Constantine

This is the transcript of my 2 minute broadcast on BBC Radio Humberside on Wednesday 21st July 2010:

Good Morning. The Humanist Carl Sagan once said that “You have to know the past to understand the present”. It was on this day in the year 306 that Constantine was made Roman Emperor, here in the north of England, in York which was then called Eboracum. Constantine was stationed in York with his father, the Emperor Constantinus and was made Emperor when his father died. He is most famous for being the first Christian Roman Emperor. It is worth wondering how the history of western civilisation might have unfolded if Constantine had not embraced the Christian religion, which subsequently became the official religion of the Roman world. Up until then, the Christians had been a persecuted minority who were called “atheists” because of their refusal to worship the Roman Gods, such as Jupiter and Saturn. A Roman called Porphyry wrote “How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained?” For the Romans, religion was first and foremost a social activity that promoted unity and loyalty to the state and there was a belief that if this was undermined by Christianity then social justice and unity would disappear. It seems ironic to me that modern day religious people sometimes suggest that our society might be damaged by the disappearance of relatively recent beliefs such as Christianity but there is little evidence of social disintegration in societies which have become less religious such as Sweden and Denmark. In fact greater levels of crime and disorder exist in the more religious societies. It’s true that Christianity has played a part in the formation of our national identity but in a multicultural society we should not turn a blind eye to the contribution of the non-religious member s of our country.