Jesus and Christianity are not necessarily the same thing.  Christianity is a religion or social order certainly built originally on the ministry of Jesus, but which developed in theological and social complexity over the centuries, split into a number of bitterly contending social-political groups over that same complexity, and today lives on in various social or religious forms.

Jesus was not opposed to religion.  He was just very disappointed in how his Jewish community had missed the point of God’s ancient covenant with Abraham − to live in full faith in God as director of our lives ... that is, to live God’s Way rather than man’s Way.

In his ministry to bring the world to live by God’s Way, Jesus himself set up no particular social or religious order − no priests in robes, no chanting at altars, no bowing to the East or West.

He did however cultivate a group of followers ... in the expectation that these followers would then spread the knowledge of God’s Way (summed up as the Law of Love) to the larger world.

Most strangely, this Way defied all reason or “common sense” but which worked most miraculously ... if people would simply, but most faithfully, let God’s Spirit lead them in taking on life’s various challenges.  This was not religion.  This was simply a higher Way of going at life.

It was in fact this failure of Jesus to conform to the religious (and social-political) standards of the day that so infuriated the Jewish priestly order, that they finally had Jesus put to death for such a crime.

And most ironically, in doing so, they inadvertently performed the one religious ritual able to do the work of all their other religious works ... and far more than that.   Through that divine sacrifice, not at an altar but on a horrible Roman cross, God washed away all human sin ... so that we humans (then and now) would be freed to look to a God-led future rather than a shameful past of human failure!

Now that was the power of God in action ... not the rational formalization of human power through religious performance.   This was the Way of Christ.

Certainly, the early followers of the Way met together, shared meals and prayed together ... though this was hardly a religious ceremony.  It was simply a communal life lived according to the Way of Christ.

But they also had to do all of this in secret because their Way was hated deeply by both Jewish and Roman authorities.  But for three centuries their communities survived and grew in number despite the persecution.

It was not until Rome itself under the Emperor Constantine in the early 300s AD ended the persecution of the Way of Christ ... and at that point – Roman style − made it the religious underpinning of the Rome Empire, complete with social laws, social authority, and rather precise religious practices.

Soon it became the only religion allowed to be practiced in Rome, other religions such as the popular worship of Earth Mother and the pagan deities suppressed harshly.  Instead, Rome redirected those same instincts to the worship of Mary and the older saints, ones supposedly offering the same spiritual giftings as had the pagan deities (romantic love, protection in travel, the blessing of homelife, etc.)

But it then took over a thousand years for ordinary Christians, finally able to read the now-widely-published Bible, to discover how far such Romanized Christianity had wandered from its origins ... and then try to bring things back to those simple but powerful 1^st century origins.  This did not sit well with the Christian religious authorities of the day and horrible religious wars soon resulted ... ones ultimately deciding English Puritans to come to America to set up their own rather simple Christian communities, to live in as much conformity as possible to the standards of the 1^st century community or church.

So here we are today ... still struggling to stay on the Way of Christ ... at a time that it has lost much of the centrality it once enjoyed in the birth and development of America.

Religion is seemingly not widely hungered for today.   But underneath it all, the Way itself will always have its strong appeal ... if people can just get beyond Christianity’s religious nature.  And we are seeing some of this registering among the younger Gen-Z generation.  Is another Great Awakening about to break forth ... and bring America back to its simple but powerful dedication to Jesus Christ and his Way?  Let’s pray that this is indeed the case!

Miles Hodges is a writer, historian and political analyst who explores the question of why societies behave as they do ... especially in this matter of their rise and fall.