S1 E37 Shit2TalkAbout Cult of Christianity with John Verner
Transcript was AI generated, if there are mistakes, please let me know! Thank you in advance! Hello, beautiful human. Thank you for joining. Shit. You don't want to talk about. We're stoked to have you be a part of the conversation changing shit. You don't want to talk about into shit to talk about. This show was created to have us open our minds and learn about new perspectives. Even when we don't agree with them, please be advised episodes can discuss content that is not suitable for all listeners and it can be triggering opinions of our guests expressed on the show are
their own. They do not necessarily represent the views of myself or the show. There are a few ways we could really use your support. Please share your favorite episode especially send them to someone that could really use the content we talked about, donate on paypal and Patreon, subscribe and rate the show
itunes and Spotify and follow on social media and join the conversation. It's shit to talk about. That's shit. The number two talk about links are in the episode description.
Jenn Junod
Hey Don. Thank you for joining shit. You don't want to talk about. Please introduce yourself and what shit you want to talk about today.
John Verner
Well, first off Thanks Jen for having me.
John Verner, Jenn Junod
I want to talk about the cult of Christianity, which is a phrase that applies to both a podcast I have and a book I have and so much history.
Jenn Junod
So can you like define the cult of Christianity or like how you got to this point?
John Verner
Yeah, sure. So there's two big hot button words in there, right? Cult and Christianity. So the simple definition of Christianity would be, you know, Christianity is the religion that claims to follow the teachings of Jesus. a dictionary definition of a cult. It actually isn't very helpful because dictionaries define cult as just a bunch of people agreeing on something which I don't think is quite what we mean.
Usually, when we're saying the word cult, I think we usually mean something more sinister is going on. So usually I say a cult is something that controls contains and seeks to convert. That's usually how I define a cult. And it's weird how I got here. I wouldn't have thought I would get here even six years ago. definitely wouldn't have thought I'd be here.
I grew up Christian, very, very Christian and so much so that at 17 years old, I thought God was calling me to be a pastor. And so I looked around for different ways I could become a pastor and most of the ways I found it seemed like it would take a really long time and I'm a pretty impatient person sometimes. So I decided to look harder and I found one college that had kind of an undergraduate degree that you could use to become a pastor.
And that was very exciting. So I went and got it. I have my bachelor of arts and biblical exposition with an interdisciplinary and ancient literature. And it was great. I learned a lot and at the time was thrilled, you know, got different pastoral intern gigs was a youth pastor briefly and was you know, looking into seminary to go further and become a pastor.
But the quick version of how things unfolded goes, something like I went through a pretty messy divorce. I had already been burned by the church a few too many times and then I got burned just one more time and it was the last time I couldn't take it anymore. I lost pretty much everything. I was homeless for a bit. I w had developed kind of an alcohol issue.
And thankfully I had a dad who looked out for me who found a old van on sale. And so he bought me a van and that started me on a journey of van life where I traveled the country and had some solo time. It was not the glamorous Instagram version. It was a little different than that. But it was still still really healing for me. And on that journey is when I started to write my book, The Cult of Christianity, how churches control contain and convert. And I wrote that book and published it and it
did. OK. And I was like, how could I promote this book? And so I started a podcast under the same title. But what I found was when I started the podcast, it actually became something a little bit bigger than the book and I was enjoying it even more. And so this is kind of become a little bit of my life's work explaining exactly how Christian churches, specifically evangelicalism is functions at least as a cult.
Jenn Junod
And there is so much to impact there as a quick word to the audience. Religion is not everybody's cup of tea and there are so many different religions out there that shit you don't want to talk about. I feel like religion in general is definitely something no one wants to talk about and is very, a lot of times you grow up in a religion and many people don't stray from it.
So I do wanna mention to our listeners, hey, like as a podcast, we're not signing with anybody, at least for a shit you don't want to talk about. One thing that I really appreciate about the Cult of Christianity. The podcast is John has a lot of Christian guests on his podcast and he's very open to talking about it and is open to having that, you know, discussions of and that really helps us understand in different parts and aspects of what we truly believe. So that just gotta get that
out there for the audience. So, you know, we're, we're not going downhill in one way or another. And I'm taking my personal beliefs out of this because, well, I don't know, they always change, who knows what I'm like interested in. Other than the four main things is men's mental health, LGBT Q plus community disabilities and marginalized communities. That's what I stand for. Religion can go into that but doesn't really in my life at least.
