Sunday Sermon: What Might Have Been

There are a fairly standard set of objections that are used against Christianity. Just to name a few: Christianity is notoriously homophobic, has outdated views on sexuality and reproduction, has a long history of wanton murder, horrendously intolerant of other points of view, and insistent that people were born as broken, wicked, evil people, who deserve to burn forever unless they bow to Jesus.

All of these are blatant problems that typically drive people away from Christianity. Even many Christians have adopted the "New Covenant" doctrine to allow them to casually discard the Old Testament whenever it becomes inconvenient, simply by claiming that Jesus changed the verse in question. This argument typically doesn't hold up when arguing against non-christians, as non-christians realize that the Old Testament seems to not apply, only for those verses where the Christian in question doesn't want that particular verse to apply (i.e. homosexuality is still a sin, but dietary restrictions on eating shellfish don't apply, even though they're in the same book).

Bearing this in mind, I would like this post to be a mixture of a brief history lesson, and some wishful thinking. You see, Christianity didn't have to be this way. In the early to mid second century, Marcion of Sinope was heading up the Marcionite church, which, for a few years, was a real contender to become the dominant Christian faith.


To sum up Marcion's beliefs very briefly: Marcion held that Christianity was a distinct religion from Judaism, with an entirely different deity. He held that the Old Testament was literally true, and in reading the Old Testament, he realized that Yhwh (the "creator deity" of the Old Testament), was wholly incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, and his "heavenly father". He - quite correctly - noted that requiring an entire town to be slaughtered, and burned to the ground if one person worships a different god, was completely incompatible with Jesus' teachings to "love your enemies", and Jesus' assertion that his heavenly father is "merciful". As such, Marcion held that the "creator deity" (whom he held to be a petty, cruel, warlike, jealous, and blood-thirsty being), was a distinctly different being from the "heavenly father deity" whom Jesus routinely referred to as being his father, (and whom he held to be a loving, kind, righteous, giving, and benevolent father-figure). He similarly held that the creator was inferior to the heavenly father, and that the creator was directly opposed to Jesus and his heavenly father.

Marcion's position conveniently takes care of quite a few problems. While he still maintained that the Old Testament is true, he stated that it's the word of a vindictive and spiteful being. In short, the creator god is the rough equivalent of Satan. It solves the problem of how a loving god can send you to hell, by simply stating that, unless you accept the heavenly father's sacrifice of his son, he can't ransom you from the creator, who will gladly send you hell. And he also solved the problem of the contradictions in the gospels by only including a portion of the Gospel of Luke - along with eleven letters of Paul - in his New Testament (Since he held that Jesus descended from heaven as a 29-year-old man, he excised the "virgin birth" and Jesus being forgotten at the temple, from Luke's gospel).

Bearing this in mind, I'd like to take the rest of this post to imagine what Christianity would look like if the Marcionite church had won out:

The Old Testament would still be used as a sort of apocryphal, or lesser text to illustrate how immoral the creator deity is, and how we need the heavenly father to save us from the creator's wrath.

The New Testament would be substantially easier to read, and less contradictory as it would only contain one gospel (Luke) and eleven other books including Galatians, Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians and parts of the Epistle to the Laodiceans. (Marcion's New Testament actually laid the groundwork, and inspired the proto-orthodox church to compile the current New Testament.)

Slavery would still have been a problem, since Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, and Philemon all endorse slavery (or at the very least they speak of slavery and don't condemn it). So the history of slavery and Jim Crow probably would've played out exactly as it has.

While Ephesians 5:22-24 and 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 are currently among the numerous other verses that teach us that womyn are essentially subhuman property, I think in the Marcionite New Testament they might actually have had the opposite effect. After all Ephesians 5 speaks specifically of husbands and wives. Since marriage is frowned upon as having been ordained by the wicked creator, this verse could be taken as a warning of how womyn would be forced into a subservient position if they satisfied the desires of the creator. Similarly 1 Corinthians 7 states that men are made in the "image of god" very clearly referencing the words of the creator in Genesis 1:26, so this passage could also be taken as an illustration of the hideous words of the creator. So in the worst case scenario, womyn are reduced to second-class citizens, but at least have their personhood left intact (unlike the current Bible); and in the best case scenario, the New Testament becomes a springboard for gender equality. It's really kind of a coin toss.

