The Pokey Finger of God

It seems inappropriate for me to blog my armchair ideas about homeless people, because I don’t know anything about homeless people. I’ve always lived and worked in enclosed structures with utilities, and I rarely consider abandoning it all to sleep under a bridge. It’s not a particular area of study or volunteerism for me, so [...]

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This whole Constantine series has been riddled with errors, and the more I re-read them, the more problems I find. In this first one, I totally trash the Roman Emperors portion of the quiz.
1. Big C was the last Tetrarch of the Roman Empire
In a sense, he was never really an official Tetrarch, having usurped [...]

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Probably the most difficult aspect of studying the origins of Christianity is that there is so much history to plow through. If you pick just one place, you can spend lifetimes exploring the peoples and families that had just been there over the centuries.
We know something about the peoples who lived in Mesopotamia in the [...]

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Fourth Century Christianity
The History Department of Wisconsin Lutheran College under the direction of Dr. Glen L. Thompson, presents a number of hard-to-find texts, insightful charts, and much relevant documentation regarding the first century of Roman Christianity.
Awesome stuff.

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Like most great conquerors of history, Flavius Valerius Constantinus was also a bastard and a usurper. Beginning with his father, the neo-Flavians had a knack for the early, embarrassing sexual entanglements. Constantine’s dad dropped his mother, Helena, like a rock when an opportunity arose to marry into an Imperial family — some question whether the [...]

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I’ve studied Christian history for years now, and the emperor Constantine has occasionally graced my mental stage as I try to imagine how the Christianity that I know today developed from the pastiche of pagan practice common in the ancient world. Recently, Constantine himself has taken center stage as I have taken special pains to [...]

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I suppose it was inevitable that I would find some connection between my favorite research topics, but I just realized how Diocletian’s Great Persecution of Christians and Nixon’s War on Drugs were very similar actions on the part of both heads of state.
Both occur during a time of difficult military engagements in which an Agent [...]

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