John Verner
Well, that's good. And I think that's really healthy and I just actually wanna applaud you because I think faith should be personal. I, I think it really should be up to each individual to decide for themselves and no one should be forcing anyone to believe anything.
Jenn Junod
And I appreciate that. And today's discussion is to let individuals really just think about, you know, different avenues, different aspects. And we are gonna have different guests in the future of, you know, Christians of Muslims, like we have future guests coming on.
So if you're curious about another one, these are also individuals point of views. And one thing that I'm very excited for John to be on here for is he's actually studied the History of Christianity. So where did Christianity start.
John Verner
That is the question, isn't it? if you were to ask a Christian, they would probably tell you Jesus. but if you were to ask maybe a more academic Christian, they might say before Jesus or if you were to ask someone who's not a Christian, they might say way after Jesus. So there's a little bit of some disagreements here. so I think the best way to kind of do this or answer this question, at least is to think about what was the context in which Jesus was born.
So because he, he was born, I mean, most scholars do agree that there was a Jesus that he was alive and that he walked the earth and that he was crucified. Most of that's pretty verifiable. But way before that, if you, if you have a Bible near you, you'll notice there's something called an Old Testament and a New Testament. So the Old Testament is full of ancient Judaism and Judaism began as one of the earliest religions at all.
Hinduism probably preceded it and some others, but ancient Judaism is one of the original religions. And it's certainly one of the first ones that was believed in one ultimate God. And they believe that, that God revealed himself to Abraham Moses and the Hebrew prophets. And they believe that God's will was revealed through cultural tradition, through Holy Sc scripts.
They didn't have obviously the whole Old Testament, but they had different holy writings. And they had oral traditions. So stories that were passed down. And the key idea to remember is that Judaism had a prophecy or a prediction that a Messiah would come that would save Jewish people from oppression. And it's important to note that Messiah is a Hebrew word.
Messiah is the literal Hebrew word and its ancient meaning was anointed, which was a anointing a king's head with oil was a ritual that Jews would perform. So Jews wore and some still are waiting for a king to restore Israel to its former glory. And they're assuming that that king, at least in the Old Testament assumed that that king would come through King David's lineage.
King David being the character in scripture. So that's Judaism before we even get to Jesus. And then right before we get to Jesus, we have pre socratic philosophy. If you've taken an intro to philosophy, course, you might have heard of some of this. But about 400 years before Jesus was born, there was a group of early Greek philosophers and teachers who argued and questioned about the origin and nature of the physical world.
Some have called them cosmologists or naturalists. They were wondering what is this? How did this get here? And there in this time period, there were a lot of mathematical formulas that were discovered. Pythagorean theorem, lots of math that we still use to this day. And it's funny that we call it the Pres Socratic time because obviously they didn't know they were in Pre Socratic time because what it means is before. Yes.
Jenn Junod
OK, good. You are explaining that I was like, wait, what is presto, pre wedding time?
John Verner
Yeah. So, so Socratic, all it means is Socrates, who's this character and Socrates was preso were just the people who were discussing these things before Socrates. And in the era that Socrates was born, he's actually credited as the father of Western philosophy or some call him like the first moral philosopher. So these guys were all wondering, how did this get here?
What is this stuff? And Socrates was like, well, what is good and what is bad? And while he's wondering, but the problem about Socrates is we, he didn't actually write anything, all of that we know about Socrates comes from his number one student who a lot of us have heard of Plato. And so Plato writes a lot about Socrates and Socrates was a super polarizing figure in Athens, Greece.
So again, approximately 400 years before Jesus was born, he was accused of corrupting the youth and he failed to acknowledge the city's official gods. And so he went to trial and was sentenced to death and killed and it's pretty dramatic, right? And the Socratic method though that according to Plato, we still use it in Western philosophy and we actually, you and I use this in podcasts without even knowing it because the Socratic Method is where you just keep asking clarifying
questions and challenging an idea until you find that idea to be either consistent or inconsistent. And so where he lived, like Socrates lived there, organized religion was fragmented. There were festivals for different gods and private rituals in homes, but there wasn't like a unified or state religion in ancient Greece. And there were no sacred texts in Greece culture. So, basically, short story is according to those who wrote about Socrates, his thoughts on religion
were all contained with his view of rationalism, meaning that Socrates argued that if there were gods, they must be wise and they must be just, and that was very different than how people viewed gods at the time because as many people know Greek mythology, Greek gods were very violent and very selfish and
competitive. So while Socrates believed if there was a God and it was a true God that, that God must be fair and good. And you're going wait, didn't I ask you when Christianity started?
