The Good News

Evangelism as a term is not found in the Bible; it comes from the Greek terms meaning “good news” or “announcing good news”

Evangelism is most closely associated with the Christian religion but it not limited to Christians. Unitarian Universalists bring the theology and practice of evangelism with them from their Judeo-Christian roots. And Unitarianism and Universalism have both been blessed by the advent of powerful preachers and prophets throughout their history.

Sharing the good news is increasingly on the front burner at the UUA and the Report from the Commission on Assessment dated this June considers the theology and development of evangelism in some detail.

I’m going to start with an Outline History of Christian Evangelism, then a very brief discussion of Evangelism and Outreach in our UU history, and then discuss why I helped start an Outreach Committee in our church and what vision I have for the future.

Jesus came into the world at just the right time. Just fifty years earlier or later and he would have been just another itinerant preacher, known but to God. A number of important conditions were in place that would ensure the rapid spread of his gospel.

Jesus was a Jew. He was born a Jew and he died a Jew. He knew the Torah, he celebrated Passover, he kept dietary laws, he preached one and only one merciful and compassionate Go, and he worshipped God in much the same way that Jews still do today. His ministry began with the Jews but he commanded his Disciples to preach the new gospel throughout the world, to Jew and Gentile alike.

In the time of the New Testament Well over a million Jews were well scattered around the known world; there were synagogues all around the Mediterranean that were teaching centers even as they are today. Since the Jews stuck with the side of Julius Caesar in the civil wars, thereby picking a winner, they received, for many years, favorable treatment from many officials, including several Roman Emperors. And the Jewish people were respected by the authorities and by their neighbors for their strict monotheism and their contributions to society. Jews had the right to their religious observances and dietary laws and at some points were exempt from conscription.

The Jews kept their strict monotheism and their love of scripture and learning wherever they went, along with their habit of regular worship in a synagogue or open air meeting. Prayer, psalm singing, scripture reading, together with exhortation based upon it – this type of religion was unique in the ancient world.

Christianity began in the Jewish community and would probably not have survived if there had not been a sizeable group willing to hear the message of the gospel. At that time, the Jewish faith was evangelical, primarily through personal invitations people made to their friends to visit synagogue and to join in the Sabbath dinner and religious festivals. The Jewish religion was growing quickly through these efforts. The existence of strong Jewish communities was an important element in the early spread of the Gospel of Jesus.

Christianity overcame the other two biggest obstacles to adoption of Judaism in the first century: dietary restrictions and circumcision. The substitution of baptism over circumcision gave Christianity an enormous advantage over Judaism in converting the Gentiles. Remember this was before surgical hygiene and before painkillers were available and adults who converted to Judaism were required to be circumcised upon joining the synagogue.

The Jewish people at the time of the first century were accustomed to proselytism and conversion from a polytheistic religion to a strictly monotheistic one. All other religions of the day made room for other faiths. Live and let live was the rule of the day.

Along with a thriving Jewish community, the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome was essential in the successful early establishment of the Christian Church.

Octavius the General became Augustus the Emperor, and he consolidated the empire and brought it stability after a century of unending civil strife. In the beginning of the first century peace and civic stability finally came to the Mediterranean world, and lasted for generations. This period coincided exactly with the growth of the early church.

The Roman preoccupation with roads made travel throughout the empire safe for the early missionaries who made good use of them. Indeed, all roads led to Rome, specifically to the Golden Mile. For example, a merchant in Hieropolis, in Asia Minor, bragged in his funeral inscription that he had made no less than 72 trips to Rome.

And, while Romans ruled with an iron fist, they were basically tolerant of local beliefs and customs, as long as the safety and stability of the Empire was never being challenged.

The Greeks brought philosophical ideas, cultural traits, and most importantly, their language which was spoken by all educated Romans, and was a lingua franca throughout the Mediterranean Basin. The Romans found Greek useful in managing their vast empire.

“The satirists Juvenal and Martial, scornfully pointed out that even the womenfolk did their lovemaking in the Greek tongue.” It was quite natural that Paul the Jew would address the Latins of Rome in Greek.

The Greek language had ten times as many words as Latin did, and that included a rich specialized vocabulary for theology and philosophy. Much like German was the language of Biblical scholarship in Theodore Parker’s time.

Greek language, culture and thought may also have been influential in another way: the everyday people derived their images of the gods from the Homeric sagas. We have written accounts of thoughtful people who reflected on the cruelties, adulteries, deceits, battles, jealousies, and lies attributed to the gods, and who were repelled and sometimes disgusted.

