Lead Article

Sometime around 250 AD, a young man converted to Christ in the town of Thena, just outside the great Roman city of Carthage. Marcus’s conversion created quite a stir in his small rural church, and his story paints a delightful picture of the early Christian church functioning at its family best. Marcus was an actor in the Greco-Roman theater, and this became an issue when Marcus chose to follow Jesus. To see why, we need to know something about the theater in the ancient world.

Theatrical performances in antiquity were typically dedicated to a pagan god or goddess, and the plays often ran as part of larger public religious festivals. Dramatic scenes portraying blatant immorality were commonplace. As a result, many Christians stayed away from the theater. But not all. Some insisted on attending the performances anyway. After all, the Bible does not specifically forbid theater going. Church leaders, however, rejected such rationalization:

Why is it right to look on what it is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at his eyes and ears—when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants of the spirit? If you are going to forbid immorality, you’d better forbid the theater. What you reject in deed, you are not to bid welcome in word (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, 17).

Now if leaders like Tertullian had this much of a problem with attending the theater, you can imagine what they thought about acting as a profession. When an actor converted to Christ, the first thing the early church demanded of him was to quit his profession and disassociate himself from the theater forever.

Our actor friend, Marcus, did just that. Marcus became a follower of Jesus. And he submitted to the moral standards of the Christian community and stopped acting in the local theater. Marcus now faced an economic dilemma, however, since he was no longer gainfully employed. So, instead of acting, Marcus decided to teach acting. Marcus opened an acting school. Well, this did not sit well with Marcus’s pastor, Eucratius, but he did not know quite what to do. Naturally, Eucratius sensed a contradiction here. How could it be acceptable for Marcus to teach a craft he himself was forbidden to practice? Yet Marcus had already made a tremendous sacrifice to follow Jesus—a sacrifice that had cost him his job. So Eucratius wrote to his spiritual mentor, Cyprian of Carthage, to ask “whether such a man (Marcus) ought to remain in communion with us.”

For Cyprian, one of the most highly respected Christian leaders of the day, the idea of a Christian running an acting school was unthinkable. Here is Cyprian’s reply:

It is not in keeping with the reverence due to the majesty of God and with the observance of the gospel teachings for the honour and respect of the Church to be polluted by contamination at once so degraded and so scandalous (Ep. 2.1.2).

No compromise. No drama teaching. Marcus must either leave the church or quit his job— again! But the best is yet to come.