The Christmas of 2024 came at an interesting juncture in history. America, arguably Christians’ strongest country in the world, is on the verge of either going the Christianity route or falling into the pitfalls of a Marxist hellhole. It all now depends on what social policies President-elect Donald Trump—a proud Christian—is going to adopt, the granules of which are stored in the hyped Project 2025 documents.
His other possible actions could be merging many small territories and making a Greater America. The strategy can easily be construed as part of spreading Christianity—a long-standing strategy of the religion.
Meanwhile, in the Arab World, another expansion for Greater Israel—a country where Jews will be in charge—is up and running. If things do not take a drastic turn, Israel will soon rule over a vast territory of Syria and spread Judaism.
While the expansion plans are not surprising, both these developments taking place at the same time and with the help of each other’s financial and military prowess present an inherent contradiction for anyone aware of the way in which both religions have interacted with each other in the past.
Incidentally, Jesus Christ, whose birthday is celebrated on 25 December, is believed to be the first common link between the two.
Historical accounts say that when Christ was born, Jews and Romans were fighting to establish the dominance of their respective Gods. He was born into a traditional Jewish family but grew out of its ways very early in his life. Though Jesus considered Rabbis as able administrators, he found their explanation of the world and metaphysics inefficient to deal with the vagaries of life.
He found his own explanations and preached them to the masses. Initially, authorities—neither Roman nor Jewish—did not give much attention to it, since many followers were not on his list. But his small group of followers did have a peculiar quality of extreme loyalty, which later helped the cause and increased headaches for both Romans and Jews.
Ultimately, Jesus was crucified, after which the stories of resurrection and various miracles also gained virality. Jesus was now being called the ultimate Messiah, which Jewish literature defined as some sort of reincarnation of God.
It took more than 375 years and the destruction of many Jewish institutions, including the Second Temple, to establish Christianity as the second religion by Theodosius. Before him, Constantine had legalised Christianity in 313 AD. With time, Romans assimilated Christianity into their cultural fold, so much so that their day of honouring the cult of Sol Invictus was appropriated as Christmas.
Since it emerged from a small, unknown tradition in the Roman Empire, Christian institutions and their leaders always remained in fear of succumbing to their old roots. The counter to this possibility was a counteroffensive drive to expand the religion to as many places as they could.
The conversion—by peaceful means or by violence—became inherent to Christianity’s existence—something which is still going on in the world beyond Arabian deserts and other territories of the Roman Empire.
Almost by design, it is Jews who suffered the initial wrath of it. In the report titled Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries, Gerard S. Sloyan writes that from an early age, Christian chroniclers started to define Jews as Christ killers.
Tertullian and Origen were two early writers who gave air to this idea. It later set the stage for Christians to see the persecution of Jews as a form of divine punishment for crucifying Jesus.
John of Antioch, also known as Chrysostom, and Bishop Augustine are some of the famous religious figures who fuelled the fire against Jews. As soon as Christians felt secure in their command over political authority, they fuelled expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres.
Even during their Holy Crusades against Muslims, many Jewish establishments were subjected to pillage and slaughter. The Rhineland Massacre, committed by French and German Crusaders in 1096 AD, is one of the infamous mass murders of Jews. This is considered one of the first in a sequence of antisemitic attacks, which ultimately culminated in Hitler killing millions of Jews.
Also Read: What made Christianity what it is today – Chapter 3: The first crusade
Bizarrely, the Rhineland Massacre came at the back of the Catholic Church making policies to protect Jews living with Christians. The narrative of Jews being responsible for the crucifixion and the crusaders’ lack of money en route refuelled the fire.
The Crusades against Muslims, which witnessed Jews’ massacre as a by-product, is another dark chapter in Christianity’s history. However, they can’t be fully blamed for it since both communities had been at each other’s throats for centuries and still are. Muslims took control of Jerusalem in the seventh century, which by and large remained under their control for more than 450 years until Christians decided to launch the Crusades.
Though killing the enemy is justified under conventional war rules, Christian warriors are said to have gone against anyone who was even remotely disassociated from Christianity. These included Muslims, atheists, or anyone else following a separate Godly figure.
After the Crusades declined in priority for Christians, the Inquisition became the next big tool for enforcing religion. It was designed to judicially target anyone who expressed disagreement with Christianity’s teachings. Among the lakhs of trials and punishments, Galileo is considered the most prominent figure to have suffered this tragedy.
Simultaneously, scuffles between Protestants and Catholics also became a recurring theme of Christianity during the first half of the 17th century, which saw the Thirty Years’ War between 1618 and 1648.
Christianity’s history with treating women and non-white sections of humanity is another bone of contention which its rivals rake from time to time. Slavery, witch hunts, restrictions on women’s education, domestication of women, and opposition to women’s suffrage, among others, are some of the basic problems followers of the Christian religion practised and promoted.
In the modern world, Christian countries are more known for forced conversion, colonialism, looting, and persecution of indigenous communities in places like New Zealand, the United States of America, Australia, Africa, and many places in Europe as well.
If historians want to chronicle, one can easily find at least a thousand instances where people were mercilessly persecuted, skins were peeled off, killed and hanged for others to watch, confined to places and mercilessly shot at (Jallianwala Bagh), stripped of any human dignity, left to die in extreme poverty, made to work in plague and famine, among others.
The modern-day West is standing on trillions of dollars of wealth looted from these colonies. Back home, these colonies are learning to stand on their feet and revive their culture, but they have to struggle in the new world order where the distaste for the relationship between Church and state is still shaping public discussions and forums.
The counterargument to it is that colonialism was part of statecraft but not a religious expansion. It could be true if Christians were even less than 0.01 percent in Asia and Africa. Deciding election results at places which Western powers left decades ago does not make any historical sense whatsoever.
As we go into 2025, the average Western youth is not in synchronisation with Christianity, which is why the Church is putting more emphasis on spreading it to erstwhile colonies like India’s Punjab through soft coercion tactics.
Many theologians believe that Jesus Christ was the only genuine saint whom Christianity produced. This could be true, but it is also true that the legacy of any great man hangs on the shoulders of those who claim to follow him – ways in which they conduct themselves.
Barring a few blips in the last two thousand years, it has been an utter disappointment on this front. The onus is on Trump now.