A Household Gathered-Church: God’s Platform for Challenging Tyranny and Oppression

Over two plus millennia, the 4th century Constantinian state-sponsored move away from the household gathered-church created specific social ramifications for the church and for doing church: our building-centered ecclesiastical and liturgical habitus replaced the NT household gathered-church habitus, which has repercussions for social mapping trajectories that have restored tiered human hierarchies and re-segregated church communities into “their-own kind” of social, economic, political, and power assemblies. The household gathered-church has ceased to be God's gospel-centered, cruciform platform for deconstructing  systemic tiers of human hierarchy. As a result, this also changed how the church addresses and challenges the current state of injustice, inequality, oppression, and tyranny.
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There is a tendency to imagine that aligning ourselves, whether as individual Christians or as a building-centered congregation, with power or an influential platform associated with power is the way to bring about systemic change in prevailing tiers of human hierarchy. Tempting as this is, Craig Greenfield reminds the church, it is a trap to think “the solution to injustice is to gain power, hoping that once the roles of power have been reversed,” injustice will cease.[1] History testifies differently—Davids inevitably become Goliaths; the oppressed who seize power become new oppressors.

Yet, it was the unassumingly insignificant, powerless, absent any sense of leverage young church that infected every level of society with the gospel and it did so through gathering together—this unique community of the poor and wealthy, property-owners and professionals, business women, slaves, orphans, and abandoned-infants, ex-prostitutes and former temple prostitutes (even some current ones), religious and military leaders, and children, women, and men—at meals in households throughout Caesar’s empire and, eventually, beyond: the gathered-church of strangers and unequals. Through the household gathered-churches invading the very core of the empire, what it was to be human had been “irrevocably altered.”[2] Christianity did not simply offer an alt-system of human relationships and personal morality, but through the very existence of the household gathered-church and its habitus every aspect of the imperial system that created, promoted, and sustained tiers of human hierarchy stood condemned.

The way in which the local church gathered and reclined at table was ultimately and completely seditious to the existing system—the system that was foundational to human identity and imperial stability. Celsus, the second century critic of Christianity, described the spread of Christianity as a religion of “slaves, women and little children,” a warning and an argument against the new sect, for it disrupted the status quo ordering of life. David Bentley Hart suggests that it was “unlikely that Celsus would have thought the Christians worth his notice had he not recognized something uniquely dangerous lurking in their gospel . . .”[3] These gathered-churches were made up of unequals and strangers. Their gatherings were traitorous. Their habitus was seditious and dangerous. Their presence, like no other, threatened to destabilize all of society. It is no shock, then, that the church was scorned and persecuted.

​The gospel shaped gathered-church is not simply one of social integration, but is a scandal to any human institution that systemizes tiers of human hierarchies, be it social, civic, or religious. More than a model or a moment in church history, the household gathered-church, together with its habits, is as much a NT teaching (i.e., instruction to the church) as any other biblical doctrine. More so, everything about the early church challenged the empire, the temple-cults, the religious and political establishment, the business world, and, supremely, all human relationships and associations. Paul and the NT, indeed, did address the issue of slavery, oppression, and human inequality. The question is: does our current form of church?

​Leveling Habits: The Table, Household Baptism, and Kiss that Changed Everything (A)
Doing “church” (and all its accompanying habitus) is a hermeneutic for reading the NT and for making church related application. Herein is our hermeneutical problem: NT documents tend to be read (heard) divorced from the most likely venue wherein they were originally read, heard, and repeated as instruction, that is, at a symposium after a gathered-church had reclined at a household deipnon (supper). NT documents should be read within such an authentic venue-hermeneutic, that is as a gathered-church set at a common meal (this is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me), the lifting of a cup to celebrate the Lord Jesus (this cup is the new covenant in My blood), and the ensuing symposium where instruction would have occurred. There is significant hermeneutical and interpretive value to the household-venue and, as such, is important for faithful and relevant trajectory application.
 