“It has been well said of the Greeks that it was not that men became so depraved that they abandoned their gods, but rather that the gods became so depraved that they were abandoned by man.”

The works of the Greek philosophers, Plato’s Form of the Good, or Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover did as little to satisfy spiritual thirst as the cold and stylized Roman state religion or the exceedingly limited household religion practiced throughout the Empire.

The empire in the first century was awash in Oriental mystery cults which claimed to help men with their daily problems and to give them immortality. The most prominent were the Cult of Cybele, The Great Mother, from Asia Minor, Dionysus from Greece, Isis, Osiris and later Serapis from Egypt, Mithras from Persia, and Judaism and
Christianity from Palestine.

These cults provided an outlet for the emotional and religious feelings of everyday people whose needs were not met by the clever dialectic of the philosophers or the empty rituals of the Roman state religion.

Who were the Evangelists in the early days?

Jesus was concerned with saving the world one person at a time. He was personal, and personable, and he evangelized at all times and in all places, to all social classes and all sectors of his society. He spoke the language of the people he approached, and focused his ministry to the area he knew and understood. Jesus commanded his disciples to bring salvation to all peoples, and to spread the gospel over all the world. He provided a pattern for evangelism through his own ministry, reaching out to all strata of his society, from outcasts to the ruling elite.

We don’t know much about how the original Apostles handled their ministries, with the exception of Peter and Luke. Very little original material has survived. We know only that they delegated some of the administration of the early church to others so they could pursue their evangelism throughout the known world, and there is some evidence that they did indeed scatter to the four corners of the world to spread the word of salvation through Jesus.

The apostles who roamed the world preaching the gospel became the model for one type of minister or evangelist, the full-time wandering missionary, some with great gifts for preaching and some without. They did not stay in any one place for long and they took a vow of poverty. They were not chosen by the leadership of the churches, but felt the call individually and responded. Their lives and their message and their effectiveness were their credentials. Like Jesus himself, the original Disciples were laymen, training in the ministry.

The full time, settled ministry began in the earliest Christian communities as people were appointed to positions by church leaders or their communities. They did do evangelism, but were more internally focused on building and sustaining the community. These early settled ministers brought evangelism into their teaching, helping everyone in the congregation learn how to win souls for Jesus, and exhorted people they met to join with the Christian community.

Theologians and philosophers like Pantaneus, Justin, Rhodon, Tatian, Origen and others in the early church started their own schools of faith, with godly intellectuals as students, Most of the writings about early evangelism comes from the educated and wealthy who made up the majority of this group and whose works have survived. But these schools learned to adapt their message to the capabilities of the hearers and expanded their efforts into the freedmen and even the slaves and outcasts of Roman society.

Everyday men and women are the real heart of the spread of Christianity in the first two centuries. It was the little man, the ordinary man who left no literary remains who was the prime agent in the mission. The very disciples themselves were laymen, without formal theological or philosophical training. Christianity was, from its inception a lay movement.

The lay preachers went everywhere gossiping the gospel, in homes, wine shops, the marketplace, near the temples and elsewhere. They preached to everyday people, the farmers, laborers, the craftsmen and freedmen and slaves who made up society. They received no pay for their labors and they were honored and listened to as a result.

Women too, in contrast to the Jewish, Roman and Greek culture, had a part to play in the church. Jesus himself attracted many women into his ministry. Women were leaders in his movement, were present at his crucifixion, helped put his body into the tomb, were waiting in Jerusalem and were there on the day of Pentecost. The first recorded meeting of Christians took place in a woman’s house. Eight of 26 people mentioned in the greetings in Romans 16 are women. Many women were among the greatest early evangelists. From the Nag Hamadi scrolls, it seems there may have been a woman Apostle.

The Power of the Evangelists

The effective evangelists were the ones who practiced what they preached, who were faithful to the commands regarding their behavior as well as spreading the gospel. Their lives were always on the line, always open to scrutiny and observation within their own Christian community and within pagan society. They maintained a remarkable adherence to their faith and the success pointed to the reality of their new life in Christ, to a noticeable change in their morals and their actions.

Their Fellowship

The fellowship the church offered, transcending barriers of race, class, sex and education, was an enormous attraction. Few other places offered a place where Jew and Gentile could break bread together. Since preaching the gospel in a new town was just a start, Christians learned early on how to build community and fellowship. When one entered the fellowship he gave up all old ties and old ways and was reborn. He began a new life centered in his new community of believers.

Their Transformation

Christians were different, significantly, from all other religions, cults, clubs, and associations a person might join. It was exclusive: once you joined the fellowship and were baptized, you left behind all other competing interests. You joined a close group that encouraged, perhaps even nagged you to holy living.

