Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

2 THE PASSIONATE STEWARD
understanding of stewardship has been propelled along a course of change
that the Apostles could not have imagined (It must be noted that Armenia,
under King Tiridates the Great, was the first state to officially adopt
Christianity as its official religion in 301 C.E., more than a decade before the
Roman Empire). Once the Church ceased to be a persecuted minority, and
was embraced not only by society, but by the governing authority, our
understanding of Christian stewardship, and the related traditions which had
developed in the early Church, became mediated not by theology and reason,
but by forces which were not always consistent with the radical newness of
the Christian message.
By the middle ages, the worldly enrichment that went hand in hand
with religious fundraising created a causa belli amongst many of the faithful,
leading in part to the Protestant Reformation. Alongside his theological
complaints, Martin Luther specifically condemned the Church’s fundraising
practices, and especially the sale of indulgences. 1 Nevertheless, unworthy
stewardship practices were not routed by the Reformation. As Lutherans
found favor in their princes, and later the English Reformation in their King
and Queens, sacral society remained tied to the State; not surprisingly, some
of the same ills that had at times led to corruption in the Roman Catholic
Church quickly left their mark on the new Protestant Churches, and the states
where they were established.
The emergence of plural ecclesiastic communities operating separately,
but still alongside the State, began to force these new faith communities, as
well as the traditional mainline Churches, to a position of self-reliance, and
financial independence. Not until religious tolerance (and therefore pluralism)
really took hold during Europe’s Enlightenment, an expression that reached
its zenith in the colonies that would become the United States, did government
commence in earnest a determined policy of abolishing the Church-
1 “Disputation Of Doctor Martin Luther On The Power And Efficacy Of
Indulgences,” October 31, 1517, No. 86: “Again:–Why does not the pope, whose
wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St.
Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?” In Works of
Doctor Martin Luther, ed. and trans. Adolph Spaeth et al., vol. 1 (Philadelphia: A.J.
Holman Co., 1915), pp. 29–38.