Continuing with my posts about the history of Western European Christianity, today I want to offer a few examples of how imperialism overshadowed its development.
In an earlier post I described how I see Paul building up the early Christian Church, within but subversive of the Roman Empire. The paradox is, it seems to me, this shaped the Church so that it became receptive to take over by Emperor Constantine.
Of course, compromises had to be made and here are a couple of examples from the book A History of Christianity .
When the wealthy citizens of the Roman ruling class adopted Christianity, one of the problems was what Jesus had said about wealth and poverty. As the new faith took root amongst them, they had to square the Gospel message of salvation for the poor and powerless with their own wealth and power.
Their solution was to give alms to the poor. Roman society was built on patronage. Your patron would speak on your behalf. It was a small jump then to the belief that God would listen to the poor when they pleaded on behalf of the rich who had given them alms.
The second example, is from the Frankish (Carolingian) Empire soon after the time of Charlemagne. The Carolingians were warriors. At the time, it was understood that Jesus would not have condoned killing. There was a way round this, by doing penance. The problem was their sins were so huge, they simply did not have time to do penance. So, they financed monasteries, whose monks said the penitential prayers on their behalf. So long the prayers were said, it did not matter who said them!
We have to remember when we consider these examples, we should not read back to those times our modern individualism. At the time, people were part of family networks and did not think of themselves as autonomous individuals. Usually it was necessary only to convert the leaders of a country, the others would follow their lead. So, what seems to us as absurd may have made sense at the time.
Of course, this was very convenient for those who wanted power. However, my thoughts are that these two examples give us a clue about what happened once Christianity succumbed to the Roman imperial project. By the time of the Carolingians, the Roman Empire was history but there was a strong desire to recreate it.
This shadow is still cast over our churches today (West and East, the Orthodox Church also originated from the Roman Empire). Tomorrow I will explore the nature of this shadow further.
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