The Chicago-born pontiff, who has a tense relationship with Trump, mailed in a ballot for the midterm elections that will decide control of the US Congress.
Yes, Christianity got weaponized (into a centralized, hierachical thing) by the Romans through imperialism as it became the Roman Imperial Cult around about Emperor Constantine (aka St. Constantine).
The weird thing is when the Apostles asked Jesus about Rome, he kind of shrugged (or perhaps, he suspected it’d spread his message?)
Though if there had been things against Rome in the early new testament, do you think the Romans would have just left that alone?
Similarly, I wonder if Constantine even really believed in Christianity. Like it’s in the historical record that he wanted something to bind all Romans together because it was getting hard to convince Iberian Romans to go fight wars in the middle east after they ran out of land to give away to legionaries. And then, he supposedly had a dream that said he would win a battle if he put a cross on his shield (iirc) and that made him a true believer! Or he picked the Christian cult out of all the cult options at the time and made up a story because no one would go for “I need you to believe this so you’ll die to further my imperial goals” if they didn’t think he believed.
Even then, it still took a few more emperors for it to stick, and I’m not sure any ruler prior to Charlemagne actually got to benefit from team Christianity giving Europe unity (at least militarily… Rome continued to struggle to fill legions after adopting it, though obviously it did get quite entrenched culturally before the western empire fell).
Yes, Christianity got weaponized (into a centralized, hierachical thing) by the Romans through imperialism as it became the Roman Imperial Cult around about Emperor Constantine (aka St. Constantine).
The weird thing is when the Apostles asked Jesus about Rome, he kind of shrugged (or perhaps, he suspected it’d spread his message?)
Though if there had been things against Rome in the early new testament, do you think the Romans would have just left that alone?
Similarly, I wonder if Constantine even really believed in Christianity. Like it’s in the historical record that he wanted something to bind all Romans together because it was getting hard to convince Iberian Romans to go fight wars in the middle east after they ran out of land to give away to legionaries. And then, he supposedly had a dream that said he would win a battle if he put a cross on his shield (iirc) and that made him a true believer! Or he picked the Christian cult out of all the cult options at the time and made up a story because no one would go for “I need you to believe this so you’ll die to further my imperial goals” if they didn’t think he believed.
Even then, it still took a few more emperors for it to stick, and I’m not sure any ruler prior to Charlemagne actually got to benefit from team Christianity giving Europe unity (at least militarily… Rome continued to struggle to fill legions after adopting it, though obviously it did get quite entrenched culturally before the western empire fell).
I think he saw a vision of the cross in the clouds or something and put it on his shield?