Jenn Junod
Yeah, but I'm, I'm, I'm staying there because I'm, I'm also thinking because Zeus did like made Hercules who was half human, but he didn't stay with his mom. And I'm like, that's a very fair and just and good. So that's where my mind was wandering off too, but please continue.
John Verner
Yeah. So that's, that's right. That's, you're exactly right. So, all mythologies about God aren't necessarily saying he's this absolute good true thing necessarily. maybe some sects of Judaism, but in general, definitely in Greece, that's not the perception of what gods are. So now we gotta fast forward 400 years to when Jesus is actually born.
And you're like, why did you mention all of that? I promise it'll make sense eventually. So Jesus was Jewish. Ok. That's the first thing we just have to, to get out of the way. Both his parents were Jews. He was likely born in Bethlehem, which is about six miles south of where Jerusalem was at that time. And then he moved to Nazareth with, with his parents, which was in Galilee.
So that's like 90 miles north of where he was born, which back in those days that's like a lot of distance. And there's some disagreements about exactly where those places were, but most scholars agree that all of those are facts religious and a religious. Both, most scholars agree with that. Most of what we do know about Jesus is found in the Bible, in the gospel, specifically Matthew, Mark Luke and John in the gospel, according to John Jesus is quoted as saying things like before
Abraham was I am and I am the father of one. And if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, but that's actually the only book of the Bible where Jesus is quoted as saying things like that, at least directly. And that's important to point out because the three other gospels in the Bible were written earlier and in including the writings of Paul, who I'll talk about more later, I'm sure.
But Paul's writings are actually before the book of John. The book of John is one of the last Bibles in the New Testament that was written about 60 years after Jesus died. So in none of them is Jesus necessarily saying he is God. But Jesus does say he's a messiah that we talked about earlier, right? In fact, the word Christ is the Greek word Creek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah.
So it's the same idea of the anointed one, meaning a king. So most Jews believed that the Messiah or the Christ would unite all the Kingdoms near Jerusalem and would establish Israel as like this glorious utopia where everything is good and amazing. But Jesus didn't seem very interested in being that kind of Messiah. Jesus presents himself almost like a radical apocalyptic type king who kind of rights all the wrongs of the poor, shakes everything up.
And he was more concerned about un unfairly treated Jewish folk at the time. So the outcast, even within the Jewish community, not just all Jews. And so when Jesus told his disciples that he himself was a Messiah. He seems to be more saying that in the future when God, who again, he's not necessarily saying he is establishes a kingdom once more, that Jesus would be the king of that kingdom.
And it's not that the Messiah was supposed to be God, but rather that the Messiah in Judaism seemed to be like an enlightened human being almost like a Hercules figure that you mentioned. but probably enlightened, you know, probably an enlightened human being. But the whole idea is kingship. So regardless of what anyone believes about Jesus, now, even if they disagree with me, it's just important to understand this fact that Jesus one did not create any rules, two did not
create any formal doctrine and three did not create anything that looks like what we perceive as Christianity today. The only religion that we know for a fact that Jesus practiced was Judaism. So I'll stop there to just say where Christianity started was actually after Jesus died. That was a long walk to get to that answer.
Jenn Junod
But at the moment, it's making me kind of like just random knowledge throughout the years because we all consume in different ways. You have movies, you have school, you have church, you have just like learning from people around you, like what we're doing today. And the biggest thing that I'm taking away from this right now is Hercules Jesus.
And Robin Hood are all very similar in helping those who are, the outcast and when needing help, that is to, to this point, at least in, in, what we're talking about that is I'm adding Robin Hood in there as well.
John Verner
It's actually a really common story arc, right? That, that's what we call it where, you know, the protagonist is a savior of some sort and Jesus is certainly the archetype of many different kinds of savior. But yeah, there were some beforehand and there continue to be some after. Absolutely.
Jenn Junod
Now you, you mentioned and this is something that I honestly with being brought up in Christianity, you should probably know about. how did we get these documents? The Old Testament, the New Testament. And why are there so many random versions?
John Verner
Hm. Wow. Yeah, this is like a huge question that I've taken literally entire classes on the shortest answer I can possibly give about this. Is there. So all scripture that you would find like in your Bible that's now in English. were at some point actual pieces of paper that were found in caves that were fragmented and assembled later as far as what we have now with the Old Testament, with the New Testament, writing had gotten a lot smoother and you know, I believe the printing press.
