So how was the church shaped by being at the heart of Empire? What effects did imperial patronage have upon its mission? In his fourth chapter of Post-Christendom, Stuart Murray examines some of these issues. He begins by outlining how significant to this was one particular theologian and thinker. For if the church was to accept what the Empire wanted then someone had to come up with the theology that made it all possible. After all what we see in Christendom – or so the theory goes – is the church changing some basic beliefs in order to accommodate the Empire.

The theologian in question was Augustine. And there is no doubting that Augustine was a towering figure in his own day and in ours. His ideas heavily influenced the church during his own lifetime and we still see some of his thoughts in church life today. He became Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, in 396 AD and remained there until his death in 430. Much could be said about the positive aspect of his thinking but space confines me to draw out some of the negatives only. Some of his innovations included providing a theological justification for oppressing religious opponents; being the first to state clearly that those who are in doctrinal error have no rights; ensuring that the baptism of babies became the norm; applying the Old Testament principle of tithing to Christians; adapting the ‘just war’ tradition so as to replace the church’s earlier emphasis on pacifism.

The field of biblical interpretation was another aspect of his work, whereby he would use the OT to justify actions that he could not easily justify from the New. He found himself in a particular dilemma when forced to call to on Christian soldiers to love the enemies they killed! But it was his interpretation of two NT texts that was of particular value to Christendom. The first was the parable of the ‘wheat and weeds’ (Mt 13:24-30, 37-43) where Jesus expressly said that he was referring to the Kingdom. But Augustine interpreted this as the church, which could therefore be mixed with believers and non-believers, thus collapsing the boundary between church and world. The second was a phrase from another parable – ‘compel them to come in’ (Lk 14:23). From this phrase Augustine said that he believed in coercion, thus allowing persecution by Christians.

The shift orchestrated by the empire-church link resulted in many changed teachings in the church compared to pre-Christendom. They include: within faith and discipleship, trusting Jesus was no longer an exercise of choice in a pluralistic environment where other choices were possible with out penalty, and discipleship meant being a good citizen rather than someone committed to living a counter-cultural life; within church and society, the church became more of a chaplain providing spiritual services to the state rather than a prophetic voice calling for change; within church life discipline became punitive and even lethal instead of mutual admonition; within mission the church became more maintenance minded and mission was done via top-down methods where coercion was often used; and within ethics the cross became a symbol of military power rather than a symbol of laying down life for the sake of others.