When did organized religion begin? In the Old
Testament religion was embedded in ethnic and tribal culture. Each culture had
their god or gods and believed that their gods were involved in their wars of
conquest. The one God asserted in the Old Testament was associated with the
Hebrew people from which Judaism, Christianity and Islam later emerged. It was
God’s intention that His people be a missionary people and bring the nations to
know Him, but they largely failed at this mission. In this context God came in
the incarnation of Jesus Christ, to create a new era of faith.
The new Jesus movement opened religion to all
tribes, cultures and ethnic groups. The Christian faith took the concrete form
of the household-based symposia or assemblies—private associations—that were
well known throughout the Roman Empire but may have originated in Greek society
where democracy was also invented. Then when the Emperor Constantine made
Christianity the official religion of the Empire, it adopted the forms of government
with bishops presiding over metropolitan areas parallel to the many princes and
city-states. The oldest branches of Christianity still preserve organizational
forms from the medieval period of European history. The Protestant
denominations have been largely shaped after the corporations that came about
with later free market economics and republican forms of government.
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