Christianity was never intended to be a tool for achieving political ends

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/08/christianity-is-not-tool-for-achieving.html

Attempts to make it a political party, or achieve political ends make those who attempt it antichrists according to the Biblical definition of the term.

"A free church in a free state" was the result of American constitutional religious liberty. There was no state church, and churches were not dependent on the state for financial support or for filling their pews with people required to be there by law. As a result, the church entered into another period of virtually unprecedented evangelistic activity. But, as Christianity became the overwhelmingly predominant religious expression in the United States, it also became the recipient of favors, exceptions to the establishment clause and in some places, a dominant force that could not resist becoming engaged in politics. And when Christians push their churches to side with partisan politics, it subverts its mission and purpose and waters down the content of the gospel to the point where principles of faith become indistinguishable from political agendas, or they get pushed aside altogether.

Christian faith loses its essence and meaning if it becomes nothing more than obedience to a set of commands out of fear of punishment. It requires spiritual conviction in order to be brought to confessing Jesus as the Christ. And it also requires spiritual conviction to exhibit the virtues of Christian faith as a lifestyle. Those things can't be enforced either by threats of violence, military power or coercion. They must be willingly accepted and genuinely practiced.

[The Magistrate]

1. Unfortunately, Sir

The author has little if any understanding of the rise and establishment of Christian political power in the Imperial period.

"Almost as quickly as the persecution ended, the infiltration of pagan influences began as the Christian church, heavily influenced by Constantine's power, entered into an alliance with the political state, and in short order, the gospel of Jesus Christ was overwhelmed by worldly power and pagan influence."

The above is simply nonesense. Christians engaged in persecution of pagans far more thorough than any the early Church encountered. 'Pagan influences' entered the Church because even though temples and priesthoods and philosophical schools had been quashed, most people continued in their folkways, all rooted in pre-Christian religious practice. To preserve a facade of conversion it was necessary to 'Christianize' these things --- the church was built where the temple was, because no one in the district would take any other spot as holy, the deity was recast as a saint, the seasonal festivals became parts of the liturgical calendar, and so ceased to be a police problem.

The rest of this is just an extended exercise in no true Scotsmanship. There is no neutral tribunal which says this is true Christian teaching or practice, while this other thing is not. Christians are people who say they are Christian, and what they do and seek is what Christians do and seek. The one thing we know about whatever the Christ may have taught is that no one wrote it down at the time, and all accounts of his life and teachings were written decades after his death, by people seeking to buttress theological positions in an already splintering sect.

[lees1975]

2. No one actually wrote down the history

at the time which you are relating, either.

Most of those who are, as you put it, followers of "the other thing," a.k.a. the Trumpists who are Christian Nationalists, claim the Bible as their authority. Therefore, its contents, regardless of whether or not it was written decades after his death, are a valid measurement of their assertions against what the written text actually says. And in that written text, there's no support for that position.

[The Magistrate]

3. Again, Sir

Your claim that 'No one actually wrote down the history of the time of which you are relating either' is simply not true, if in reference to the only period I spoke of, namely the Church in the Imperial period. There are the writings of prominent clergy of the times, contemporary observations from hostile witnesses of Christian foolery, even official documentation. How these things are best understood is open to debate, that they are available is not.

Declaring this or that item is without Biblical support is a mug's game. The thing begins with two alternate accounts of creation, a person may prefer one to the other, but cannot say those who prefer the other have no Biblical support for their view. Everyone remembers the fellow who said they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, the fellow who said they shall beat their plowshares into swords, and their pruning hooks into spears is not so well recalled, but he's there just the same.

Some appreciation of the tenor of the times is necessary for understanding the period I refer to. Religion was an inherent part of everyday life in the pre-modern period. Very little of importance did not involve evocation of some particular deity, and people believed favorable results were generally obtained by doing so. You made the appropriate sacrifice before setting out on a journey, you got there easy enough, those three pigeons laid on the altar really worked.