Christians therefore were often admired for their chastity, their lack of cruelty, their civil obedience, good citizenship, their honesty in business and in their personal lives. They refused to expose infants, they did not swear, they would have nothing to do with idolatry.

Even their enemies acknowledged the quality of caring and compassion, the obvious enthusiasm, and the passion for their faith that would let them go to the martyr’s stake with a prayer of forgiveness on their lips. Such a reputation worked well for Christian evangelism.

Their Endurance
“The blood of Christians is seed,” said Tertullian. The oftener we are mowed down by you the more in number we grow. The perseverance in their faith in the face of scourging, insults and martyrdom was a public and powerful witness to the seriousness of their faith and the quality of their communities.

Evangelistic Methods

Jesus was a Jew and his followers in the first century were mostly Jewish as well. Wherever there were Jews, there were synagogues where the gospel could be preached and the scriptures could be taught. Synagogue was the place of the Torah, of study, of prayer and of music. The services, with the Shemah , the Prayer, the reading of the Law and the Prophets, followed by a commentary or explication, and a blessing, were unlike any other worship at the time. And while there were high priests in the larger cities with large Jewish populations, most synagogues allowed anyone (any male) the privelege of reading the Scriptures.

Open Air Preaching

Open air preaching was a common practice in Judaism, as well as in the early Christian church. The evangelist would generally find a location with good traffic, say near a temple or marketplace, and might even try to find a time when a crowd would be available. Public preaching was curtailed when Christians were being persecuted by Nero and Domitian, but many lay evangelists and members were put to death for violating prohibitions on meetings by Christians.

Prophetic Preaching

Every religion has a priestly and a prophetic side. The Priestly side is concerned with conducting services, with rituals, with governance, with teaching the faith, and with things internal to the organization. The prophetic side wants to call the faithful back to God or back to righteousness, wants to convert the heathen heal the sick and make justice roll down like waters. Most of the names that have come down to us from the first and second century have been of the Prophetic stripe. Men like Origen and Paul and Ireneaus and Augustine and many others were primarily teachers and prophets and spent their lives trying to bring more people to Jesus.

In Unitarian Universalism, we are fortunate in having had many people in both traditions. I believe that the many UUs on the prophetic side have been successful far beyond their local congregations. People from Theodore Parker all the way up to James Reeb and A. Powell Davies have turned their faith into action, effective action in support of our core principles. We have these UU prophets among us today, calling us to witness for our beliefs and putting their own lives on the line.

Teaching Evangelism

From the earliest days, Christians formed schools for their faith. Origen was teaching when he was just 19 years old. These schools ranged from Origen’s efforts among the powerful and influential, to innumerable small schools in small places designed to bring people into the fold and to instill in them how a Christian is supposed to live. Still, today, Sunday school and Bible lessons are part of almost every congregation of Christians, and are mirrored in UU practice.

Under Nero, in 64 AD, when the persecution against Christians started in earnest, many people paid for their teaching with their lives. Unfortunately, over the two millennia since Jesus lived, countless others made the ultimate sacrifice for their beliefs, often at the hands of those who supposedly learned the Christian gospel of mercy and forgiveness. Perhaps some now held in Afghanistan will pay the ultimate price.

Household Evangelism

The household was fundamental to Gods plan for his chosen people. Noah and his house are brought into the ark, Abraham and his house are brought into the covenant with God, and to David and his house the kingdom is promised.

Christians did not have any church buildings until over 150 years had passed since the death of Jesus. Before that they met in synagogues until the breach with Judaism, and in peoples’ homes. The Christian Pater Familias would have exercised absolute dominion over his family members, including relatives, friends, clients and slaves.

The early church considered the family the center of society and made every effort to convert households entire. This was easy when the husband accepted Jesus, then everyone else did too on pain of death or exile. Sometimes the wife was converted first which often created problems in the family, and in a surprising number of cases, household slaves or children were converted and brought the rest of the family in.

Some of the most important conversion in the early church occurred because a slave or freedman converted and set such an example of changed character that it caused the other members of the household to take notice and see what could account for the miracle.

In some houses that have been excavated in Pompeii, there are mosaics on the wall that are similar to the pastoral and very pagan scenes in other houses, but with a difference – there is a motif of fish or a lamb – a secret signal to other Christians that they are welcome as Christians. Not unlike keeping a decal on you house and car to provoke conversation and identify you to other UUs.

