Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There is something almost breathtaking about watching Christianity go from a movement built around a man who preached love, compassion, forgiveness, and care for the least among us to an institution that has, at various points in history, been responsible for some of the most spectacular examples of human cruelty ever committed in the name of God.

That is quite a transformation. Somewhere along the way, somebody apparently decided that turning the other cheek was less practical than turning the other guy over to the authorities.

The first-century followers of Jesus were not exactly operating from a position of power. They were a small religious movement living under Roman occupation, gathering in homes, sharing what they had, caring for the poor, and attempting to live according to the teachings of a Jewish Messiah who had some rather inconvenient things to say about wealth, power, forgiveness, and how we treat people who have absolutely nothing to offer us in return.

Love your enemies. Feed the hungry. Care for the sick. Welcome the stranger. Do unto others.

Pretty radical stuff, especially when your neighbors are living under an empire that has perfected the art of making examples out of people.

And then came Constantine.

In the fourth century, Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to an officially favored one under the Roman Empire. Eventually, the religion that had spent centuries surviving the attention of Roman authorities became entangled with the very machinery of imperial power.

The oppressed had been invited into the palace.

And apparently, they liked the furniture.

Now, to be fair, Constantine did not single-handedly invent every terrible thing Christianity would ever do. The early church was already a complicated collection of communities, arguments, and competing interpretations. And Christianity did not become a single unified institution overnight. History, inconveniently, is rarely as tidy as a Sunday school coloring book.

But Constantine’s embrace of Christianity marked a profound change in the relationship between the religion and political power. The faith that had once existed largely outside the structures of empire was now becoming part of those structures.

And once religion and government discover they can be useful to each other, well, good luck getting them to leave the party.

The religion of the persecuted could now help legitimize the power of the emperor. The message of a Messiah who said that his kingdom was not of this world became entangled with an empire that very much believed in this world, its borders, its armies, and its ability to make you disappear if you became inconvenient.

Eventually, Christianity became associated with crusades, inquisitions, forced conversions, religious persecution, and colonial conquest. People were tortured, executed, dispossessed, and enslaved while men claiming to represent the teachings of Jesus explained why all of it was necessary.

Which is a remarkable theological achievement when your central religious figure specifically told people to love their enemies.

Imagine standing before Jesus and explaining that you had just authorized the torture of somebody because they disagreed with your interpretation of his teachings.

“Well, Lord, technically, we did it for you.”

I suspect the conversation would be brief.

The uncomfortable truth is that Christianity, like virtually every major religion, has been used both to inspire extraordinary compassion and to justify extraordinary cruelty. There have been Christians who devoted their lives to caring for the poor, defending the vulnerable, and challenging injustice. There have also been Christians who used the authority of their religion to build systems of oppression.

The difference is not always the words printed in the book. Sometimes it is who gets to interpret those words, who holds the power, and who benefits from the interpretation.

The first-century followers of Jesus did not have armies, cathedrals, or the ability to summon a government to enforce their theology. They had a message, a community, and a belief that they were supposed to live differently from the world around them.

The later Christian empires had armies, cathedrals, and governments.

And apparently, once you have the army, the cathedral, and the government, you can find a theological justification for almost anything.

That is the part I find most interesting. The original message did not necessarily change because somebody found a new Bible. The political circumstances changed. The people claiming authority changed. The incentives changed.

A movement that had once challenged the powerful could now become a tool of the powerful.

And if you believe the accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about the Messiah at the center of Christianity, he probably would have had some serious objections to the arrangement.

The man who told his followers to love their enemies would likely have found the Crusades a little difficult to explain.

The man who told his followers to care for the poor might have had questions about the accumulation of enormous wealth by religious institutions.

The man who told his followers not to lord their authority over others might have had a few words for religious leaders who believed their position entitled them to control the lives of everyone else.

And the man who said that whatever you did for the least of his brothers, you did for him, might have been somewhat disappointed by the number of people who claimed to love him while treating the poor, the sick, the foreigner, and the powerless as inconveniences.

But perhaps that is the problem with institutional religion. It is one thing to follow a teacher who tells you to love your enemies. It is another thing entirely to build an institution that must defend its authority, protect its wealth, and maintain its political influence.

The teacher says, “Blessed are the meek.”

The institution says, “Yes, but we have some very aggressive lawyers.”

And so the religion that began with a man who had no palace, no army, and no political office eventually became associated with some of the most powerful institutions in human history.

The oppressed became the oppressors.

The people who had once been hunted became the people doing the hunting.

The message of compassion became a justification for conquest.

And the man who preached love and forgiveness became a symbol that could be placed on banners carried into battle.

There is a lesson in that, although it is probably not the lesson most religious institutions would prefer to teach.

It is not enough to claim allegiance to a teacher. You have to consider whether your actions resemble the teachings of that teacher.

Because if the religion you practice requires you to abandon compassion, forgiveness, humility, and care for the vulnerable in order to defend its power, then perhaps you are no longer defending the religion.

Perhaps you are defending the institution.

And those are not always the same thing.

I have no problem with people finding meaning, comfort, or guidance in Christianity. I have a problem with people using the name of a man who preached love and kindness to justify cruelty, oppression, and the accumulation of power.

If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John got it right about the Messiah, then the question is not whether Jesus would recognize Christianity.

The question is whether he would recognize what some Christians have done in his name.

And I have a suspicion that if he walked into some of our modern churches, he might look around at the wealth, the political power, and the people being told that God wants them to have more, and wonder what happened to the part about loving your neighbor.

Then again, maybe he would just turn over a few tables.

That would at least be historically consistent.