I will never forget the shock I experienced the first time I read about the time the church became a State Church. I was stunned to learn how the church first became the Empire’s favorite child. It was called the great "Constantine Shift!"
Actually there are countless numbers of Christians today who have no earthly idea that such a shift ever took place, let alone understanding its tragic consequences. This is perhaps why so many today continue to be hung up over the "prayer in school" issue.
For the first three hundred years of church history Christians were marginalized, persecuted, and were second class citizens in an Empire that didn't want them. This is the context behind most of the book of Revelation. Yet ironically the church grew the fastest and the farthest during this period as well.
But then in C.E. 313 the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, thus moving it from the margins of Roman society to becoming the centerpiece of Roman life. It’s a long story but well documented.
Now granted the church immediately experienced the benefits of a now hospitable Empire. Christians could now express their faith in public without fear of persecution. This had to have been a great relief for them; who wouldn't have been pleased with such a development?
The churches of the Empire also reaped a financial windfall from the Emperor and eventually gained political power themselves. Christian orthodoxy was also established at the insistence of the Emperor in a place called Nicaea. The marriage of Church and State was an accomplished fact.
This period of Christian history (C.E. 313 to roughly the middle of the 20th century) became known as “Christendom.” The unhappy result of this marriage was the attempt to airbrush Jesus out of the center of the church’s life and mission and make him more compatible with this new Church/State relationship.
There are church historians today who believe that the teachings of Jesus (Sermon on the Mount) were reinterpreted in ways that would have been foreign to Christians prior to the Constantine Shift. For example, loving one’s enemies does not sit well with an Empire that used violence and war as a means to expand its interests. Jesus bringing peace came to be spiritualized as inner peace within the individual; justice came to be understood as "righteousness" (with a moralistic flair of course).
Many of Jesus’ core teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount were spiritualized or considered instructions for the Age to Come, but definitely not intended for the current age. Some even taught that Jesus' most difficult teachings, like enemy love, were meant to show just how incapable we humans are of living up to such expectations and therefore stand in need of God’s grace for salvation.
The sad truth is, historically speaking, the Constantine Shift marked the day that Christianity got into bed with the Empire and over the years lost more and more of its prophetic edge; having shifted from the margins of Roman society to its center, the voice of Jesus became much more muted to the ears of those living in Christendom.
So when I hear so-called Christian leaders or politicians today suggesting that they want to see Christianity once again become our national religion, I cringe. They want to reinstall Christendom and reboot another Constantinian Shift.
I resist any such movement.
The State needs a Christian voice and witness that comes from the margins of American society. It cannot hear the prophetic voice of the church if the church is embedded at the center of American society.
The yeast cannot do its work if it becomes the loaf of bread. We must remember the words of Jesus that we live in the world but are not of it.
Christendom is dead, it’s just that many don’t know it yet. National flags need to be removed from Christendom sanctuaries. Christian worship needs to be centered on the Christ Event rather than national holidays. Jesus (the Cross) needs to be the centerpiece of the church's life and mission, and the Christian Faith needs to be situated on the margins of American society once again.
We live in a very dangerous and frightening world. There is no telling what lies ahead. But this we do know:
When we Christians live and behave according to the teachings of Jesus and the values of God’s kingdom we will more than likely find ourselves situated at the margins of American society—and this is not a bad thing. This is not cause for grief but rather reason for celebration.
Christendom is dead. The divorce has already occurred. It was never intended for Christianity to become an embedded instrument of the Empire, or the State, or even American Democracy.
The Church cannot be Christ’s true Church when the State holds the mortgage over our heads.
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