Oh man. Yeah, that's something I'd have to look up exactly when it was. But I believe it's pretty early that at least Chinese culture had it. but being able to write things became easier later on, but all of this stuff was not assembled till about 300 ad, maybe even a little earlier or later, depending on who you ask. But as far as assembling different things because there's different categories in the Bible, right?
There's narrative which are just like, well who wrote stories about things that happened. And then a lot of the New Testament, I, you know, you have the accounts in the gospels which are narrative, you know, telling the story of what Jesus did while he was here. But most of the New Testament is actually letters which are apostles. I'll define that word in a minute. But different apostles wrote letters to different churches and communities telling them what they were either a
doing wrong or b should do better, which we both kind of what you're doing wrong. But those are, those are those are what they were originally were letters to, I don't even like using the word churches, but letters to communities that were following Christ. So or following Jesus that believe Jesus was the Christ.
Jenn Junod
OK.
John Verner
So let me explain what an Apostle is really quick because that might be helpful. So, so the word apostle literally in Greek would mean something like someone who was sent. So, you know, a lot of people know the 12 disciples or students, you know, most accurately, the closest friends of Jesus. you know, they, after Jesus died they started being called the apostles, which meant they were sent by Jesus, you know, very, I could list them all, but I'll skip that.
There's a lot of them and they all have crazy backstories, but there's like sets of brothers, there's like three or four sets who are all brothers with each other. Very interesting to get into the lives of the apostles, but the entire crew has very interesting stories. But it's important to note that they all interacted with Jesus when he was alive.
But there's one apostle, one apostle who did not interact with Jesus when he was alive. And that is the apostle Paul. And according to what Luke, one of the other apostles writes in the book of Acts. Paul was a Pharisee, which that's the religious sect that hated Jesus. their Jewish sect that had over 682 commandments. And when Jesus came along and said, hey, all your commandments are ridiculous.
They wanted him killed. And so Paul participated early on in the persecution of early followers of Jesus, particularly hellenized Jews. That's a whole thing I won't get into. But according to Luke Paul was, this is, this is the story that Paul was traveling down the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to arrest Jews and bring them back to Jerusalem because Jews were starting to blend the old Jewish way of doing things with New Greek traditions and all sorts of other stuff.
So, according to Luke, resurrected from the dead Jesus just appeared to Paul as a bright light that blinded him. And after three days, his sight came back and he began to preach Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the messiah and that he was coming back. And the craziest thing to me is that Paul actually wrote half of the letters that we now call the New Testament.
So most of the New Testament was written by a guy who didn't actually interact with Jesus while he was alive. And that was, that's the responsibility. I put a lot of it on Paul in a big shift in the understanding of Jesus. So Jesus fulfilled his role as Jewish Messiah. That's something Jesus himself might have said. But because he supposedly resurrected from the dead, at three, you know, after three days, he resurrected and appeared to, you know, a select a group of people and then
shoot it up to the sky before all their eyes. That apparently made him become the son of God. This is a phrase you'll see all over the New Testament. And in Paul's view, the Paul, Paul was kind of the first one to say jesus' death was not like an unfortunate tragedy but was intentionally planned for humanity's benefit. So to Paul jesus' sacrifice was a substitute for the lives of others and it, and it freed them from their inability to be perfect.
So now if you believed in Jesus, you could now get his perfection. And so this is something you'll still hear in churches today. But Paul is kind of the first person we can see who starts talking like this. And before one more thing that's really important about Paul is just his relationship with Ancient Greece that I talked about earlier. So Paul is responsible you know, for giving what would later be called Christianity.
Its start in Greece. And to this day, most of the population of Greece is Christian which can be traced back all the way to Apostle Church, the Apostle Paul and the churches he started in Greece. And that's important to note because Paul's writing actually demonstrates a clear understanding of Greek philosophers and poets. And the question can kind of get chicken and egg here, right?
Like which came first because we're left to wonder whether Paul was influencing Greek thought or if Greek thought was influencing Paul. And this is a good question because for something to spread as quickly as it did and as solidly as it did, it seems almost impossible that Paul would deliver like a, a completely contrary message to what all you know, Greek thought was, but would likely have to you know, at least use Greek language to communicate
his Jesus story. And so that's just important to note for the, for what the New Testament is and kind of how Christianity is starting to form and mix with Greek philosophy.
