Coping With Prejudice

Over the past twenty or so years, social psychologists have identified a number of surprisingly effective practical strategies that the targets of social prejudice employ in their efforts to cope with their predicaments. In this study, Paul A. Holloway applies these findings of social psychology to the early Christian pseudepigraphon known as 1 Peter. He argues that 1 Peter marks one of the earliest attempts by a Christian author to craft a more or less comprehensive response to anti-Christian prejudice and its outcomes. Unlike later Apologists, however, who also wrote in response to anti-Christian prejudice, the author of 1 Peter does not seek to influence directly the thoughts and actions of those hostile to Christianity, but writes instead for his beleaguered coreligionists, consoling them in their suffering and advising them on how to cope with popular prejudice and the persecution it engendered.