Sex would still have a stigma attached to it, and would still be viewed as a weird, sort of icky thing to most Christians. After all, marriage and sex were ordained by the creator deity, so abstaining from these things was viewed as being distressing to the creator. I'm sure over time this doctrine would've been watered down to allow for some limited procreation, but it would still be semi-taboo, like it is now for many denominations.

On the bright side, condoms and contraceptives would probably be hugely popular among Christians. While sex would still be a "sin of the flesh" at least with contraceptives you're still distressing the creator by refusing to carry out his "be fruitful and multiply" command. At least you'd be breaking even, distressing the creator on one front, while giving in on another. I imagine that the Catholic church (or whatever it's equivalent in this alternate timeline might be) would be shipping condoms over to africa by the freighter! I can see the slogans now "Serve Your Heavenly Father! Defeat AIDS!" Can you imagine the Catholic church being the hero of the 21st century for its invaluable contributions to combatting AIDS? (We can only hope that the Catholic church would also crack down on its pedophilia problem in this alternate timeline…)

Homosexuality would still be a sin according to Romans 1:26-27, but all sexuality would be a sin, so Christians wouldn't really have a leg to stand on there. On the other hand homosexuality would still be refusing to carry out "be fruitful and multiply" so in the grand scheme of things it would probably be viewed as kind of "icky" but generally ok. Since marriage wouldn't be viewed as a sacred institution (having been instituted by the creator) their would probably be no "gay marriage" debate. After all, how would you destroy the sanctity of something that doesn't have any sanctity to start with?

War-mongerers like Moses and David were supposedly condemned to hell for following the creator's spiteful whims, so the warlike aspects of Christianity wouldn't have been nearly so popular, and things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. would've likely not happened. (Also, the makers of military grade gunsights probably wouldn't put Bible verses on them.) Of course this isn't exactly a perfect system, as it holds that Cain (the alleged first murderer) would go to heaven for rebelling against the creator. That said, I suppose that if I were forced to choose between Cain (who killed one person) or David (who supposedly slaughtered whole towns and peoples), I would probably choose Cain. So it would definitely be an imperfect improvement.

Faith healing probably wouldn't have killed nearly so many children, since Luke's gospel is the only one of the four that doesn't include any sort of promise that prayers will be answered.

Lastly, most Christians would probably have no issues with accepting evolution and other scientific ideas. Since the creator is essentially the Marcionite equivalent of Satan (in fact, Satan might still exist in Marcionite theology, but he would be a good being for leading people away from the creator), it would likely be the case that no Christian would truly be surprised to discover that the creator had lied. As such, the idea that the Earth is round, orbits the Sun, and is several billion years old, would likely have been fairly easy to accept, especially considering that the creator said otherwise. Similarly it would be pretty easy to accept that evolution is true and that the creator had simply lied about specifically creating humanity as we are. It would probably be similarly easy to accept that "the flood" and other such events that have no place in actual history were fabrications designed to scare people.


In short, while Christianity would still have had its fair share of problems (i.e. vicarious redemption, acceptance of slavery, and a strange and unhealthy preoccupation with sex), it could've been a fairly alright religion. Sure it still wouldn't be true, but it would've at least been able to make a reasonable claim to being a book of good moral teachings. Unfortunately for Christianity, the early church insisted on shackling itself to the terrible books of the Jewish Old Testament. While Christianity could have taken the road prescribed by Marcion and could have been a distinct religion, completely separate from Judaism, the church insisted that the gospel story had to reverse engineer and prove the truth and perfection of the Old Testament books as well. Charged with this insufferable burden you've saddled yourself with an unbelievable and wicked religion.

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.” ~ John Greenleaf Whittier


[End Note: I would like to acknowledge that there really is no such thing as a "typical" Christian. There are currently about 2.2 billion Christians worldwide (± 0.1 billion), divided up into over 39,000 denominations (an average of 56,410 adherents per denomination) no two of which teach exactly the same thing. That said, virtually all of the various denominations use the same Bible (or at least a relevantly similar Bible, and maybe some additional texts), and there are many tenets that are recognized as being the norm, even by denominations that don't accept those tenets (i.e. churches that accept homosexuality, even though they still acknowledge that it's not the dominant, or biblically sound, stance). As a result, it's possible to address Christianity as a whole, in light of its usual tenets.]