26. When did Christendom get started, and how, and with what kind of professed Christians?

²⁶ Nearly three centuries after the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness of Judea, Christendom came into existence. This was in the days of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who was baptized as a professor of Christianity just before his death in the year 337 C.E. But he had claimed to be converted to Christianity years earlier, in the year 312 C.E. By that time what was called Christianity had moved so far away from the teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles that there were so-called Christians in military armor fighting for this pagan general and politician Constantine.

Throughout the following centuries Christendom experienced many splits, accompanied by religious wars, crusades and persecutions among so-called Christians. Many distinct National State Churches were established. Christendom has grown to be the most powerful and numerous religious organization on earth. It has become a spectacle to all the pagan, non-Christian world, now over two thirds of the earth’s population. But an example of what? Of true Christianity? Or of a so-called divine rulership as exercised through a religious hierarchy that cooperates with human kings who claim to have the “divine right of kings”?

29. Why do we ask about the Christianity of the two world wars and the world peace organizations and the preparations for another world war?

²⁹ Was World War I Christian because it began between two European political states that claimed to be Christian? Was the League of Nations Christian because it was backed by the Church of England and because the American clergymen called it “the political expression of the Kingdom of God on earth”? Was World War II Christian for the reason that it began with the invasion by armies of one so-called Christian State into the territory of another “Christian” State? Is the United Nations a Christian organization for world peace and security because about half of its 132 member nations claim to be Christian? Are the steady preparations for World War II with nuclear bombs and missiles Christian because Christendom feels obliged to protect herself with such weapons for survival?

[Picture on page 627]

Did the blessing of the churches on the world wars make those conflicts Christian?

[New York Times, April 2, 1917, p. 4]

[New York World Telegram, October 23, 1944]

[New York Times, June 16, 1940]

[New York Times, April 6, 1917, p. 10]

[New York Times, October 5, 1940, p. 4]

[New York Times, September 30, 1914, p. 3]

[New York Post, October 30, 1940]

[New York Times, April 15, 1917, p. 7]

[New York Post, June 6, 1940]