In Rome, religion had a civic component, if things were not done right in the eyes of their deities, the polity would come to grief. This is not a position without Biblical warrant. That the tribal deity will afflict the people as a whole should unrighteous behavior prevail among them bulks very large in that book. Paying homage to other deities, depriving the true god of his right to exclusive worship, is the pinnacle of unrighteousness.

That this view prevailed in early Christianity is well established. Christians were forbidden to participate in any worship of any other deity. You were supposed to seek healing from elders of your congregation, who would annoint you and pray, because to see a doctor was to consult a priest, and involved prayers to the deity he healed by. You were not to bring suit in courts, or even contest suit against you, because court procedure involved evocation of various deities, which in the Imperial period soon came to include recognition of the Emperor's divinity.

This was the basis of the sporadic persecution of Christians, and why these were often popular. Christian behavior was perverse and dangerous to a devout Roman, just as burning incense to Isis would be to some Jerusalem prophet. It was not uncommon for people to bring known Christians to Imperial officials in the wake of local calamity or distress. Their disbelief angered, even weakened, the gods of the community, anyone could see that. Imperial Rome did not care what you worshiped (absent black magic and agitation to rebellion), so long as you also gave the Gods of Rome their due. The refusal of Christians to do this obvious civic duty did harm to the community.

Christian extirpation of the 'pagan' religions proceeded from the same line. Worship paid any deity but theirs risked bringing calamity on all. Early leaders did add one extra twist. They did not view the deities most of the Empire worshiped as imaginary, as things which did not really exist. They viewed them as demonic manifestations, part of Satan's war against Christ, and thus all non-Christian worship became devil-worship, which simply could not be tolerated. This view was solidly established in the early Church, well before Constantine.

That this view has a great deal in common with the present christo-fascist outbreak is too obvious to belabor. That this has deep roots in both the Bible and early Christian writings is a flat fact. An uncomfortable one for good-hearted people, who want their religion to be synonymous with all things good and virtuous, but a fact nonetheless.

[Collimator]

6. "Christians are people who say they are Christian, . . .

". . . and what they do and seek is what Christians do and seek."

Thank you for this succinct and profound summation. I get so angry at the political machinations of some Right-Wing activists that I tend to forget this simple fact.

When I was a believer, I was taught the idea that some people--make that most people--claiming to be Christians were not actually "saved" and that still needed to "accept Jesus", etc., etc. It wasn't quite as extreme as calling them heretics and burning them at the stake, but it was an internalized sense of judgment that could have led Dog knows where.

After my realization that I no longer believed (because I simply could not) I held onto to some of those distinctions. Despite myself, I still played with the idea of "real" Christians versus those with a more liberal outlook and interpretation. And of course, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses weren't "real" Christians even though to my mind none of it was real to begin with. And Catholics, ( the church that I grew up in before becoming "Born Again" ), were also not quite "real" Christians, but they were somehow closer to that category than the Mormon's and JW's.

It's all really absurd when I think about and I have slowly been opening my mind and acknowledging my own flaws in reasoning. Sometimes I am too stratified in looking at things, and sometimes my thinking is muddled.

I do believe that there are certain worthwhile, life affirming values that support social cohesion while allowing for individuality and personal authenticity. And there are people throughout the world who agree with those values who call themselves by many names and ascribe to many faiths.

Oh, and for the record, based on all the reading that I have done over the decades, I don't believe that Jesus actually existed as a distinct historical person. And the earliest extant accounts of those First Century events that scholars (secular or believing) can still access and work with date from four hundred years after the events they purport to describe.

Four hundred years is a long time for people to mess around with a narrative, no matter if they are well-meaning or self-serving in their intentions. And that is just one of the reasons that I no longer believe.

[Beastly Boy]

4. It was never intended to be so, but Christianity quickly became a political force.

From Constantine's conversion in search of a single faith under which to unify Rome, to the conquests of the New World, to the 20th century colonialism, Christianity and politics have been inseparable. The Christianity you are talking about had a fairly short history: from the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in 69 AD to about 301 AD, when Armenia adopted Christianity as an official state religion.

[Gore1FL]

5. I am unaware of any religion that was not intended to be a politcal tool.

Be it Christianity or Pastafarian, there is always a political motive.