Saturday, April 21, 2012

Politicized

Time and Newsweek both had Jesus on the cover for Easter. Newsweek's Jesus was a hipster in New York. The article started with something that I hear a lot and is said as if it is non-controversial. It was something to the affect of "Christianity has become more politicized lately". What I can't figure out is when was it not politicized?

Moses was the lawmaker. He negotiated with a King for the release of his people. Then there were a lot of wars, supported by God until they united into a Kingdom and crowned their own King. The prophets continued to comment on policies of those Kings. In Jesus' time, there were various factions that had opinions about how to either ally with or fight against the Romans. Christianity really began to flourish when it got the support of Constantine and for centuries to be the legitimate King, you had to be crowned by the Pope.

This all finally started to break down in the 16th century, causing a lot of wars. In 1868, the 14th amendment to the United States constitution put the end to the debate about the separation of church and state. So for a few decades, at least in America, Christianity was not all that political.

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