I love reading, this fun, and often enlightening giving you new things to think about. This little piece I read and tracked down though I had to retype the forward is entitled Blood on the Ground, Chruchs All Around from "The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read" and is for educational purpose of your enlightenment.

 

It's 1992. Rioters are taking control of the steets of Los Angeles. The street gangs are the Blues and the Reds, known as Crips and Bloods. The gangs unie their efforts to defy the armed forces of Police Chief Daryl Gates.

 

And where is Chief Gates? He is sipping cocktails at a fund-raising party while Los Angeles Begins to burn.

 

Now let us suppose, with about 50 dead in Los Angeles, that a national political leader feels called upon to comment. Hear Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States, adressing the commonwealth Club, San Fransisco, May 19 1992:

 

"So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values..."

 

A journalist has a similar urge. William A Rusher says in his comments on the Los Angeles riots in Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 5 1992:

 

Simply pu, the esucular humanists have been gnawing away at the foundations of Western Civilization... and have finally succeeded in producing, especially in our inner cities, an almost totally amoral kind of human being...

 

Well, now! What if secular humanism were swept away and Christianity put in charge? What would happen? What would be different? History can tell us. That is what history is for. Let's go back to the year 532 C.E. (Common Era)

Twelve Thousand Bodies

They lie scattered across the benches. Sprawled on the stone floors of the stadium. The sun beats down on the silence. The bodies have not yet rotted much. But the rats have already discovered the carnage.

Close to the exits, panic stricken thousands had clawed at one another. They were trying to escape the advancing soldiers of the Imperial Guard. Few succeeded. Many people were crushed, their bodies mangled underfoot. The hum and buzz of flies was the only sound now over this spectacle of death.

From all around, the air is suddenly alive with the joyous sound of bells. Hundreds of bells, from hundreds of churches. No sound of any call to Allah or indication of any other religion besides Christianity. This is CHRISTIAN CITY. In the broad boulevards and narrow allies around the hippodrome, thousands and thousands of corpses lie on the paving stones. They lie where they fell. They had fallen, screaming in terror, pursued by the Guards.

Who were these dead? They were the youth of Christian City. They had formed rival gangs. The Blues and the Greens. The two gangs had united to riot together in their contempt for the emperor. The Emperor Justinian was overcome with fear. Get ready to flee, said the emperor.

But Justinian was saved! His wife, the Empress Theodora, was stronger than he. She gave courage to the emperor and his followers. They decided to stay and fight. This was the woman who had been on the stage, no princess, but merely a showgirl. The people of Constaninople called her "whore".

The emperor's swordsmen were highly trained. They were proud professionals, carrying on the traditions of the Roman Empire. They were unflinchingly loyal to Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora. They killed rioters without mercy. The Guards did not take prisoners. They pursued the youth of Christian City and killed them. In five days of disorder, thirty thousand died. Their corpses tell us of life in Christian City, called Constantinople.

This was Christianity's showplace. Separation of Church and State? Not here. This was Christianity's chance. A chance to show what Christianity can do when it achieves power over civil life. How did Christian City get started?

A Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, claimed he had seen a cross in the sky. He went on to win in battle. For his own political ends, Constantinople blessed Christianity. Henceforth, he said, Christianity would be an appropriate religion for the Empire. Christianity gained momentum which, to our day, has never lost.

Emperor Constantine became a master planner of the Christian faith. Even in our time you find him honored in sects of the Episcopal tradition. The Nicene Creed is recited: it was compiled in Constantine's reign The mystical doctrine of the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 3 gods in one--is a product of the Ecumenical Council convened by Constantine. And he gave us Constantinople. From the beginning, it was Christian City. The showplace of the Faith. Church and State not separated but united. Christianity was triumphant.

Constantinople was far more Christian than Rome. Rome was just a Christian excrescence layered upon the foundations of hundreds of years of paganism. No--Constantinople was utterly Christian, in conception as well as design. It smothered the remains of smaller towns which had preceded it--such as Byzantium. And who remembers the Greek settlement of Thrace? The great new metropolis of Constantinople had conquered its forebears. Constantinople was the jewel in the crown of our Lord Jesus Christ. Constantinople was Christianity in full flower. It deserves the title; Christian City.

See the Hippodrome now. Only a few Guards remain. The flies are buzzing more loudly now, clouds of them hovering every mound of corpses. Let us stroll the streets of Christian City. Hear the mourners wailing in just about every house. See those people! Some weep, mourning their dead. Searchers pick their way among the dead, seeking their kin. The pavements are still wet with blood.

But--wait! Lift up your eyes to the horizon. See the churches! Oh, just look at that marvelous church! What a masterpiece! The whole world will wonder. The Emperor Justinian, he who presided over the massacre of thirty thousand in five days of urban disorders, will be remembered in 1992 as the builder of Hagia Sophia. Still standing, after 1400 years? Yes. For Justinian built it to last. He succeeded. And visitors from all over the world come to see it.

The glories of Constantinople's architecture are stunning. Historians will write appreciatively of the "Byzantine" style. It has the flavor of the East, in the service of Christian faith. The result is dazzling. Decorated with marvelous mosaics, each church models the cosmos with its portrayals of celestial beings.

Just look at Christian City's mighty walls! There are two walls, one inside the other. and atop the walls are ninety six towers! How can an enemy take such a city? In Rome--the barbarians will rule. But Constantinople? Never! So they thought. For Constantinople shows the world what a society is like when Christianity governs every aspect of its operation. A thoroughly Christianized civilization! A Christian Reconstructionist dream.

The thirty thousand corpses are beginning to stink.

Did It Work?

Let it be clear to us all! The worst, the bloodiest urban riots of all times took place in the most Christian of cities, Constantinople in the year 532 CE.

Meanwhile, where were the humanists? Not much in evidence, unfortunately. The Dark ages were upon Europe.

But across the sea in Athens, we can suppose there were still a few philosophers, clad in white walking quietly amid the trees. If their pavements were slippery, it is because of fruit from the olive branches, not blood from tormented bodies, shed by Christian swords.

Today's freethinkers can look with sorrow on the spectacle of death which occurred when Christianity took charge of civil life. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to say to the Christians: "Thank you but NO to your vision of a Christian society." It had its chance. Did Christian City work? Thirty thousand deaths say "No."