sorry, couldn’t resist my favorite line from “deteriorata”

Christianity became the state religion of Armenia in 301 A.D., decades before the Council of Nicea, making the Armenian Apotoslic Church the world’s oldest national church.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Apostolic_Church

Christianity under Constantine was not the official religion, but merely an accepted one. Coinage from this period combines the Chi-Rho symbol of christ (the cross didn’t become the main symbol until quite later) with pagan symbology, primarily Sol Invictus.
This apparently led to some confusion; Jesus was often depicted as Helios or Apollo in 2-3rd century Roman Christian mosaics. A mosaic from the Tomb of the Julii was recently discoverd under the Vatican depicting Helios’s sun chariot driven by a clean-shaven Jesus, identified only by the distinctive Chi-Rho.

Contrary to popular notion, virtually all modern Christian denominations teach Pauline Christianity – that is, they follow the teachings of Paul over those of Jesus. In short, Jesus was a socialist, while Paul was the first Elmer Gantry and very much a capitalist. The disciples of Jesus lived in a socialistic commune described in Acts 2:44-45 – “All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” and Acts 4:34ff – “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” This, then, is the true meaning of sell all you have and give it to the poor – they were known as the Ebionites, from Evyonim – THE Poor. Today, virtually no one (except the Shakers) follows Jesus’s teaching of from each according to ability, to each according to need.

In a particularly embarrassing period in Jewish history, Judean King Alexander Jannaeus crucified several thousand of his fellow Jews. Among them was said to be a godly man named Jesus.

The name Jesus was a particularly popular one – Jesus being the result of Greek/Latin translation of the name of the great Jewish warrior Joshua. There over over a dozen people mentioned in the bible named Jesus or one of numerous variants.

It is my (mis?)understanding that crucifixion was a method of execution reserved primarily for political crimes. One could argue that the actions of Jesus were at least perceived by the Romans as a political threat. If I recall correctly, John Dominic Crossan has written well about this. The liberation theologists certainly believed that the teachings of Jesus could be expressed politically. I found them admirable in that regard.

There is a certain regard for the separation of church and state in one of the temptations of Christ (in Matthew chapter 6 ?). Satan takes Jesus to the top of a high mountain and tempts him with the power to rule all of what he sees. Also the oft quoted, “Render unto Caesar…”

The temptation of earthly power seems an apt metaphor for what has happened with the GOP and the Christian right, although it is a toss up who lead who astray.

The old saying “Man has a god shaped hole in his heart that he is always trying to fill.” has some merit. Maybe the concept of a god is a projection of a genetic(?) behavioral program, that in essence defines what it means to be human. Regardless, there are some concepts emerging from quantum physics that, to a layman such as myself, seem quite mystical. The theory of the mind as described by Jeffery Schwartz and Susan Begley, the non-existence of time in Julian Barbour, membrane theory and Paul Davies’ new book, “Cosmic Jackpot” seem to indicate that the cosmos is a far stranger place that we might have imagined. Maybe so strange a place that it might conceive “gods”. I wish I had 40 or 50 more I.Q. points so that I might truly appreciate these theories. I will leave that to your more gifted readership. But, my sense is that some of the implications of these insights have already been approached through mysticism.

Sorry, just “thinking out loud”.

Not totally true. Christ had harsh words of condemnation for “the hypocrites”, people who put on an exterior show of religiosity, but in reality are “whitewashed tombs”. He called the Pharisees “lovers of money”. Threatening the power structure like this, and in other ways, is part of why he got crucified.

As for imposing morality, at one point in the gospels, the disciples are commisioned to spread the gospel. Much of the New Testament is about this kind of evangelism, and todays’ Christians try to do the same. Of course Jesus’ early followers didn’t try to do this through explicit political means, but it wasn’t much different from people today who try to “save the lost”.

There has always been a gray area between church and state, dating back to the Council of Nicea in 325 AD when Christianity became focused around certain theological tenets (Jesus is God), and rejecting all others as heresies, which resulted in a kind of theology and church which many see as favoring the Emperor Constantine, who used it to consolidate Roman rule. This reaches its apogee in the Byzantine Empire, which was a complete theocracy, thoroughly mixing religion and politics. Much later, there was a split in the Russian Orthodox church between “the possessors” and the “non possessors” – those who favored the accumulation of material wealth and power for the church, versus those who shunned it. And there have been many countries who had a state religion, either explicitly or implicitly, even in modern times. The USA was probably one of the first to explicitly reject this notion at its founding.

And so the efforts by some of today’s Christians to bring about their own utopian theocracy in the USA isn’t new. You’re right to say that Jesus basically magnetized his followers, and didn’t operate through the political realm. His early disciples didn’t either, both because they mostly lacked political power and because they thought his return was imminent. But after these early centuries, politics and the Christian religion get quite mixed up.

Christianity is supposed to bea philosophy based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians are supposed to try to immitate Him.

Jesus Christ lived in Israel during the Roman occupation. It was not pretty. Many (if not most) Jews in that time expected the Messiah to liberate Israel from the Roman oppression & drive out the Romans. God knows if ever a war would have been just, defeating Rome would have been. It did not happen!

Christ was never political. He never forced his teaching on others; quite the opposite, by my reading of the Gospel, people thronged to see HIM outside of towns and villages whenever they heard he was passing through.Christ ministered to the bodies and souls of all people (even Romans) and never took on a shread of political power. He could have raised an army at the end of his 3rd year of public life; he didn’t.

Explain to me (and I am not Christain, so maybe I don’t get it) how a christian who follows the teachings of Christ when Christ was NOT political, how, how, HOW does that christian justify being political, attempting to impose his morality on me, when clearly Christ never did???!!!!

One point I must add. I have known plenty of Christians (caps on purpose) who devote themselves to ministering to the bodies and spirits of all men. Fine folks with whom I have no quarrel, even if I find their theology odd, but you won’t see them on TV.

http://www.religiousworlds.com/fondarosa/freud21.html