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  • From: nm_mcgovern AT fandm.edu
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re:Why were Gentiles attracted to Christianity?
  • Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:15:29 -0400


David Hindley wrote:

> Clive Jacks made the statement:
>
> >>After all, one of the problems I have long discerned was
> just why an "off the street" gentile would react positively
> to any proclamation that "the time of waiting is over," that
> "the kingdom of God is at hand," because the long-awaited
> Messiah prophesied in the Scriptures has come.  Just how
> much of that would be even intelligible much less agreeable
> to any gentiles not previously exposed to such Jewish
> concerns and categories?<<
>
> And a good question to be asking, too. Unfortunately, many
> of us still seem to assume that there is an obvious ethical
> superiority to the Christian message that would make it
> universally appealing to all people

Perhaps it would be useful to make a comparison to the modern Hindu sect
ISKCON
in America.  The religious beliefs of early Christianity and ISKCON are of
course very different, so no comparison can be made between what attracted
Gentiles to the teachings of Christianity and what attracts Americans to the
teachings of the Hare Krishnas; still, the two movements are similar insofar
as
they are both fringe sects that have found success in lands where their
parent
religions are not widely practiced.  I don't know a lot about the Hare
Krishnas, but I think that their converts have often been people
disillusioned
by American society--"countercultural" types, if you will--often people who
already have some sort of interest in Hinduism or Eastern religion in
general.  
Maybe the same thing was happening in the first-century Roman empire:  people
were disillusioned by Roman society, came to reject both it and its dominant
religion, and turned to the foreign religion of Judaea for answers--sometimes
via the Jewish sect of Christianity.  In any case, I think the phenomena of
ISKCON in America and Gentile Christianity are similar enough that something
about the latter can be learned from the former.

Nathan McGovern
Franklin and Marshall College






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