Christianity through the ages

>>1367527
the corruption of authority

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>>1367527
>What went wrong?

>>1367527

no dude listen it was literally the devil and his dank meme armies ok?

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>>1367527
the concept of the pope and church heirarchy

>>1367619
>Implying that any Pope ever agreed with werewolf hunts

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>accept death rather than respond with violence against even the most cruel and depraved of earthly authorities

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Religion determined politics because the most important thing in most lives was eternal salvation, and communities were reluctant to tolerate forms of belief unpleasing to God.

It's just superstition m8, and the catholic church was getting wayyy too big for its boots. It's like a good friend who has one too many beers and he's suddenly a dick because he lets it get to his head and starts yelling about muh eternal salvation and starts burning things.

>>1367527
It got institutions and popes and shit.

>>1367543

If I might elaborate on this anon's theory a little further;

In AD 50, Christianity was a fast growing religion mostly aimed at the poor and destitute, which also attempted to bring in Gentiles as a political act to gain greater respectability. I don't think there's anything wrong or unchristian in this, even the followers of the True Lord of the Cross had to keep a long term plan of evangelization in mind. But by 1500 it had not just become the dominant religion of Europe, it was literally the European definition for human (my apologies for lack of a citation, I'm not quite invested enough to hunt down a fact I learned like 2 years ago).

So, now that there were no longer pagans to convert or heathens to hunt down or a need to convince other poor Jew/Greek people to follow, the Church became more obsessed with political authority than religious comfort. It lost the Holy Spirit, as it became *more* concerned with political matters than the concerns of the souls of the meek, mild, poor, and suffering. And so any slight offense became a target, often under extravagant and hyperbolic accusations, in order to keep the Church in power. No doubt the Church hierarchy believed in their accusations, but they believed in such accusations primarily because they needed to in order to justify their power.

>tldr: Church's focus shifted from evangelizing the poor to maintaining power, lost the holy spirit, became crazy.

>inb4 Lutheran shill: I'm Anglican.