The Forgotten Creed Quotes

“The slave was a kind of surrogate body placed at the disposal of an owner to do with as he or she pleased. Masters used their slave bodies for all sorts of things, including manual labor, of course, but not only this. A slave was a surrogate body in every sense. Slaves could receive corporal punishment on behalf of his or her master; a slave could be imprisoned instead of his or her master. Conversely, attacking a person’s slave was tantamount to attacking his or her master. Slaves performed the duties of a hit man, leading to various legal puzzles about culpability—when was the slave liable, and when the master? Slave gangs could be deployed as private armies. Female bodies had their own special uses—milk, for one. As Glancy notes, the slave wet nurse was a stock character in generations of Greek and Roman literature.28 Sex, for another—although one should not assume this to have been a burden borne only by female bodies. Greek and Roman men also made use of their male bodies in this way.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“Slaves, women, and foreigners were all essentially the same to ancient men—contemptible. They were all other.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“In baptism they were committed to giving up old identities falsely acquired on the basis of baseless assumptions—Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—and declared themselves to be children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“Everyone agrees that the three dyads in verse 28 are its central feature, its basic claim. Baptism exposes the follies by which most of us live, defined by the other, who we are not. It declares the unreality of race, class, and gender: there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female. We may not all be the same, but we are all one, each one a child of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“If that all makes sense, the original credo would have read something like this: For you are all children (sons) of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; For you are all one in the Spirit. This is my best guess on how the original creed went, but it is by no means the only way to imagine it.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“So Paul did not create the baptismal creed embedded in Galatians 3:26–28. The creed, then, must have preceded Paul. But there is not very much in the New Testament that precedes Paul. His voice is the first voice we hear from the nascent Christian movement. That makes Galatians 3:26–28 one of the oldest statements of faith in all of the New Testament, perhaps even the first such statement in all of Christian history.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“That is what it’s about—being a child of God. Ethnicity (no Jew or Greek), class (no slave or free), and gender (no male and female) count neither for you nor against you. We are all children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“The creed was originally about the fact that race, class, and gender are typically used to divide the human race into us and them to the advantage of us. It aimed to declare that there is no us, no them. We are all children of God. It was about solidarity, not cultural obliteration.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“So, an ancient Christian credo declaring solidarity across ethnic lines, class division, and gender difference sounded a little unbelievable to someone who had come to see the Christian church as more a symbol of social ills than of starry-eyed utopian dreams.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism

“This creed claims that there is no us, no them. We are all one. We are all children of God.”
― Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism