The Role of the Workplace in the Rise of the Early Church
With its foundation on a historical person killed at the hands of the state, the pre-Constantinian Church found itself in the unique position of being a religion with no state support. This status was unprecedented and thought to be untenable in the ancient world. Despite the state's lack of support, the early Church grew and flourished over the first few centuries into an institution that fundamentally changed the world. A Church that found itself separated from the state faced new questions. 'How does faith inform participation in the workplace and marketplace?' and 'What is the meaning of work?' became central questions of Christian praxis. How the early Church lived out their answers to these questions was a significant factor in the rise of the Christian Church.
In the teaching of Jesus, the Church gained an understanding of work that was radically counter-cultural and gave new dignity to the workplace. By worshiping an incarnated God, the son of a carpenter, the early Church taught the goodness of created things. Jesus regularly preached in the marketplace and taught parables that centred on metaphors of work. He surrounded himself with disciples with various trades – fishermen, a zealot and a tax collector. Jesus' work and ministry often occurred in and referenced the workplace, giving dignity to material things and the many spheres of work.
In his life and ministry, Paul also emphasized the importance of work. While writing the epistles, Paul regularly referenced the manual labour he engaged in[1]. Indeed, Paul's tentmaking trade contributed to how he understood his apostolic calling[2]. For upper-class citizens in the Greco-Roman world, manual labour was considered "slavish and demeaning."[3] Despite this conventional wisdom, Paul boasted about working with his hands. He admonished Christians to work in passages such as 1 Thessalonians 3:10-11, 2 Thessalonians 4:11-12 and many others. However, Paul's work was not simply a means to support his ministry. Instead, his ministry occurred within and alongside his work. Fee writes that "Paul spread the gospel here in the workplace as a tentmaker."[4] By working with his hands, Paul differentiated himself from Greek philosophers and leaders of other religions. The Gospel brought by Jesus and the theology taught by Paul left the Church with a counter-cultural understanding of the dignity of work.
The early Church was well aware that they were the people of God, without hierarchy. The priesthood of all believers had significant implications for engagement in the workplace. No longer could people find status merely through their station in life. While there was a hierarchy between clergy and laity in the Old Covenant, "under the New, these functions are abolished, or rather universalized in the laos of God."[5] A Church that treated all people as equal, no matter their status, occupation or background, had a significant impact on oppressed groups. For instance, "there is virtual consensus among historians of the early Church as well as biblical scholars that women held positions of honor and authority within early Christianity." The priesthood of all believers restored dignity to people who had previously had it taken away by the conventional wisdom of the workplace.
Similarly, slaves and those with low social rank were given a higher status in the Church than they were allowed elsewhere. The early Church lived out a novel idea: that relations between people could be greater than a self-interested exchange.[6] The workplace was often defined by social status, hierarchy and position. The Church instead had slaves dining with slave-owners, women in leadership positions, and all who participated in the Church taking communion as equals. Origen, the great theologian of the third century, recognized that each Christian could bring their "ordinary life, dedicated for instance to work in the fields, to navigation, to the occupations of ordinary life."[7] As the Church gathered, each person could bring their work, regardless of hierarchy, as an offering to God.
It is well-known that the early Church met in homes; what is less commonly noted is that by meeting in homes, the Church was meeting in the workplace. For most people, the home was the place where work occurred. "They were not privatized, enclosed spaces— often the entryway would not even have a door!"[8] Paul's work as a tentmaker would have occurred in the sight of all, on the bottom floor of a home, where he could converse with passers-by and philosophers. The workplace was where Paul would have discussed and spread the Gospel.[9] For example, Lydia produced purple dye, likely from her own home, which was also where the Philippian Church met.[10] There does not appear to have been a clear distinction for the early Christians between home, workplace and Church in terms of location. The understanding that they were not significantly separate spheres helped the early Christians recognize that God was present in the home and workplace. As Atkinson and Comiskey suggest, "The genius of the house church structure was that it changed lives where people lived and worked."[11] The workplace was central to the Church's praxis because the home, workplace, and Church were deeply connected. Christians sought to redeem the spheres in which they already found themselves. The workplace was pivotal to the Christians' work in the world because it was where the Church found itself when it both gathered and scattered.
The workplace and marketplace gained prominence in Christian praxis, not simply because of its location, but due to the moral dignity the early Christians afforded work. Greek attitudes towards work derived from a belief that a free person would never submit to manual labour. Instead, someone who was free would live a life of leisure. This was also the story of their gods who "were viewed as living a life unencumbered by labour."[12] However, Christians worshipped an incarnate God who ate, travelled, interacted with people and worked. Their God affirmed the moral goodness of material things. A duality between the goodness of physical and mental work was simply not an option following the revelation of the Incarnation. Jesus and Paul humiliated themselves in the eyes of the world by working with their hands. This was understood as central to their mission. So too, the Church understood their mission was not separate from their calling to work in the world. By finding a place within the mission of a religion and affirming the goodness of creation, work was afforded a moral dignity that stood in sharp contrast to the watching world.
