Book Review: Through the Eye of a Needle Part 2

The next section of the book discusses where the churches began accumulating their wealth from. Brown compares early Christian churches with Synagogues. Many commoners who could afford it made donations to the churches, often through sections of mosaic or small pieces of statuary or even just the pavement outside. These sections would be small and not significant on their own, however "middle class" people of the time gave as much as they could and frequently. Brown says that donating to churches or temples was seen as equal to giving to the poor. You were making an offering to God. Of course most of the money came from bigger sources like the super rich who offered patronage. Once Constantine declared for the Christian faith he began giving donations as well, but in return, he expected that the Christians would continue their at that time 300 year old tradition of giving to the poor, and essentially to provide services to the poor of the empire. Of course about halfway through the 4th century people started taking more noticeable advantage of the church and the power it's positions offered. Senators became bishops for the wealth and privilege without previous training or knowledge, and as the religion grew in popularity it became important to become Christian in order to be in the "in" circles or the powerful political circles. This is especially true as all but one of the emperors after Constantine were Christians. Kind of like how nowadays to be a conservative or republican you need to be super religious, even though those parties initially were based on a totally different set of beliefs.