Jenn Junod
OK. There are questions that I'm gonna work on. I'm gonna say them all right now. So hopefully I remember them all because first one that I, I wanna go back to you is the Old Testament and the New Testament and dig in a little deeper on the creation of them. And how the Bible. So just mentioning that the other question, it at least the, the way it's described, it almost sounds like, you know, Socrates being this like all knowing dude is like, yo, just have one God that's gonna be like,
they just need to be a good God and just, and you know, do, do good stuff and then 400 years down the line, you have enough people talking about that that does really start to change the psychology away from the unjust gods because of the stifle of Greek mythology. And then you have some dude just showing up going, yo, Jesus is cool.
He's this one dude that happens to fit into Socrates way of thinking. It almost like I see what you mean by the chicken and the egg. But it's almost like it could have been just like a, a perfect storm. It also could have been, go ahead.
John Verner
I think you're nailing it. I, I honestly, I think, I think this is a very kind of cultural storm that all kind of hit at once and then ended up, you know, the lightning struck, whatever it struck and boom, burst out this huge thing called Christianity.
Jenn Junod
I almost wonder. And I again, listeners, I'm not dismissing Christianity. I am just questioning the, you know what we're finding out. I have personal experience with this, with my, that's I do not call him my father anymore. There are plenty of specifically men, I, there are women as well, but specifically men throughout history that use religion, specifically Christianity as a way to power and destruct.
And I was wondering, yo, like if Paul knows everybody believes this, couldn't that be a really good way of, you know, getting control of a community and just like buying into their fear? OK. That aside because I feel like I could go down a rabbit hole and nobody is really interested in me questioning all that because I have so many questions. So you said the Old Testament was found in a cave? Yes.
John Verner
Most a lot of it. Yes.
John Verner, Jenn Junod
For several years later, the apostles or the dudes from the New Testament find it. And then they got it all started printing or so it's, it's definitely more complicated than that because it, it, it's what it is is around the time the apostles are there.
John Verner
Most scripture is still being handwrit, I believe. And most of what's communicated through Judaism is again, oral tradition. So it's not like everybody has these holy texts we're reading. In fact, that didn't happen until like 500 years ago, that it was common for everyone to have the Bible. It, you know, through most of church history, which at the beginning was Catholic history.
And, or Eastern Orthodox history, only those trained in to be, you know, priest or leaders in the church were literate and able to read anything. So no, that the cave thing happened much later. And then when you start getting into translations, I mean, we're talking pretty recent history compared to all of this. So that's step one II, I like what you were actually talking about when it comes to you know, churches and power because again, you don't, you can be a Christian or not and
still observe, you know, historical facts. And you know, between like 100 years after Jesus was born and 300 years after he was born 103 100 ad you know, Christianity looked weird and the answer is not simple, right? It's, it's not simple how it looked because the New Testament was assembled somewhere in that time frame. You know, probably soon after John was done writing the apostle John and, and many believe that, you know, it's, you've probably heard this, that a lot of that
early church suffered persecution and that, there were great martyrs murdered, you know, for, for preaching the gospel and the good news of Jesus. But that idea is actually not true. you know, at, at best it's, it's really misleading. It's definitely incomplete. There, there's, the problem is there's only a handful of credible accounts of what the early Christians were doing.
If they were doing anything, Right after the New Testament was assembled, The absence of records does kind of suggest that that Christians were expecting the apocalypse or the second coming in their lifetime. So this is one of the most interesting things about when Jesus was born. A lot of people thought he was coming back while they were still alive.
They, they weren't when the apostles were preaching to people, you know, they'll say things like no one knows the day he could come back at any moment, that kind of stuff. It's kind of interesting. I think they really thought he was coming back really quickly. And I think that's what made the message really exciting, you know, like what this guy died and went up in the sky and is coming back like that sounds really exciting, you know. But yeah, I don't think, I don't that, according
to what I've read, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of persecution that happened to Christians specifically, just a lot of persecution towards Jewish folk. And remember there were Jews who were believing that Jesus was a messiah. And there's also Greek people believing that Jesus is their God all happening at the same time. And that's all under the larger umbrella of Christianity.
