The Early Christian Church

I. The early Christian Church began with its strong believe in pacifism.

A. Christianity can be studied back centuries to the start of it all around 100A.D.

B. Because the religion was new, the logistics of it all were all debatable except for one thing: pacifism.

C. Christian’s all agreed in absolute pacifism and rejected the military and violence all together.

1. This resulted in the mass persecution of Christians because of their defiance to the Roman Empire.

D. Many men are considered the Father of Christianity but two stood out among the rest.

1. Maximilian of Tebessa refused military service because of his faith and was beheaded for his beliefs.

2. Marcellus was a roman centurion and converted his faith to Christianity and refused to

Francis of Assisi started his own religious order under Christianity that followed in the life of Jesus more closely.

1. They committed themselves to celibacy, poverty and obedience to the Father.

2. These men, Franciscan Friars, practiced personal pacifism, as Jesus did.

D. Although Christians of the Middle Ages did not believe violence was inherently wrong, they still insisted that men who returned from war must make a religious retreat and repent for having kills other men.

III. The Reformation of Christianity created a divide in the religion, creating the Protestant religion.

A. Protestants came to the agreement that Jesus was a pacifist and in order to truly follow his teachings, they must be a pacifist as well and denounce any violence.

B. These people were given the name Anabaptists, people who were baptized in their adult life into a different faith from which they were originally in as infants.

C. Anabaptists were split in their opinions of pacifism.

1. Majority believed they must reject all violence and adopt the idea of absolute pacifism.

2. Some Anabaptists, on the other hand, took on the idea of principled pacifism, like the Modern Aged Christians, and beloved violence was allowed if it was in order to restore

Amish, Mennonite and Quakers are the most known Anabaptists in modern society that still fully denounce violence.

IV. Modern Day Christianity has been an influential part in altering the minds of people about important issues.

A. The Catholic Workers are a group of men and women, with no official connection to the Church, that focus on helping feed and clothe the poor, discuss and inform people on social injustices and shelter homeless and poor people.

1. These are active pacifists who deal with issues of injustice, poverty and violence through peaceful protests and civil disobedience that can even place them in jail.

2. The Catholic Workers became popular in the time of the Great Depression while advocating for employed workers.

3. They were scrutinized during WWII because of their protests against the war and their efforts to stop workers from funding the war.

B. Martin Luther King Jr. played a major role in social reformation of America.

1. He focused his time on the evils facing America and its citizens: racism, poverty and war.

2. MLK Jr. encouraged his followers to act against the laws put strictly on people of color, like Jim Crow Laws, to bring to light that they are doing nothing wrong, they are just a different skin