Alligators, Crocodiles, and Casual Christians: Asbury Honors Program Hosts Dr. Nadya Williams
September 20, 2024
The Asbury University Honors Program (AUHP) welcomed Dr. Nadya Williams last week as part of the Studies in Virtue and Human Value lecture series. Her lecture, titled “Alligators, Crocodiles, and Casual Christians,” explored topics surrounding cultural Christianity.
Williams grew up in a secular Jewish family and came to Christ at age 30. Combining her knowledge of the ancient world with her newfound faith, she began researching the early church and how it was filled with sinners like us.
“Ironically, the misconception that most people, whether students or avid churchgoers, have is that early Christians were ultimately better than us — they were ‘saints’ or ‘martyrs’ willing to face the lions and die for their faith,” Williams said. “The reality is more complicated. It’s just that we have more names of those saints or martyrs, whereas we don’t have names of so many ordinary Christians like us.”
She then explained the concept of the “cultural Christian,” discussing how the culture in which Christians live can sometimes mislead them.
“All of us have a desire for heroes. We want to find heroes in the Bible and in history,” Williams said. “And it feels uncomfortable to say, ‘Well, maybe they were more like us.’”
Williams drew the title of her lecture from an analogy, asking how we approach dangers in our culture, such as alligators and crocodiles. Another point she made involved the fact that many ancient papyri, which scholars use as primary sources, were bureaucratic documents recycled as mummy casings for sacred crocodiles.
“In ancient Egypt, it’s funny because a lot of the documents we have — like confessions of faith or denunciations of Christians — exist because they were recycled as wrapping for those crocodiles. And those documents give us a glimpse of the culture.”
The strong takeaway from Williams’ lecture, in her view, offers both good news and bad news for modern Christians.
“The bad news is that people in the early church were a lot more like you than you think,” she said. “The good news? People in the early church were a lot more like you than you think. So instead of looking for heroes, think about how you can follow Jesus and seek sanctification where you are right now.”
Williams holds a Ph.D. in classics from Princeton University and is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024). She is the book review editor for Current magazine, where she also edits the Arena blog. Williams is a regular contributor to Christianity Today and a contributing editor for Providence Magazine and Front Porch Republic.
The AUHP invites students to join a community of scholars engaged in a themed enrichment experience, which focuses on the concept of human value, dignity, and the virtuous life. You can regularly find AUHP guests on the This Is Asbury podcast.