NON-VIOLENCE AND ALL THAT.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 144, 27 March 1942, Page 4

NON-VIOLENCE AND ALL THAT.

Sir--yYour correspondent "Remember Amritsar’s" citation of an early Christian policy of non-violence as a contributing cause to the conversions of their Roman conquerors is not in accordance with historical fact. Some of the oldest Christian documents, the letters of Clement and Ignatius, tell of schisms

and bitter strifes in the early churches, and as J.M. Robertson somewhat mildly puts it, "that is the constant note of Christian history from first to last." From the Peter versus Paul conflict, to. the bitter and fiery struggles from Gnosticism to Arianism, history tells not of non-violence, but of fierce passions and sanguinary strifes. When we consider that (according to Gibbon) Christians probably ‘formed no more than a twentieth part of the population of the Roman Empire even by the year 250 A.D., we may readily understand their submissiveness to the Roman conqueror. Their own safety and very existence demanded it. All this, however, had no bearing on the acceptance of Christianity as the established religion of the Roman Empire. In the year 324 A.D., mainly as a political expedient, as all available support was required for the coming war, official sanction enabling Christianity to enjoy equal privileges with pagan religions was given by Constantine. But the complete "conversion" of the Roman Empire was to take place at a later date in the year 379 A.D.-as a bargain and a bribe. Then the newly formed church adopted persecution methods and ruthlessly suppressed by banishment and even death all rival sects. So with complete power came complete intolerance, which, in the centuries to follow was to be the hall-mark of the successful religion. :

LIONEL

COONEY

(Auckland)