And finally, Personal Evangelism of the sort that continues down to this day and no doubt will go to the stars if humanity makes it there. The same kind of personal evangelism you and I can do every day in our own lives. Paul of Tarsus used this line of thought:

Here is the basic outline of The Pauline Testimony in Acts 26:

1. Where I was before I met Christ
2. How I met Christ
3. How am I different; what has changed

How would you answer:

Where I was before I found the UU church.
How I came into the fold of UUism
How am I different; what has changed?

Evangelism in Unitarian Universalism

We have, in our long history, many examples of powerful preachers from both the priestly and the prophetic sides of our house. Within the two great streams that make up our current denomination, we would have to give the Universalists credit for their long and impressive history of circuit-riding, open air evangelism and personal witness. Both houses too have a strong prophetic strain, strenuously calling for and working for the abolition of slavery, for women’s rights, for fair treatment of workers, for an end to greed and corruption. Theodore Parker went so far as to secretly back John Brown in his raid at Harper’s Ferry, hoping it would heighten the contradictions and bring on the break between North and South striking a blow against slavery.

Universalist ministers such as Adams Streeter, Elhanan Winchester, John Murray and Caleb Rich worked long hours going on horseback from town to town in the Eighteenth Century preaching a gospel of Universal salvation. They started congregations in the towns they visited and came through once a month or two to preach and teach and guide the fledgling congregation. Many of these early preachers began their religious life as Baptists or in another denomination and switched to Universalism as their faith matured and their concept of God’s love widened.

As the West was opened to settlement, a few Unitarian but mostly Universalist ministers went along and found a fertile soil in the lives of everyday folks. At the time, Typhoid, TB, Cholera and other diseases followed the rivers and trails into the heartland, taking a great toll. Many thousands of grieving fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters found Calvinist ministers saying that their loved ones would find only everlasting hellfire and damnation since they did not make a proper confession in time in the established church. Universalism, with its doctrine of salvation for all provided comfort and peace and a bit of interesting controversy after church.

Today, most prophetic inspiration is found in service through organizations like the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or Beacon House work, acknowledging that in the modern world a coordinated, corporate response to evil and injustice is needed to make headway.

Lets take a minute to talk about how we do UU Evangelism at UUCSS:

Corporate Evangelism

Social Action Committee for faith in action
Support for the GWA, JPD and UUA etc. Remember the radio spot on NPR?
Physical presence in the Hillandale neighborhood.
Support for the Outreach Committee efforts
Availability of the pulpit for evangelists and outside speakers
An open offer to sign the book and join the congregation at each service
Professional staff and minister
Educational and affiliative work of the Membership Committee

Community Evangelism

Outreach Committee posters
Advertising in local media
Presence at local events and fairs
Treatment on the side of the building
Renting the church hall to various groups, esp music
Literature available at non-church sponsored events held at church

Personal Evangelism

Learning how to answer questions about UUism
The use of questions and the questions to ask..
Taking just five minutes a day to share the faith
Writing letters to the editor
Putting UU items visibly in your home or car or upon your person
Developing an evangelical opportunity consciousness

Why should we bother? Why should we Unitarian Universalists make ourselves uncomfortable trying to talk about our religion, when maybe we don’t even know much of its history and beliefs? Why make ourselves and others feel awkward?

We bother because the world is going to hell as always.

We keep trying because people throughout the world and here in America, here in the Washington area, not more than a mile or two from this church there are children who have the distended bellies and stick-thin limbs of malnutrition. UUs have something to say about hunger. We do something about hunger, that’s why.

We bother, we keep slogging because there are wars and rumors of wars throughout the world. People cry out for peace. That’s why we keep trying.

We keep going because we do not accept that assassination is an instrument of policy in too many countries; We do not accept that torture is still used in too many places in the world. We find, to our shame, that it is even used in some police departments in the United States. There has been enough torture. That’s why we keep trying to get the people on this planet to grow up, to open their hearts and minds.

We can’t stop, because we are destroying the ozone layer, poisoning the oceans, choking the rivers and compromising the entire biosphere of our planet. We cannot stop trying if we care at all about our fragile home planet, if we care about our kids and grandkids.

We keep trying because our brothers and sisters who are different in whom they love are teased and beaten and kept out of jobs and housing and are dying by the tens of thousands as the result of our prejudice and prudery.

We must keep trying because in action there is salvation; salvation for the self, salvation for the family, salvation for the community, salvation for our nation, salvation for the world. Make no mistake about it: We as a denomination are vitally concerned with salvation. We can be uplifted that our concern is with salvation in the largest sense, is not confined to a selfish concern for our own immortal souls.

In action there is growth in spirit; in action there is community; in action there is self-respect that comes with implementing our belief in the essential worth and dignity of every human being.