Jenn Junod
OK? There are so many thoughts coming again like OK to, to make sure I I mentioned them all is first question, it is gonna be where? So Paul went to Greece and you know, started Christianity. Then what? So that, that's my first like question and then also just your mention of how the Bibles were not available until 500 years ago or so, like generally available. And then you think back to, you know, the dark ages and to, you know, middle evil times and across cultures, you see that
difference and in it and it's still even our in our society today where those in power can use whatever they want to influence those who are not as well educated and do not have the same resources. And I'm like just because you're talking about oh, like, you know, the poor could read. So basically they kind of had to be like, I'm just gonna believe whatever you tell me because I can't read it. So yeah, whatever you say is true.
John Verner
Cool. Yeah. And that doesn't make anyone stupid, right? Like what other option do they have? Because you're wondering, I mean, think about if the catalysts were wondering about where we came from, you know, you have kind of Greek philosophy that wants to observe things and question things and then you have Judaism that has more of oral tradition.
And now you kind of have this weird third thing that's combined both of these kind of questions or kind of ways of approaching the issue. Like people are wondering, yeah, where did we come from? And now a guy who's a trusted member of the community who, you know, is not afraid to say kind of wacky things and is usually, you know, pretty gifted or, you know, in, in oration. Yeah, of course, you're gonna gravitate towards that guy.
Why would he lie to you? And sometimes it was about power sometimes about, it was about money and sometimes it was just what people thought, you know, we thought the earth was flat for a really, really, really long time. And so, you know, it doesn't make someone stupid just because they believed what they were told because that was their best case scenario for that.
Jenn Junod
Agreed. Agreed. Now we got to the point and y'all, I have so many questions and like, I don't think an hour is gonna do it, but we're gonna see what curiosity questions you can answer in the meantime. So, well, they're chilling. Christianity is born and Christianity as the term, the name you know about Christ makes sense to me. Like, you know, like cool Christ Christianity basically the same name. Got it. Now did we get, because Catholicism was the first?
John Verner
Yeah, I'll let me speed up some of that because, yeah, that's the, yeah, that's, that's a good lead in. So before we get there, we probably need to talk about Constantine. I know. I'm just like mentioning all these people that you're like, isn't this supposed to be about Jesus? And my answer is, yeah, you would think. But no, it's not a lot more guys than Jesus.
So Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. officially, he became emperor in the year 306. And although he lived most of his life as a pagan, he began to favor Christianity sometime around 312. So about six years after he becomes emperor. and he played a very influential role in, in like legally declaring complete tolerance for Christianity.
because Romans did not like Christians it to for various reasons, you know, Nero didn't like anything that wasn't worshiping him. And so during the reign of Constantine, there were two authors like just writers who were charting the history of Christian suffering specifically and they were doing it in such a way that they were writing that Christians used to suffer.
But now we have a glorious utopian Christian empire that we wanna build. because these, we've been oppressed for different beliefs. And it's kind of like the first people who have the concept of religious freedom, which is interesting. So, in both of those authors works and they talked about, you know, the execution of Christians in the previous, you know, 300 years.
But the reality is that the punishment of Christians in the first three centuries was really over exaggerated in those documents and actually not directly related to official policy. A lot of it was like mob violence. And there's letters written between Roman officials specifically saying that Christians shouldn't be sought out and should only be punished.
If they're found to be guilty, it was almost like, don't ask, don't tell. So the Romans as, as they didn't like Christians weren't necessarily seeking them out, which is actually the literal translation of the word persecute means to pursue. that wasn't really happening as much. So it's true that Romans didn't like Christians, but they weren't necessarily pursuing them and torturing them.
you know, punishing Christians wasn't sanctioned by emperors at all. But it was more common for a common martyrdom story is about this guy named Polycarp. And that, that, that happened, he was burned alive. But that action was actually mob violence. It wasn't ordered by any emperor. And so I just have to emphasize that like, because a lot of Christians and a lot of Catholics are taught that in these first centuries, anyone who believed in Jesus was sought after was burned at the
stake. And it's this whole there's this great book by Can and Moss called The Myth of Early Church persecution. And it's, and it's written by a Catholic a believer who's a professor at Notre Dame. And she does a great job explaining why there's not as much evidence as Christians make it sound a great book. But Constantine this emperor, you know, had built this narrative now with these authors that Christians were persecuted and he kind of saw himself as someone who could right
those wrongs that he truly believed happened. And so in 321 he legislated that Sunday should be a day of rest for all citizens. And in, you know, a couple of years later, he issued a decree banning Christians from participating in state sacrifices. So Christians were now exempt from having to follow the cultural norms and could practice their own faith.
