Constantine Messed with us
Boy did Constantine mess with us. I can remember in church membership classes giving honor to Constantine for his part (all his) in making Christianity the official state religion. And persecution resulted to those who did not following that edict. I now have come to believe that Constantine's motives were less than pure as I look at recorded history on how he really felt about Christianity. He wanted unity not Christianity.
For an honest majority Constantine remains the hero. The institutional church was born through his edict and that has caused harm to the mission of Jesus Christ. History has proven that when you institutionalize movements we stop the movement in leage part. Jesus handed us a movement and we decided to create our own box for it. And now today, thousands are leaving the institution because we put Jesus in a box that is too small for the Jesus many long for!
Let's just consider the fact that Constantine forced us away from the mission of Jesus! Then movement after movement of denominational structures erupted and the model we adopted for the American church is European. We left the missional movement of disciples making disciples and instead of new believers fueled by mission we are now serving in church ministries that keep us at arms length from the world. That is unless the church has a programmed outreach event and even then Constantine shows his controlling colors.
Again Satan disguises his demise of the movement of God with something that looks and feels right but is clearly trickery. While the institution has done well and has impacted lives for eternity we are far behindwhat we should be missionally. We are now seeing our culture reject the church and if we are to turn the ship we need to go back to the days before Constantine and his edict which made Christianity the state religion.
Constantine really messed us up! I invite you comments but let's try to be clear positionally.
posted by Bob Carder @ 2:15 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
You have a follow-up I suppose? This one is a bit light on evidence and a bit full of assertions, as well as undefined terms (institutionalized).
I love follow ups! Michael Frost writes from a different perspective than many. Sometimes people write to prove a point and support their position and others write with the big picture in mind. Frost is a big picture person and he lays it out in a way that reveals in part why the church in America has become and Institution instead of continuing to be a movement. Inward focussed "take care of us" without be mobilized "out and into" the world as the main thing become institutions.
Michael Frost in "Exiles" page 4 writes, "'Christendom' is the name given to the religious culture that has dominated Western society since the fourth century. Awakened by the Roman emperor Constantine, it was the cultural phenomenon that resulted when Christianity was established as the official imperial religion, moving it from being a marginalized, subversive, and persecuted movement to being the only official religion in the empire. Whereas followers of Jesus at one time had met secretly in homes and underground catacombs, now they were given some of the greatest temples and meeting places in the empire. They were, in quite a literal sense, handed the keys of the Roman kingdom. As C.K. Chesterton is noted to have said, 'The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.'"
Is that C.K. Chesterton or G.K. Chesterton?
Post a Comment
<< Home