Friends: Rather than bore everybody with specifics about some church history I’ve been reading, let’s talk about the old time religion we recognize … or don’t. I had to bring up Christmas to make a point … but at least I didn’t mention Eusebius or Athanasius. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #797

February 22, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Old Time Religion

By Bob Walters

I am aware it is late February, but I need Christmas to make a point.

The gentle nostalgia and familial warmth of the phrase, “Old Time Christmas,” when you really study it, harkens back to a time that didn’t actually exist.  Our American minds have been taught to picture, say, brightly decorated and old-fashioned Victorian homes, snow, bells, sleighs, gifts, egg nog, and the “old fashioned values” of “the true meaning of Christmas.”  I guess that’s my picture, anyway.  Currier & Ives, Thomas Kincaid, etc.

You are welcome to picture your own architecture, time frame, decorations, food, transportation, and nostalgia, but the fact is the Christmas we know today is largely a commercial / cultural manifestation of the past century or so.  Christmas was barely celebrated before that; recognized as the birth of Jesus, yes, but far more subdued.

One’s personal “Old Time” sentiments are likely the Christmas memories of decades-ago youth and if we are fortunate, we remember them fondly.  But the ancient and “through history” reality of Christmas is not a story most folks recognize or recite today. 

And here is where enters, “Old Time Religion.”  It too can be a nostalgic fooler.

It has been, to me, a stunning and unanticipated development of my now past-midway adult life to have found secure faith in Jesus Christ.  And when I think of the “Old Time Religion” of my Episcopal youth, it is different from the “Old Time Religion” of my Bible-reading and theology-studying adulthood.  Old time religion is far older than I imagined.

What was great about the “Old Time Religion” of the Episcopal church was its grounding in history that went back hundreds of years – OK, two thousand years if you count Jesus – but regardless, there was security in the durability of the church itself.  No need to look back.

What I didn’t have as a kid and Episcopal altar boy was security in personal knowledge of the Bible or a personal relationship with Christ: both very big things in “evangelical” circles.  What tends not to be a big evangelical “thing” is the oldest of Old Time Religion – the way-back, early-centuries reality of Christian development.  The early heroes of faith are out of fashion.

In the majority of “mainline denominations,” the affectations of modern social and cultural “church” – with rare exceptions – supplant the ancient Biblical truth of Christ.  It’s re-written so we see more churches concerned with human-based “social justice” than divinely based, Jesus-believing truth.  These religions have old roots but new priorities, and it’s not progress.

The Bible-based crowd, my crowd, lamentably often seems eager to ignore the oldest of Christian developments – the early-centuries doctrinal certainty that fought heresies and celebrated martyrs to preserve the catholic (worldwide, single, true) understanding of Jesus – in Trinitarian relationship, Father, Son, Spirit – for which faithful people willingly died.

My own great comfort in tangible faith is the time travel of the saints, tracking church history back to the beginning and knowing there is a convincing and steady line of believers – from Jesus to today – who never reordered their priorities for modern therapeutic Christianity.  They cleaved to Biblical truth that goes all the way back to and is rooted at the foot of the Cross.

Bible Christians tend to ignore deep and meaningful church history; mainline Christians too often are easy prey for the heresies of redefining Jesus for our own modern purposes. 

Old time religion, the real thing, has a single purpose: understanding the truth of Jesus in faith as we lovingly serve our fellow human beings in the exclusive truth of His love.

While “Old Time Christmas” signals a need for historical perspective, “Old Time Religion” signals a need for Christian reckoning with the only truth that endures: Jesus Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) didn’t want to bore everyone with specific church history classics he’s been reading, but there is more to Jesus than praise music and politics.  Believe it.