the forces of secular humanism and liberalism (Park 1994: 144).
In such societies, those who have turned away from Christianity
might also study early Christians in some sense as a way of justi-
fying their rejection of religion, particularly in its organized, more
doctrinaire incarnations. Even so, they often find that their atti-
tudes to early Christianity are still profoundly informed by their
experiences of its modern counterpart. The late Keith Hopkins,
author of a study of Christianity that sought to place it firmly in
the context of the religious milieu of the Roman empire, freely
admitted that, in researching his book, he became aware of the
residual religious biases that seemed to confound his professed
atheism. Reflecting on his engagement with scholars from a range
of religious traditions, he discovered something disquieting about
what he had believed were his attitudes to Christianity: ‘Beneath
the liberal veneer, there was a reluctance, a deep resistance to be
open minded, to unlearn the half-conscious absorptions of child-
hood and adolescence. Put another way, my atheism was indelibly
Protestant’ (K. Hopkins 1999: 2). Regardless, then, of whether or
not one considers oneself a Christian, engagement with early
Christianity involves some element of confrontation of one’s own
identity and system of beliefs, be they religious or secular.The secular challenge
At the opposite extreme are those who might argue that any study
of religion, and not just early Christianity, should be consigned
to the dustbin of history. For them the processes of secularization
outlined above demonstrate loudly the bankruptcy of religion in
general. To many, religion seems to represent all that is backward
and primitive, from which humanity has been emancipated by the
triumph of ‘rational scientific’ explanations over ‘superstitious’
ones. I cite as evidence (albeit anecdotal) a radio interview I heard
at the point when I was first formulating the ideas for this book.
The atheist interviewee called for the replacement of religious
education in schools with the teaching of science, citing as
support for this view the evidence (also anecdotal) that pupils atWHAT IS EARLY CHRISTIANITY?
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