A Meal and Table of Unequals. As most experience the Lord’s Supper, we find no NT equivalent nor within the first 150 years of church history. Despite the NT calling it a supper, most contemporary forms are foreign to the NT, that is, small crackers and a thimble-sized plastic cup (i.e., tokens of bread and wine), with congregants sitting in theater-like rows (i.e., pews or chairs), and all the action and authority “up-front.” The NT Lord’s Supper habitus centered on who reclined at table; whereas, most modern Lord’s Supper habitus is about the appropriate distribution of the tokens. Something happened at those NT/early church gatherings that was culturally subversive and sociologically seditious. The gathered-church formed its identity within the context of “household” amid habitus that was instructive to them and hermeneutical to us.

In the Greco-Roman world, food occasions were a means for creating community and bonding that community together—meals were encoded, social habits were established, and status defined.[1] The habitus of each meal-gathering was a message “about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion, exclusion, boundaries, and transactions across boundaries.”[2] Men were at the center of such meals and where one reclined at table indicated one’s ranking in society and among his associates. Invitation only. Women and slaves served and did not recline at table. Children were not permitted. However, it was acceptable at these meals for entertainment to include sexual encounters “between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys.”[3] Depending on social class and wealth, there would have been plentiful entertainment, namely “flute girls, party games, gambling, dramas, mimes, strippers, jesters, moral poems, talks, debate, political, religious, moral, abusive, to erotic discussions”[4] and “sexual liaisons and promiscuities were very common.”[5] Classes did not ordinarily mix. The household banquet-meal was a built-in means for social formation, “a miniature reproduction of Roman society,” serving as a virtual classroom where one’s social status was taught, practiced, and formally enculturated. Social mapping was practiced, a habitus marking identity and social boundaries. The banquet-meal was the imperial instrument for maintaining “social control of the polis”[6] and was utilized “to dominate people and keep them in their place.”[7] This was interrupted by the household gathered-church where women, children, slaves, and men from differing classes and economic status were welcome to recline at table as equals—literally an open table of unequals.

The gathered-church adapted, from its NT origin and as the early church took root in the ensuing century, the customary “pattern found throughout their world,”[8] the Greco-Roman household banquet-meal (deipnon) and symposium. Greco-Roman banquet-meal hosts and guests all acknowledged “the gift of food to the gods,” who were understood as the real hosts of the meal.[9] Such meal-gatherings always honored Caesar and some patron deity, which made such meals a blend of social and religious habitus. However, while Romans lifted a cup to Caesar and national deities, local gods, or a household emulate at the bridge between deipnon and symposium, Christians raised “the cup of blessing” in honor of Christ (1 Cor 10:16; cf. 11:23–28). This made each gathered-church at table seditious, for it was not only affirming a traitorous allegiance to another Lord and God, the occasion created a habitus that taught and maintained new identities, removed boundaries, and promoted counter- and cross-cultural relationships.
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However, the nature of the gospel and trajectory application of the cross brought about a challenging social-mapping: an ecclesial-demographical mapping of unequal people outside the banquet hall, yet who reclined as equals at table. Adapting the Greco-Roman evening deipnon/symposium set a household gathered-church on the eve (i.e., Saturday evening) of the Lord’s Day (i.e., Sunday), which accommodated the poor and slaves and working children that could not have attended an early morning “service,” for history had yet not giving us a 6-day work week with Sunday off.[10] The wealthy and upper-class church attenders had more power to adjust their daily schedule; the poor and destitute could not. Furthermore, this history and a household-venue hermeneutic allows a fair reading of the deipnon-table and Lord’s Supper issue in 1 Corinthians 10-11 to be about “haves” that were separating (or distinguishing) themselves through food habitus from the “have nots” at the Lord’s table. In this way, the gathered-church-temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; cf. Eph 2:18-22) was being destroyed (1 Cor 11:18–22). These meal-occasions failed, literally at table, to display love toward one another (the reason for chapter 13), thus they had ceased to eat the “Lord’s’ Supper,” abandoning the gospel-ecclesial social-mapping and habitus purpose of the meal.[11]

