Relevance

Some very brief questions : how 'relevant' (to be anachronistic for a moment)  was the early Church in terms of the prevailing philosophies and ethics, the trends and priorities of society in the Roman Empire? 
How much was the Church then concerned about its "credibility in wider society?"

In what is, by common admission, a post-Christian society, one which like the Roman considers itself to be morally superior to the primitive revelations of a intellectually backward offshoot of Judaism, how concerned should we be?
Or do we think a post-Christian society calls for a post-Christian Established Church to preach to it only the message it wants to hear? Perhaps this will do?

Happy St Clement's Day!

The Martyrdom of St Clement by Bernadino Fungai (1460-1516)

" Therefore it is right and proper, brethren, that we should be obedient unto God, rather than follow those who in arrogance and unruliness have set themselves up as leaders in abominable jealousy.

 For we shall bring upon us no common harm, but rather great peril, if we surrender ourselves recklessly to the purposes of men who launch out into strife and seditions, so as to estrange us from that which is right.

Let us be good one towards another according to the compassion and sweetness of Him that made us. For it is written:

The good shall be dwellers in the land, and the innocent shall be left on it but they that transgress shall be destroyed utterly from it.

And again He saith I saw the ungodly lifted up on high and exalted as the cedars of Lebanon. And I passed by, and behold he was not; and sought out his place, and I found it not. Keep innocence and behold uprightness; for there is a remnant for the peaceful man. "

[I Clement 14 - from J.B. Lightfoot's translation]