And then on, on like currency, he started replacing pagan gods with Christian symbols. So constant, he's trying to like be friendly with Christians. But before you know, it, all of a sudden Christianity had unequivocally become the official religion of the Roman Empire. And they said it wasn't, but all the evidence suggests that it kind of was and he wasn't just a kind and tolerant emperor, but he now called himself, a God appointed ruler.
And you know, most of the narratives about Constantine's conversion and his friendliness with Christianity come from one author who's named Eusebius. but he actually never met the emperor until like 325. So years after all of this is happening and he met him at the Council of Nice, which is an important council because and I promise this leads to Catholics, I promise it does.
But likely it had you know, sociopolitical biases in, in what Eusebius wrote about Constantine. And so what's historically certain about Constantine is that he had a huge influence on the Nicene creed. And that's the thing that was written at the Council of Nice, which was a statement that Christians could read publicly and establish what we now call orthodox Christianity from then on.
And churches still recite that creed to this day. I, I recited this creed growing up and it's essentially the beginning of Christianity as you know, it, it's fairly short. So I'll read it very quickly. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God born of the Father before all ages, God from God like yada yada.
That's not important born of the virgin Mary. And it became man for our sake. He was crucified yada yada yada. I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. So to answer your question, Catholicism means universality.
That means that a Christian in one part of the world and a Christian in another part of the world are both part of the same family. The that's the implication of Catholicism, but it didn't become an official type of religion until the East West schism, which is about 600 years of arguing and fighting between the Greek East and the Latin West, which is why, you know, a lot of Catholic churches still recite Latin in their services.
There was this giant global church split, split in a 1054 ad so about 700 years after Constantine because all of this time they're fighting about basically what the Nicene creed says and what it means. So both these people say the Nicene creed says all of these things, but they're arguing about what it means. And so eventually they just say it's too much and they split and that's when we got what we now call the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern orthodox church, the first two
churches. And prior to the split, the differences between Christian churches was still very vast, but it wasn't official. That was the first time they were officially saying you and I are different. Which is why if you ask Catholic or Orthodox leadership today, if you ask a priest or a parish or whatever, who the first church was, they'll both say we were. and they'll say the other person is the one who left.
And so that's gives them you know, and, and there was tension with Islam because this is about, you know, 300 years after Muhammad saying what he's saying, all that tension is the exact environment in which we then got the famous crusades, which we now you know, are pretty, pretty ashamed of. Even Christians are pretty ashamed of them.
Jenn Junod
I feel like that is a great pausing point because I have so many questions and you and I talked about this beforehand of like, how fast do we go or how slow or, and there's so much and I know that part of this is history is important in so many different ways of, you know, so we don't repeat the same mistakes, we learn from other individuals. We and the reason why, like when you and I started talking about this is we, I personally wanted to really eventually go into how Christianity
influenced colonialism and how that's something that's really not talked about and how it's impacted the world so much. And I, I wanna pause here just because I feel like this is a the, the really good place of where Co Catholicism started, but really quick, like, because I, I definitely do want to have you on again.
How would totally switching away, because it's the cult of Christianity is your podcast and everybody should go check it out. How would you describe in, if you had to say it really, really quickly? I know it's, it's a task. how Christianity influenced colonialism.
John Verner
Oh, yeah. To me, to be very honest, I don't think they're that different of things. I think they're almost the same thing. a great book to read on that a little more would be unsettling truths by Mark Charles. he's a native American who actually ran for president as an independent in 2020. and I had him on my podcast actually, and he's a great guy.
but the short of it is, there's this thing called The Doctrine of Discovery that goes back to those councils. I talked about, you know, Council of nice and several other councils where talked about written about were Catholic doctrines. That's the Doctrine of Discovery basically led, read that if you discovered something, kill all of its inhabitants and then you will have no competition for our beliefs.
And that is pretty much, verbatim what colonialism is, which is, you know, it, you can discover something that someone already lives on and, call it a discovery and commit atrocities that we would now call atrocities. But to them when you don't view people as, as human beings or you, you can, force them into your ways of thinking or you can kill them.
And that's a lot of what happened with colonialism. And I think Christianity aligned with it in both power, but also just habitually in how they think, or how they thought at the time, at least. And so that, that would be the shortest way I could answer. That is I, I really think they went hand in hand and there really wasn't one influencing the other.