As the Church sought to live out the Great Commission, they understood that it gave a context for the redemption of creation. Work in the workplace was significant to living out this redemptive calling. For example, Siemens remarks that "Paul's manual labor as a tentmaker made a great contribution to his overall strategy. He would not have dedicated the better part of many days making tents had it not been a vital part of his mission strategy."[13] Not only were the house and workplace inextricably linked, so too was work and mission. The early Churches, meeting in workplaces, understood both the place and act of work to be of holy commissioning. Central to this understanding was that the Great Commission was working towards the salvation of the created order rather than offering an escape from it.[14] Indeed, work was not simply an opportunity to witness to souls. Christians witnessed through the work produced in the workplace, recognizing that good work pronounced the glory of God.[15]
The early Church transformed the world not by retreating from it but by living out a vision of the Kingdom of God within the world. This meant that the spheres of life inhabited by Christians were reframed as places of ministry. Christians in the first century recognized that the workplace and marketplace were the mission-field.[16] In the open-doored buildings that were the workplace, the watching world observed the early Church participating in a different way of life. It was not merely the early Church leaders that transformed the ancient world; it was the "the common person living a life of Faith that was the most powerful evangelist."[17] Celsus, writing against Christianity in the third-century claims "in private houses workers in wool and leather, and fullers, and persons of the most uninstructed and rustic character… pour forth wonderful statements, to the effect that they ought not to give heed to their father and to their teachers, but should obey them."[18] Such activity meant that converts "go with the women and their playfellows to the women's apartments, or to the leather shop, or to the fuller's shop, that they may attain to perfection;— and by words like these they gain them over."[19] In responding, Origen does not refute Celsus' statement, for Celsus had simply observed the mission and praxis of the pre-Constantinian Church. Such was the radical moral dignity that the workplace had in the early Christian worldview. Leatherworkers, tentmakers, fishermen are the ministers of God who changed the world. They did so not by leaving the workplace but by transforming it.
In its first few centuries, the early Church became a dominant force in the modern world. Christians demonstrated a compelling vision for how God saw the world. The Incarnation and Scripture taught of the goodness of created matter and human work, which remained a central focus of the Church forefathers. By instructing Christians to engage in work and not be idle, the Church countered conventional wisdom. This teaching, and the way it was lived out, gave moral dignity to work and workers. In doing so, Christians engaged and revolutionized the workplace. The workplace was no longer a means to an end for those of lower status; instead, the workplace was where ministry was practiced. It was where the Church lived out its mission and was observed by a watching world. It became a place of evangelism, not as a trojan horse for preaching, but as a demonstration of how the Christian story transforms all of life. The workplace was a primary location of the scattered Church's praxis, living out what it learnt when it gathered. Christians, in their workplaces, changed the world. This presents a great challenge for modern Christianity. The greatest work of the Church occurs in its scattered context, in workplaces and family homes, living out a different way of being, a taste of the kingdom. In the workplace, applied theology fundamentally changed the world in the first few centuries. It can continue to do so today.
References:
[1] Todd Still, “Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 4 (2006): 782.
[2] Still, "Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor?," 782.
[3] Still, "Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor?," 782.
[4] Gordon Fee, Jeffrey Greenman, and Paul Stevens, Offer Yourselves to God: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Paul’s Epistles. (Cascade Books, 2019), 28.
[5] Paul Stevens, Abolition of the Laity: Vocation Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (London: Paternoster Press, 2000), 20.
[6] Stevens, Abolition of the Laity, 86.
[7] José Alviar, “Christian Vocation and World in Origen and the Desert Fathers and Mothers.,” Vocación cristiana y mundo, en Orígenes y en los Padres y Madres del Desierto. 50, no. 2 (August 2018): 388.
[8] Fee, Greenman, and Stevens, Offer Yourselves to God, 28.
[9] Fee, Greenman, and Stevens, Offer Yourselves to God, 28.
[10] Fee, Greenman, and Stevens, Offer Yourselves to God, 29.
[11] Harley Atkinson and Joel Comiskey, “Lessons from the Early House Church for Today’s Cell Groups,” Christian Education Journal: Research on Educational Ministry 11 (May 1, 2014): 82.
[12] John McKay, The Dignity of Work (Newcastle: The Christian Institute, 2018), 7.
[13] Ruth Siemens, “The Vital Role of Tentmaking in Paul’s Mission Strategy,” International Journal of Frontier Missions 14, no. 3 (1997): 129.
[14] Paul Stevens, “Tentmaking,” in The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, ed. Robert Banks and Paul Stevens (Graceworks, 2018), 3.
[15] Stevens, “Tentmaking,” 2.
[16] Stevens, Abolition of the Laity, 29.
[17] Eric Tosi, “Evangelism in the Early Church” (University of Toronto, Trinity College, 2011), 34.
[18] Origen, Contra Celsum: Book 3, 248 AD, Chapter 55.
[19] Origen, Contra Celsum, Chapter 55.
