Christianity is Learning What Pagans Experienced

The Bible's story and the narrative about Christianity's growth is about the triumph of little Christianity over the world power Roman Empire and its Paganism. It's a story of every sports movie where the skinny little kid comes off the bench to win the game. The narrative is universally popular. It has served Christianity well. 

But, as the black author I read recently said, history does not care about her disappointment at learning her black ancestors were slave owners and not slaves, "History doesn't care about what I want it to be," she wrote. 

Christianity is now the big ogre of religion-  infused government. It is the President using law enforcement to clear out an area so he can be photographed in front of a church with a Bible. Christianity is the old Pagan Romans, not the skinny kid on the bench. The skinny kid on the bench is coming into the game.

One of the takeaways of the election, according to NYT columnist David Brooks , is the majority of voters do not want more religion, i.e. Christianity, in government. While anti abortion operatives claim abortion is something other than a religious issue they have never made a successful case it is anything else but religion. Taking down the political power of one religion, Paganism, was what happened in Rome. We don't know for sure who the skinny kid is that is taking on the Christian political power but numbers and the election tell us he/she is being given the ball.

While the Roman Empire was vast and complex, and parts of it claimed to live on after it died, my understanding of it goes like this. It started a few hundred years before the common era, CE. The Pagan part of it was mostly gone by around 400 CE. This was followed by a Christian version of Roman rule which in turn was followed by hundreds of years of Christian dictators, monarchies and democratic countries for hundreds of years to the present time. 

The game clock kept ticking, however, and now the same thing that happened to the Pagan Roman Empire seems to be happening to the Western Christian version. Europe polls majority not Christian. If current trends continue the U.S. will also. The computer has given Christianity's competition the upper hand. Just as the Pagans tried to hang on Christians are trying to do so today. 

The hand writing, as they say, is on the wall.