A brief history of Christianity

 

Jesus (who really did exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus) started preaching inclusivity, peace, love and understanding in Palestine, and picked up a few followers. His teachings upset the religious authorities because it undermined their power, so they conspired to have him killed.

About 50 years later Saul ("Paul") picked up the stories of Jesus and adapted it into a religion, largely by putting all the threats and punishments back in, borrowed from traditional Judaism.  He called it "Christianity".

Missionaries spread this "Christianity" thing far and wide, but each telling a slightly different, and in many cases contradictory version of the story, so in AD340 the Council of Nicea got together and “standardised” it, cutting out the bits they did not like.

The Council of Nicea produced a Bible, but they wrote it in Latin so that ordinary people could not read it, thus enshrining the power of the Church to “interpret” it.  

Seeking to strengthen its power base and finances the Church invented lots of new twiddles not mentioned in the Bible (but as only they could read it, it didn’t matter) – e.g. “Purgatory”, where you go after death until a relative still alive pays the church to release you, and “Papal indulgences”, where you pay in advance before committing a sin – which succeeded in making it one of the largest and richest non-governmental organisations the world has ever known.

Martin Luther came along and actually read The Bible, as created by the aforementioned Council of Nicea.  He realised that the Church was not sticking to it and proposed a new “back to the Bible” version of Christianity, Protestantism (because they were protesting against the Church).

In England, King Henry VIII had fallen out with the Pope, who wouldn’t allow him to divorce his older wife for the younger, sexier Anne Boelyn.  He sided with Luther and created the Anglican Church.  There were now two versions of Christianity: the “Catholic” variant and the “Protestant” variant.

This “rejecting the established church” idea caught on and soon Protestant Christianity was split into many sects, divided over trivial matters of doctrine, each of which claimed all the others was “not really Christian”. 

This is pretty much where we are today.