Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-36% $19.29$19.29
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$12.95$12.95
$5.69 delivery May 22 - 24
Ships from: bozemanbabycompany Sold by: bozemanbabycompany
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire Paperback – March 29, 2016
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBaker Academic
- Publication dateMarch 29, 2016
- Dimensions6 x 0.84 x 9 inches
- ISBN-109780801048494
- ISBN-13978-0801048494
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
From the brand
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
"Alan Kreider has done it again. Here he utilizes his immense grasp of early Christian sources, texts, and scholarship to illuminate for us the virtue of Christian patience and its formative nature in articulating an approach to worship and life. Highly recommended."
--Maxwell Johnson, University of Notre Dame; author of Praying and Believing in Early Christianity
"In this lively and insightful study, Kreider draws on deep learning to offer a picture of the early Christian communities at a time when their future was anything but certain. Ancient men and women come to light as people whose improbable success in winning converts was the direct result of their own struggle to live with--and live up to--the powerful ideals of patience and humility. Kreider has the rare ability to read ancient sources from a fresh perspective. A marvelous and inspiring book."
--Kate Cooper, University of Manchester; author of Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women
"At a time when many scholars interpret the rise of Christianity in terms of power, Kreider provides a refreshing and warranted scenario of early Christian growth from the 'inside.' The reader is invited to discover the slower and more subtle processes that have been neglected in arguments for the rapid rise of Christianity. Herein one will find a means to better balance the scholarly dialogues prevalent today."
--D. H. Williams, Baylor University
"In this remarkable book, Kreider refocuses our attention on patience, the cardinal virtue of the early church's witness, with rich attention to how this was cultivated in worship and catechesis. I can't imagine a more timely history for the church in our secular age."
--James K. A. Smith, Calvin College; author of Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
"'Time is greater than space.' Pope Francis has been urging this principle on both the church and movements for peaceful social change. As he wrote in The Joy of the Gospel, 'This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results' or 'trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion.' Kreider's thoroughly researched yet marvelously readable book demonstrates that Francis is actually calling Christians back to the nonviolent patience and winsome witness of the church's first centuries."
--Gerald W. Schlabach, University of St. Thomas
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 0801048494
- Publisher : Baker Academic (March 29, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780801048494
- ISBN-13 : 978-0801048494
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.84 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #27,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
He argues, with compelling evidence, that a central conviction by the early Christians had much to do with their sustained vitality. They centered on the teachings of Jesus, in particular the sermon on the mount. They actually believed they were to live in obedience to the upside down Way of Jesus. It was this distinctive and intriguing lifestyle - Kreider uses the term "habitus" or their habitual behavior - that the church insisted upon and that attracted others. They patiently lived in community, expecting that over time, the impact of the light of their lives would "bubble up" or ferment in the lives of their neighbors.
So, rather than emphasize evangelism, the early Christians emphasized catechesis - careful formation and teaching. Only after a lengthy period of time - up to three years! - during which the prospective member was mentored and drilled in the life of Christ, was the person allowed to be baptized and take the Lord's Supper. They had to demonstrate, prove, that they were indeed genuinely living the life of Christ. Caring for the poor, sharing their resources, returning good for evil, turning the other cheek - those things had to be demonstrably evident.
Kreider ends by contrasting this patient habitus with the changing focus after Constantine. His examination of Augustine's redefinition of faithful Christian living that provided a way for Christians to both claim allegiance to Jesus' teachings yet use force and violence was both incisive and deeply saddening.
These days, most followers of Jesus do a better job of rationalizing why they can't take the Sermon on the Mount as more than platitudes. This book further challenges me, and I hope, the church at large, to actually live like Jesus! What a novel idea.
There are just a handful of books that have deeply influenced me, books that I find myself returning to again and again. The Patient Ferment is one of those books now. I hope this book becomes widely read, and even more, widely influential. May it disturb our comfort...
Long review:
It is incredible the simplicity of the Christians praxis in its origins, and how Saint Augustine and then Luther totally misunderstood these origins.
I can’t give you all the thoughts about this book, but here a glimpse of some ideas:
- The forgiveness between Christians is still powerful mean to live in peace and in a productive way
- The peace kiss is now forgotten, but it was a very powerful practice that maintain unity in the communities
- Women in the church were extremely important, they helped with maintain the union and share information
- The first Christian didn’t think that mission was most important than behavior, and for good reasons: talk is cheap, actions are more important.
- The testimony was noting about believe, it was about behave as a Christian, you can only access the great teachings of the New Testament once you showed with your actions that you are worthy of that.
Incredible simple, I think that is difficult to destroy religion only with reason, because religions have nothing to do with theology, is about behavior and cooperation.
People should realize that western European Christians are only one portion of Christian communities, and other Christian communities to the east are as important, if not more important, and have subsisted, even flowered, for by now millennia as a minor tool of government, and even often treated as an enemy body by a hostile government.
Certainly exciting time to be Christian in a western civilization country, whose governments by now view Christians with hostility as a minority body, certainly a challenge for Christians who once again may have to put patience at the forefront of their character.
Top reviews from other countries
A fascinating glimpse of how things were for those small communities of Christian believers, and an encouragement fir small Christian communities in the 21st century.
Very readable.