Melanie Starks Kierstead - Phrygian Roots of the Montanist Movement

With William Tabbernee’s  celebrated  discovery of Pepouza (2000), even greater certainty can be had in the claims of indigenous Phrygian religious influence on Montanist Christianity.  Long before Pepouza was the epicenter of Montanism’s  milleniarial “New Jerusalem,” this heart of the Phrygian mountains of Western Asia Minor was home to worship of the Mother God, AKA, Cybele. 

 Most certainly the active leadership role of women in the Cybele cult naturally carried over into Christian expression that challenged the male-dominated  episcopacy that had developed in Christianity.  

The pagan social environs of Montanism shaped its religious expression not only in terms of female leadership, most notably of Priscilla and Maxmillia, but also its’ charismatic, free worship practices which adherents claimed to be inspired by the Spirit.  

This paper will make the link between the early church fathers’ charges against Montanism with their religious social environment.  It identifies aspects of the worship of Cybele, the  Mother God of Phrygia which became natural (pneumatic) expressions, attributed to the Spirit in Phrygian Christian worship.