For its first 300 years or so, the Church endured waves of brutal persecution. Nero, Domitian, the list goes on. Yet it continued growing through the preaching of the Word, demonstrations of God’s power, and the sacrificial love Christians showed one another — and even toward their pagan neighbors.
Then Christianity became socially acceptable.
How?
Emperor Constantine ended official persecution and extended imperial favor toward the Church. He did not change the basic elements of Christian worship so much as he changed their social standing and political setting. Christians moved from vulnerable home-based congregations into safe, publicly-funded buildings. Clergy acquired status and privileges.
Later, the Emperor Theodosius made Nicene Christianity (the branch of the faith associated with the bishops of Rome and Alexandria) the official religion of the Roman Empire in AD 380.
His contributions were to:
- Support the Council of Constantinople in AD 381 (which also amended the Nicene Creed)
- Replace non-Nicene leadership with Nicene clergy
- Restrict heretical assemblies
- Prohibit pagan sacrifices and rites
- Impose fines, confiscations, and other penalties for prohibited worship
By AD 392, even private pagan sacrifices, incense offerings, lamps, and garlands could be punished under imperial law.
In summary, Constantine made Christianity legal, wealthy, respectable, and politically influential. Then Theodosius made Christianity imperially enforced.
Together, their policies encouraged:
- Large, formal public worship.
- Greater wealth and status for bishops and clergy.
- Imperial involvement in doctrine and church leadership.
- Socially and politically motivated conversions.
- Increasing uniformity — and decreasing religious freedom.
- A lasting alliance between ecclesiastical and governmental power.
Sycophants & Corruption Multiply
Everyone who wanted to curry favor with the emperor had to appear as if they worshipped his God. As a result, rampant corruption immediately began to set in.
The historical result? Professing Christianity became socially acceptable and politically useful. No genuine conversion required, only a false public profession. And who a person’s true “lord” was either real or hidden behind closed doors and lying lips.
State Churches
Over a period of centuries, the line between Roman Catholicism and secular government had become seriously blurred. The Church attempted to rule through their religious control of secular monarchs. Those sovereigns, in turn, tried to control local and regional clerics while chafing under the influence of the Church while coveting its wealth. When the Protestant Reformation hit, many heads of state jumped ship to Protestantism simply so they could throw off Roman Catholicism’s control over them, not to mention seize the considerable wealth of the local RC establishment for their own coffers.
Tragically, Protestantism simply continued the state-church model within all the regions where it held sway. Almost every non-Catholic country in Europe maintains a state church to this day. Some of them were founded by none other than the reformers themselves, most notably Luther, Calvin, and Knox. Because those reformers were so conditioned by the state-church paradigm launched by Emperor Theodosius just over a millennia prior, it never occurred to them to question whether such a church model was indeed scriptural. It’s not!
Competition for congregants is the natural consequence of religious pluralism, a fact proven in the United States where religious freedom is ingrained into our national identity. Catholic or Protestant, wherever a state church holds a religious monopoly within its respective nation, its clergy tends to be spiritually incompetent, even useless, lazy, or far worse: corrupt. For an excellent modern-day portrayal of this state of affairs, view some episodes of PBS’ now-defunct mystery series Grantchester.
Regardless of what doctrinal flavor of state church you may care to choose, all of them remain spiritually bankrupt to this day. Both attendance and donations have always been — and remain to this day — abysmally low. All those empty European churches portrayed in movies and television series are their true reality. The only reason any of them can keep their doors open is because their buildings and clergy are propped up by unpopular taxes collected from the populace by their respective governments.
As I have said elsewhere, they are spiritual tombs housed in some amazingly beautiful buildings.
Tragically, all their modern-day American counterparts are in terminal decline. Why? Because as I’ve already stated in Part 1 of this series, they have abandoned God’s Word as the sole authority over faith and practice to embrace secular pop culture narratives.
Thanks for reading!
Part 4: When the Church Lost the Common Language Part 6: When the Church Went Up for Sale Return to the Series Index