​A Household Table-Waiter Preaches. Luke’s story of Stephen’s sermon before Jewish leaders (Acts 6:1–7:60) is framed by the gathered-church household-venue (5:42; 8:3; cf. 2:46). At some point the widows of Hellenist converts were being overlooked in the daily serving of food (Acts 6:1c) at the deipnon (i.e., supper) component of the gathered-church. The Acts 6 setting assumes a house-venue (from house to house, Acts 5:42) where the Greek-speaking widows were to have found a place at table (certainly a trajectory application of the distributed Spirit upon aged women!) As a response, the twelve (apostles) determined their role was prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2) and that reputable, Spirit-filled men were to be selected to serve (diakoneō) tables at the deipnon and care for the widows. Men! Not slaves. Not women. This was an astonishing trajectory application of the gospel and the inaugural distribution of the Spirit. Men did not do this in a Greco-Roman household. Furthermore, when Luke choose his very first scene afterward for the “ministry of the word,” he does not pick one that included an apostle; it was a table-waiting lay-person from among the household gathered-church, Stephen.

Furthermore, we should not treat lightly the “house” theme in table-waiter Stephen’s defense before temple-leadership, for he draws upon a text that deconstructs temple-imagery and his trajectory application constructs God’s new dwelling of “house.” Stephen quotes Isaiah’s words to Jewish exiles to stress that the Most High does not dwell in anything made by human hands (cheiropoiētois):

​The Leveling Story: Relistening to Narrative Choices that Formed the Gathered-Church
The hermeneutical and interpretive value of narrative choices made by NT authors are often overlooked in forming our understanding of “church.” Such choices, particularly Luke’s in Acts, speak to the church’s formation and of its habitus (i.e., behaviors) that described who they were as a gathered-people (i.e., their social definition, associations among each other, and boundaries).[1] Here, I am selective, noting only a few narratives choices that highlight the formation of the household gathered-church as the gospel spread into the Gentile world.
 
The Acts-House Movement, Day of Pentecost, and the case-study of Cornelius’ conversion. We should consider the hermeneutical and instructive nature of the church as a house movement. Although some early Christian witness occurred in the temple and synagogues, the NT is clear that the household-venue was the primary space of the local gathered-church. There are a number of texts indicating a gathered-church in someone’s house: . . . greet the church that is in their house (Rom 16:5); Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus (Rom 16:10); Greet . . . the household of Narcissus, who are in the Lord (Rom 16:11); Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house (1 Cor 16:19); Greet . . . Nympha and the church that is in her house (Col 4:15); To Philemon . . . and to the church in your house (Phlm 1:1–2). Additionally, other texts affirm and indicate the formation of “household” as church (e.g., Eph 2:19–22; 1 Pet 4:17; 1 Cor 1:16; 16:15; Gal 6:10; 1 Tim 3:15; cf., 2 Tim 1:16; 3:6; 4:19; 1 Pet 2:5; cf. Acts 12:12; 14:27; 15:30; 20:7–8).[2]

Furthermore, the gathered-church, depicted in NT narrative and biographical texts, did not invent, but adapted the typical Greco-Roman banquet-meal for their own household gathered-church venue (form). The banquet-meal typically divided into two-parts: first, a full meal (deipnon, supper) and, then, an after-meal symposium. The second component, among the Greeks and Romans, tended to be a prolonged time of drinking and entertainment, including speeches with discussion among the guests. The two components were bridged by a cup raised (or poured libation) of wine in honor of the Emperor with added praise or blessing of household deities, temple gods, and/or the benefactor or honored guest of the evening’s banquet.[3] The gathered-church, as it spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, celebrated the Lord’s Supper by breaking bread at the start to indicate the (broken) body of Christ now gathered, by enjoying a meal to which all were welcome (to recline at table), and, then, by lifting a cup of blessing in treasonous celebration of the risen (traitor, criminal, yet risen) messiah-king Jesus.

Some imagine and describe the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 as spectacular, more in keeping with a concert or stadium sporting event, than simply akin to someone’s family or dining upper-room. We speculate on the details, but we do know it started in a house (2:2c) and was evident to those who had gathered near, around, and outside that upper room (2:6). Greco-Roman banquet meals would have been somewhat public events,[4] where non-guests, a ring of on-lookers as it were, could easily observe the banquet event. So, it makes sense that onlookers would have observed the after-effects of the Spirit (cf., Acts 2:8–11). Amid non-guest reactions, some mocked, “They are full of sweet wine” (2:13). The reference to “sweet wine” was neither strange nor culturally unfitting. The gathering in the house’s upper-room would have been a household deipnon celebration (it was Pentecost after all) and potential drunkenness would not have been an incongruous assumption. Peter offered, however, an explanation (at the symposium?) by drawing on Joel’s promise of the Spirit.

