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I am interested in house churching and have read several reports online which indicate that Constantine, though he issued the edict of toleration forbidding persecution of Christianity, also ordered that Christians assemble in the basilicas which he financed from his own pocket.

I have found plenty of evidence that he in fact financed the building of basilicas and other religious facilities and interfered with the church in many other ways, but I have not been able to find documentation one way or the other about house churching vs. public worship.

Does anyone know of a credible resource, online or otherwise, which will help me resolve this? I simply want to know the truth, whatever that is.

Incidentally, this should be a scholarly, respected work, so though I expect the rantings of anti-religious types, I 'm not really after anything religious - this is a history question, so humor me please and don't subject me to a bunch of blithering.

2007-03-29 14:47:56 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities History

1 answers

And you don't want any blithering? I'll give the anti-blitherings a shot here, and let's see what happens.

There's a number of good books and authors who write about Constantine from a variety of perspectives. Meyendorff and Pelican are two names that come to mind from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. The first was a visiting prof at Dunbarton Oaks (Harvard's school of Byzantine studies) and the other taught at Yale. I guess those would be anti-blithering.

From non-religious sources I've used and read books by Shirly, Pohlsander and Kousoulas and found both of them to be helpful.

If I have a general suspicion that house churches no longer needed to exist once Christianity was recognized. The whole purpose for their existence during the persecution was to fill in the gap for the people to worship in, when they could not worship in public. Once they were allowed freedom then there was no long any need for them.

Some people might read into the existence of house churches as a statement of the way the early church was and wanted to be. Yes, it was that way, in places, but no one really wanted to feel the burden of persecution on them. House churches were just a stop-gap measure until Christianity was tolerated.

2007-03-29 15:56:58 · answer #1 · answered by John B 7 · 0 0

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