It was Constantine what messed it up. I’ve heard it said. I’ve said it myself. Perhaps, if he hadn’t Christianity wouldn’t be a world faith. But I think there is something in the idea that the way he brought the church and the state together kind of changed Christianity and made it something different to what Jesus had been about. And so maybe the world faith that Christianity became wasn’t proper no more.
I think the problem might go back a lot, lot further though. I think things might have gone askew in Antioch. Because it was in Antioch that ‘the disciples were first called Christians’. Before that, as I’ve said on this blog before they were called ‘followers of the way’.
The problem I see with the switch is that it changes from something dynamic to something static. It goes from a description of your direction of travel to a statement of your arrival.
And it opens up that whole notion of conversion. One minute you are not. The next minute you are. You’ve reached the end point.
‘Metanioa’ — repentance — on the other hand is the word used for bringing a boat about. It’s about a change in direction. It’s about the way you travel being different than it was before but it leaves open the possibility that you may come about again. Maybe travelling on the way is, as Richard Passmore says, about tacking — moving in a direction but tangentally, repeatedly coming about to bring you back on course.
Christian means little Christ. That’s not something you can be. It can only ever be something you’re becoming.
If we’re followers on the way, fellow travellers, it’s much harder to determine who’s in and who’s out. Because none of us has arrived. Even baptism becomes a waymarker on the journey. So maybe that encourages us to be more humble.
The other question though is whether there is only the way. But that’s a whole other can of worms!
the Pompey Pioneer 
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