letters. And that was only counting the 7 letters scholars widely agree came from Paul. There are 6 or 7 others that have traditionally been attributed to him as well. Clearly faith was important for Paul.

Paul’s words about faith – particularly in Romans – have led to what I see as a major problem in modern Christianity. This is the idea that we are saved by “faith alone.” Paul argues, throughout Romans and elsewhere, that Christians are saved by faith, and not “works of the law.” This has been misunderstood in mainstream Christianity to mean that the “profession of faith” in God and Jesus is all that really matters. If you profess your faith and mean it, and if you “ask Jesus into your heart,” then you have attained salvation. Of course, there is plenty of lip service given to leading a good life, being kind to others, “living like Jesus,” and so on. But all of that is just icing on the cake. Salvation is actually attained by the profession of faith. It’s good to do the other stuff too, but it’s not required.

For me, this is a quite depressing misunderstanding of Paul, and it’s one that is unfortunately extremely common among Christians. When Paul spoke about “works of the law,” he wasn’t talking about “good deeds.” He was talking about Mosaic Law – Old Testament commandments about how Jews should live their lives. He was talking about things like dietary restrictions, lifestyle codes, circumcision, honoring the Sabbath, appropriately celebrating the various Jewish holy days, and so on. He was saying that these things don’t provide salvation because they are ultimately impossible to follow perfectly. Instead, salvation comes from God’s grace, through faith. And that isn’t just plain old faith. Paul makes it clear that the kind of faith he is talking about is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). In other words, faith is an action, not a mere profession.

That this was misunderstood even in the earliest generations of Christianity is apparent within the New Testament itself. People came to understand that all they had to do was profess faith in Jesus, and they were set. They had their “get out of death free” card. Much of the book of James is a response to misunderstandings Christians had over Paul’s direction about faith. James attacks those who think that mere professions of faith are good enough for salvation. What good is it, James asks, if you wish someone well, but don’t actually do anything to help them? In 2:17, he says: “Faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” The word “works” in that passage is not referring to Mosaic Law. It is referring to good deeds. James is attacking the platitudes and religious stagnation he saw around him. People had their profession of faith, their conversion to Christianity, and they were content to sit on it, offering lip service at best. James says no. James says that’s wrong. James says you have misunderstood Paul. Paul was talking about Mosaic Law as it related to faith, not good deeds or lovingkindness in relation to faith. James makes clear what Paul frequently left ambiguous – that faith without good deeds and loving actions was a dead faith. It was meaningless. It served no purpose. It was, as I have said elsewhere, a windmill with no wind.

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since the time of James. Many Christians still think a profession of faith is all they need to attain salvation. Like the Christians of James’ era, they have their “get out of death free” card, and they are content to sit on it. It’s too challenging to actually follow Jesus in the lifestyle he taught. It’s too challenging to actually give ourselves away to others. And more than that, it’s not at all convenient to our modern way of life in this materialistic, individualistic western society.

Jesus showed his followers how to live for others. He showed his followers how to love one another and work together for the common good. He demonstrated how the kingdom of God is a present reality that we all can take part in. He taught that the kingdom of God is our responsibility, not some future event that we have no control over. Early Christians textualized this teaching and asserted the importance of faith working through acts of love and compassion. For Jesus and the earliest Christians, salvation was never about the future. It was about the here and now, and it was attained through acts of love.

As a Christian, I don’t engage much in absolutes. I recognize that what we know about Jesus comes from ancient texts that are wide open to interpretation. I recognize that we can’t know anything about God other than what we discern from those texts that we consider authoritative, and from our own personal religious practice – prayer, meditation, etc. I believe that God can be approached from many different religious traditions and I do not believe in claims of theological exclusivity. I feel a high level of contempt for those religious persons who claim to have the exclusive pathway to heaven, and anyone who doesn’t follow them has an exclusive pathway to hell.

For me, salvation is about life in the here and now. I have hope for an afterlife, but religion, for me, is about how we act and live together here on earth, in the present. So when I talk of “being saved” or “not being saved,” I am not talking about eschatology – that is, ideas about the ultimate destiny of humanity and the world. I am not talking about the end of the world and what will happen to humans after they die. I don’t know what happens to people after they die. Instead, I am talking about life in the present. Salvation for me, then, is expressing love for God through acts of love for others. Those two things cannot be separated. I cannot express love for God unless I am living for others, and I cannot live for others without expressing love for God. I approach this salvation through the teachings of Jesus and the earliest Christians who taught in his name. If someone approaches God from a different religious tradition, but one with ultimately the same ends, then I consider them a brother or sister in God.

For me, if a Christian is not expressing love for God through acts of love for others – that is, if they are not living for others rather than for themselves – then they are not taking part in the kingdom of God promised by Jesus. They are Christians in name only – which means they aren’t Christians at all. As James said, their faith is as good as a corpse.

Even though those words come without any underlying threat of eternal damnation and ultimate eschatological absolutes, I realize they may seem harsh. And lest I appear as a monstrous hypocrite, I will be the first to admit that I frequently fall short.

There is nothing more difficult in modern western society than to actually live like Jesus taught us to live. Our culture teaches us to pursue wealth, pursue material and personal gain, pursue power and influence and authority and status, and live for ourselves even at the expense of others. It teaches us that individualism is the ultimate expression of humanity, and reinforces the idea that if someone fails or falls on hard times, they probably have only themselves to blame. We promote charity, but we expect to get a tax write-off for doing it. We promote living Godly lives, but we expect divine blessings in the form of material gain for doing it – the age old Gospel of Prosperity. We toss a few bucks in the offering plate, give some money to the Santa Claus at the Salvation Army bucket every Christmas, and give our old, worn-out clothes to Goodwill – and we think it’s enough. We’re nice to people, we try not to be hateful, and we generally attempt to be contributing members of society – and we think it’s enough. We say our prayers, we attend worship services, and we don’t take the Lord’s name in vain – and we think it’s enough.

My argument is that it’s not enough. My argument is that the life of Christ is a life of service to others. Not service just when it’s convenient. Not service in the form of platitudes. But a real, living, active lifestyle of service for others. Living for others and not for ourselves. Putting the needs of others ahead of the needs of ourselves.

That’s salvation. That’s living as part of the kingdom of God. That’s true faith. And even if we frequently fail to live to those standards, the least we can do is try. Make the attempt. When we fail, try again. And never stop trying.

If we do that, we are following the life of Christ. We are living Christianity as a verb. If not, we are just silent windmills in a vacuum.