The first purpose of this section is to show how Christianity became the religion of Europe. (And of the Middle East and North Africa until the rise of Islam). Although unlikely given the historical facts, this is not to say that Chistianity could not have risen without the loathesome alliance (Jefferson's words) of church and state. Improbable as it is, this is not to say that it could not have become empire wide without the brutal repressions, imperial decrees and the use of troops. But this is the way it happened.

While many point to the Crusades, the Inquisitions and the violent Protestant theocracies as terrible chapters in Christian History, there is a period that is generally ignored but is much more insidious and revealing because it is how the Empire was Christianized. It sets the stage for all the rest of the torture, imprisonment, burnings, war and executions of the future that were in the name of Christianity.

I will describe the church-state alliances of the different Imperial Courts with the clergy. I will present the imperial decrees and letters that outlawed every competing religion and sought to completely wipe out religious diversity and intellectual pluralism. I will present the declarations and canons of the Church Councils that sought to wipe out every other religion. I will show how the emperors ratified and enforced these Councils' decisions with both law and imperial might. Working hand in hand, the church and the state made it nearly impossible for the people to practice any religion but the one the "loathesome alliance" (Jefferson's phrase) had decided was for all.

The message beginning with this period and running a course for fifteen centuries was, like that of both fascism and Stalinism, "comply or else". Without this period's alliance of the clergy with the imperial court, this world might have had a chance for a bright age, not a dark, impoverished, and ignorant one that claimed several tens of millions of lives due to religious differences alone. The Heliocentric solar system and the Atomist ideas of the classical philosophers and naturalists might not have disappeared for a long night. When the Fourth century Christian historian Eusebius declared a militant Christian monarchy was far superior to the anarchy of democracy, he was dead wrong. For fifteen centuries. But that is what we got.

The founders of the United States chose classical architecture to represent the new world because it represents democratic ideals, learning, and a pluralist society which all have roots in classical antiquity. For centuries, Christian fanatics roamed the cities and countryside seeking to destroy these same architectural forms and what they represented. The founders of the United States gave us a New Rome and a New Athens. A matured Roman Senate and a grown up Athenian Democracy, infused and energized by the freedoms of intellectual, artistic, cultural and religious pursuits. A new order for the ages.

The second purpose of this section is to give us all more reasons why we should keep church and state as far apart as possible. That alliance has never amounted to much other than tyranny and repression; violence and injustice; ignorance and a war on knowledge and intellectual inquiry. It has always fostered extremism, lacked a sense of justice, degraded the equality of the citizens and outlawed the freedoms of conscience.

I have also incorporated the Church Creeds and Imperial Decrees of this section with the article on the Constitution and the Commandments into another article. Spanning from Emperor Constantine to the 1961 USSC ruling on Maryland's religious test in its Constitutrion, it is titled A History of Religious Tests. I present examples from this section here, Protestant 'Confessions', Parliamentary ratifications, Diets [German assemblies], decrees of monarchs, coronation oaths, and the colonial charters and state constitutions of the USA. These essays overlap in material so that different angles are presented with which to support the central message of this website: To foster keeping Church and State separated but promise all peaceful people the full liberties of conscience in their daily lives. Whether you be doubter, naturalist, pagan or theist, the government should have no role in religion except to protect all citizen's rights of conscience. Secularism is the foundation of the liberties of conscience; a religion-neutral government that protects these rights for all while taking no side in the debates places every citizen's rights on equal footing. Given human nature and the nature of "revelatory religions' that dictate individual conformity and social uniformity, it is the only rational and intelligent way to approach these matters.