Part of the church's opposition might have been its pagan connotations. All along, the church has been uncomfortable with what I would call folk religion. But they could do little to stop it.

Miners could afford to own one of these. They were little; they were made by village painters, and their frames are simple. Many were painted by someone who was obviously self-taught.

Typically, outside of churches there would be people selling religious souvenirs. There would be someone selling little prints of an image that might be in the church. They were treasured, worn by soldiers into battle, and became personal badges of affiliation.

It is important to think about the Church not as "over there" but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.

Unity is the only way a church can ever thrive.

What was true of an ancient community of Christian believers struggling with a powerful and appealing philosophy is also true for Christians in a postmodern context. Arguments that deconstruct the regimes of truth at work in the late modern culture of global capitalism are indispensable. So also is a deeper understanding of the counterideological force of the biblical tradition. But such arguments are no guarantee that the biblical metanarrative will not be co-opted for ideological purposes of violent exclusion, nor do arguments prove the truth of the gospel. Only the nonideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible.