Milan Cathedral, Italy

SPLENDOUR IN WORSHIP. To the ancient simplicity there now succeeded a taste for religious pageantry, the natural associate of ease and opulence in a superstitious age. The notion began to prevail that in order to captivate the multitude, Christianity needed to be surrounded with pomp and presented under images of sense. The example of Constantine gave a powerful impulse to this movement. In his new capital on the Bosphorus, in Antioch, Jerusalem and other places, he erected churches which emulated in their magnificence the grandest of the heathen temples. . . Did it never occur to the good bishops of the age of Constantine that all this outward glory, however it might harmonise with the character and purpose of the Old Dispensation, is foreign, if not wholly repugnant, to the spirit of the New? So far from being able to serve God better in their glittering temples than did the early Christians in their simple unconsecrated buildings, the allurements of sense which they took so much pains to accumulate, were the very means to obstruct and render more difficult that worship in spirit and in truth which is alone acceptable unto Him. — Early Church History to the Death of Constantine, pgs 237-238.

Even today, magnificent churches span the globe. Unparalleled in opulence and splendor, these churches have become not just a testament to the immense wealth the church has amassed, but they have become normative for every religious sect. Many today still believe that they can worship God better in bigger buildings decorated in costly materials and crafted with the most intricate and ostentatious architecture. What they fail to realize is that church buildings have become the biggest idol in the hearts of religious leadership and their followers. Just as these elaborate buildings interfered with the purity of worship in Constantine’s day, so it is today. Churches have become places of religious showmanship, rooted in elaborate orations and music aimed at getting religion’s followers to let loose of their pocketbooks.

We must understand that church buildings have nothing to do with God. They are a mutation of paganism with early Christianity; an invention of Constantine’s own theological devices.  Early Christians had no designated “churches” of worship. Pagan temples were converted to “churches” in order to bring the masses together to congregate into one place so that they could be monitored and controlled by clergy. This is exactly what many churches of all denominations do today. They monitor and control those that enter through their doors and use the tactics I elaborate on in my book, Religion’s Cell, to bring about thought reform to the specific institution’s ideals and dogmas.

There is nothing wrong with meeting in a building in this day and age to worship. There is everything wrong with the way in which organized religion wield’s it’s power and control over people in order to control and manipulate them once they enter into the “church building.” Real Christianity is missing in many of today’s religions due to corruption. . . it has turned into a system of showmanship and of amassing wealth instead of a system of purity rooted in helping the poor, the fatherless and the widow in need.