There was a plethora of OT Spirit-promises available to Peter, yet Joel 2 was chosen. Moreover, given the nature of speeches at that time, no doubt Peter was more verbose and quoted from elsewhere as well in his full Pentecost sermon. Still, these words are Luke’s narrative choice and should be seen as having hermeneutical and interpretive influence on our understanding of “church”:

Albeit eschatological, the use of Joel 2 highlights a trajectory application meaningful for Luke’s formation of “church.” The issue of “tongues” (here known languages, Acts 2:6c) is intimately related to the redemptive turn that now all will hear of this gospel in their own language and the distribution of the Spirit would be on all demographics, social caste, gender, and age. In fact, Peter’s ending (Luke’s choice of ending) affirms this: And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (v. 21).
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After Peter’s message, the narrative, then, directs our attention (2:43–7) to the “added” believers (v. 47b) among households (i.e., house to house, 2:46b). The mention of “breaking bread” (v. 46b) and “meals together” (v. 46c) suggests the first gatherings took place at a household deipnon. The “added” that were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching (v. 42a) suggests the after-meal symposium was the venue for apostolic teaching. Thus, the first habitus of the newly formed gathered-church was shaped by the promised distribution of the Spirit across demographics, class, gender, and age within household-venues amid the celebration of food (a deipnon) and instruction (a symposium).
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The narrative choice of the Cornelius story, one of the longest in Acts (10-11), should be considered a second-Pentecost, for Luke records Peter’s explanation that the Spirit fell “just as He did at the beginning” (11:15; cf. 10:44–45). This repeat Pentecost affirms a trajectory application of the first (Acts 2). The Spirit falls, again, in a house (10:22; 11:12, 14), yet specifically a Gentile’s house. Typically, commentary follows Peter, that is, the apostolic reach into the Gentile world, in which when he preaches and the Spirit falls upon new believers outside of Jerusalem. However, it is Peter (i.e., and, thus, the reader) that is being taught something about the gospel and the church as they spread into the Gentile world. Luke’s telling of the story affirms this: When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, “Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18).

In Ibram X. Kendi’s stellar volume on the history of racist ideas in America, Stamped From the Beginning, he argues for Aristotle’s influence on colonial Puritan politicians and preachers. And without hesitation, Kendi moves quickly back to early Christianity, linking the apostle Paul to the Aristotelian thread of “superior” demographics, the “three-tiered of hierarchy slave relations—heavenly master (top), earthy master (middle), enslaved (bottom).” Kendi, then, quotes Paul from Colossians 3:22: Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Is this, however, a fair characterization of Paul’s view on slavery? Still, why didn’t Paul just simply condemn slavery outright? Moreover, why didn’t Jesus and the NT writers directly address the cultural and social oppression of women, children, and slaves? Yet, perhaps they had. Imagine, still, just maybe they had something more noble in mind?

Arguably, it was the presence of Christianity in the Roman Empire that turned socially accepted tiers of human hierarchies and practices up-side-down, albeit slowly penetrating the social fabric of the Greco-Roman world through the formation of a household platform (literally) that inaugurated a social mapping revolution. Some cast early Christianity as a protest movement against an oppressive, imperial empire, yet the apostolic and early church lacked any power or leverage for such social and cultural revolution. New Testament writers did not seek to overthrow authority structures wherein the gathered-church inhabited. Nonetheless, the household gathered-church, along with their table-fellowship (i.e., the common meal/the Lord’s Supper) and other early gathered-church practices (i.e., household baptism and kiss), was the platform for making known God’s cosmic reconciliation.

​In this paper, I suggest it was the narrative of the gospel as it intruded upon the Gentile world in the midst of the local, household gathered-church that changed everything--that more noble idea. It is my thesis that the gospel let loose (applied and socially forming) among household gathered-churches changed existing social mapping, worked out through the habitus taught and implied (i.e., trajectory application) by NT teaching. My concern is to hear how relevant narrative choices in Acts speak to the household gathered-church and how its habitus resulted in new social-mapping (forms and habits) consistent with the gospel and the meaning of the cross.