Today's unbelief is just Roman paganism revived.
Pagans & Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac by Steven D. Smith sheds new/old light on the secularism and unbelief of our day.
Would you like to read the “signs of the times” along with the first Christians in the early centuries of the Church? Professor Smith provides a thorough investigation of and answer to T.S. Eliot’s assertion in “The Idea of a Christian Society”: “…I believe that the choice before us is between the formation of a new Christian culture, and the acceptance of a pagan one….” As Smith demonstrates, it's clear our culture has chosen door 2.
Smith offers a fascinating story of the progress of early Christianity, first of persecution and then conquest of the dominant pagan ethos of Rome. Smith takes us through a detailed look at how both Christians and pagans saw the conflict in those first centuries.
He demonstrates that paganism was never really vanquished. It has been with us throughout the course of Church history and has become especially present in these days when the "canopy" of Christianity has become tattered and shredded.
Like any good lawyer (or expositor), Smith applies the lessons learned to the case at hand. How now are we to live in the face of a revived paganism? Although he doesn’t offer certainties, he gives a faithful Christian plenty of ideas to take before the Holy Spirit in prayer to determine their way forward.
For anyone who wants to understand the times and determine what we as Christians must do, Pagans & Christians in the City offers important insights to our present situation and need.