Niche-marketing religion...the third-oldest profession.

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, religion, alternate christianities, history

Beliefnet's eclectic approach to spirituality is reflected in their "Beliefnet Guide to..." series. To date they've tackled Islam, the Kabbalah, and Evangelical Christianity. Their forté is a kind of hit-and-run survey of a religion or religious phenomenon.

The current volume, Gnosticism and Other Vanished Christianities by Richard Valantasis, surveys a significant assemblage of religious competitors to "orthodox" Christianity during its first several centuries. Dr. Valantasis, an Episcopal priest and professor of Theology, has summarized a wealth of primary source material that opens a little window into the beliefs and lives of vanished Christian (and semi-Christian) traditions.

So, who were Gnostics? What did they believe? It is a little like asking, who are the Baptists, or the Pentecostals. Gnostic groups ranged from near-orthodox elites to wholly non-Christian mystery cults that occasionally mentioned Christ. They shared two characteristics: Dualism, the struggle between good and evil, meaning for them, between spirit and matter; and Elitism, the belief that some people were by nature "pneumatic" and could thus learn the esoteric knowledge (gnosis) needed for salvation, while the rest could not and never would.

Gnostics aren't so extinct as one might think. I've witnessed one definite incursion of elitism-plus-dualism into a congregation of which I was a part. It's a seductive mix. People get to feel special, and they get a simple explanation of "how things work," even though that explanation is made to seem mysterious and esoteric, secret knowledge. In the end, however, any esoteric movement turns out to be the propagation of the pecularity of one person and a number of followers who share that peculiarity in some measure.

In biblical terms, this kind of "rampant peculiarity" is like all the eyes, for example, getting together in a club that excludes all non-eyes, saying to the rest of the body of Christ, "I have no need of thee." Too late, the eyes find out that without feet, they can't go anywhere to see anything, and without hands, they can't do anything about what they might genuinely see.

What is peculiarity? It is any soulish counterfeit of seemingly spiritual virtues; something one person may naturally be good at that looks spiritual but is actually natural. James the brother of Jesus was famed for wearing holes into the floorboards near his bed with his knees, by long praying. So, should we all pray until our knees are wooden and the floor wears out? Perhaps James really had a spiritual gift of prayer, or perhaps he was simply good at mindless kneeling. But God doesn't need millions of people who can kneel for hours, so there's no use everyone trying to be like James (downright boring, in any case).

I happen to have a good memory, and I notice details. In a discussion once about an article for a Christian newspaper, someone asked how to quote a certain saying of Jesus. Someone else replied that it was found in Matthew and Mark both, but the words were the same, "so take your pick." I responded, "They are differently punctuated; check with the Greek for both." Another burst out, "You Pharisee! I can barely recall the words; how d'you remember the punctuation?" I didn't answer. I've learned not to say too much about details; they usually aren't as important as all that, not worth getting bogged down with. (And for those thinking this is an instance of inconsistency in Scripture, the real detail to learn is that Jesus said things more than once to different audiences; Mark was recording one incident, and Matthew a different one, in which Jesus used a saying he probably used frequently.)

OK, so, who were the Gnostics? They were special-interest groups. Just one vaguely related group of Christian spin-offs among many. Don't think denominationalism is a modern phenomenon. Selling faith to narrow markets has gone on long before the Gnostics and various heretics (notice I didn't say "other heretics"; most Gnostics weren't heretics) brought it into the Christian realm.

They were mostly rather unpleasant people. They despised the "non-pneumatic," and were often more rigid in their own practice than the "orthodox" against whom they rebelled. I guess they needed a reason to feel special, because without that, few of them would get any respect.