Jenn Junod
I think it was a perfect marriage and that, and just as things that this podcast will talk about at some point is the injustices done to indigenous people here in the US of and Canada with the schools that were the reform schools that were created and that is just giant rabbit hole to go down. And also if you think about how the Spanish conquered so much of South America and took away Christianity, took away their religions and cultures and so much there, so much there.
So I appreciate you really gearing us up for a future conversations. Now, is there that you're like, hey, someone needs to know this that we did not go over that you wanted them to know about today.
John Verner
Yeah, I mean, again, when you talk about Christian history, what you're really talking about is world history. When you talk about any subject, it's not silos. Like I think the, the only thing I'll mention just as a kind of explanation of like, wait, what did, what did he even talk about today? I wanna, I wanna say that context is huge because the temptation as a human is to process information as quickly as possible and to make complicated things simple.
But that's actually a lot of what my problems with Christianity are is making complicated things simple. And so, that's all I wanted to say is just, there's, there's a lot more to say about Christianity how it looks. Now. A lot of my podcast actually doesn't get into too much of this history.
A lot of it is actually talking about how it works now and then using history to kind of bolster it. So there's a lot to it. So the only thing I would say is just, don't think of it as a simple thing. It's a very, very, very complicated issue, agreed.
Jenn Junod
And, and again, like we talked about at the beginning, it's, it's all knowledge to help others understand whether or not they agree or disagree. It's to make people think and not everything is black and white. There may be individuals that are Christian that really disagree with colonialism that really believe in the religion. There may be people like there's so many different different variations. So I really appreciate you calling that out and context and yes, I know that
so many of us wanted to just make something simple. And, on another podcast we talked about that people just want to make it happy, whatever is happy, let's take away all the pain, whatever is happy. And so there, there's so much that we can go into and John now as, you know, we're heading towards the end. What is, but what are ways that people can reach out to you in a word of wisdom?
John Verner
Oh my. Ok. Well, I don't know if I have any words of wisdom, but I certainly know how people can reach out to me. If you wanna learn more about you know, Christianity read books. you know, there's a lot of books out there. But if you, if you're more interested in, in the tone of my voice, you can listen to the Cult of Christianity podcast. You can just go to the Cult of christianity.com and you'll find whatever you're looking for there if you want to buy my book, same thing Cult of
christianity.com. If you're big into Instagram, there's a cult of Christianity, Instagram. If you just want to see pictures of my cat, you can go to how it be Johnny V and follow that Instagram. That's mostly what that is. So yeah, words of wisdom. The only thing I ever tell. you know, I, I'm a football coach and I tell my kids this a lot. If you want to be an honest person, which I think we all want to be honest people.
be honest with yourself first. If you can't be honest with yourself first, you have no chance of being honest with other people. So that's, that's the only wisdom that's gotten me this far is to be honest with myself first so that I can be honest with other people.
Jenn Junod
I really dig that. That is, that's definitely a good one. And what is something that you're grateful for?
John Verner
Yeah, I struggle with this just total transparency. I, I live a lot of my life kind of ungrateful sometimes. You know, the, the one thing I'm grateful for is that I am I can change that I'm never stuck being the person I am. That's something that I think for a lot of my life, I didn't believe, I think I believed that who I was was just who I would always be.
And it's amazing how much change can happen in a short amount of time. It, it truly a lot of positive change can happen in such a small amount of time. So I'm very grateful that people, if they open their minds can be changed drastically and become better people. That's a really cool thing about humanity.
Jenn Junod
I love that. And something I'm grateful for is the opportunity to have conversations with points of view. And people that we may not agree with and being able to have a respectful and insightful conversation and also still have friends with different points of view or family with different points of view or relationships. They're you not as, I don't even know where this term came from.
or if it's just like a three year old thing, but not everyone has to be same, same, same, same, I don't know where that term came from, but same thing, you don't have to be same thing. You can be, you know, apples and oranges, whatever we want to be and we can learn from each other even if our views don't match.
John Verner
Absolutely.
Jenn Junod
And thank you John for coming on the podcast today. We really appreciate it.
John Verner
Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.
Hello again, beautiful human. What did you get out of today's episode? We'd love to hear what was most impactful to you. We all know someone that could have really used this episode so please send it their way. Remind them that they're not alone. Stay tuned for new episodes every Wednesday. Here's a few ways that we could really use your support to keep shit.
You don't wanna talk about going share an episode. Let's get the message out there, donate on paypal or Patreon, subscribe and rate the show on itunes or Spotify and follow us on social media, shit to talk about shit. The number two talk about. Bye.
