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cheered by Christians, even those who had reservations about the new Christian soldier, because the edict meant an end to their persecution. In the remaining twenty-five years of his life, Constantine built grand churches, including three of the grandest—St. Peter's in Rome, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Constantine became the Christian emperor, the defender of Christianity, and, as such, forever changed the character of the religion as he promoted it and used it to solidify his power. Whether he himself embraced the religion or simply used it politically has been debated by historians ever since. He empowered the Church as an instrument of state-craft, spending a large part of state funds in the establishment and control of clergy. He declared his prayer day, Sunday, as an official day of rest and prayer for the entire empire. By enforcing this one edict, the Church became a major force in everyone's daily lives.
    One of history's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component and becomes a force for war rather than peace. The state must make war, because without war it would have to drop its power politics and renege on its mission to seek advantage over other nations, enhancing itself at the expense of others. And so a religion that is in the service of a state is a religion that notonly accepts war but prays for victory. From Constantine to the Crusaders to the contemporary American Christian right, people who call themselves Christians have betrayed the teachings of Jesus while using His name in the pursuit of political power. But this is not an exclusively Christian phenomenon. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism—all the great religions have been betrayed in the hands of people seeking political power and have been defiled and disgraced in the hands of nation-states.
    Christianity began to change immediately upon the warm embrace of Constantine's empire. The year after Christianity became a legal religion, a Church synod at Arles ruled that conscientious objection would only be acceptable in time of war. Any Christian who refused military service in peacetime was to be excommunicated from the Church. Significantly, during this period, in A.D. 326, the empress Helena announced that buried deep in the hillside at Calvary she had discovered the “True Cross,” the gruesome implement of torture used to kill Jesus, supposedly made of wood from the Garden of Eden. And this bloodstained implement of violence, the image of which had been woven into banners and painted on shields at the Milvian Bridge, now became the official symbol of the Church.
    A permanent split developed between the impassioned followers of Jesus and the official Church, which, having a pro-state bias, compromised on principles with legalistic arguments to allow states to continue functioning the way they always had. The assumption was that this was the only way a state could operate.
    Some Christians continued to refuse military service. In 336 another son of a soldier suddenly put down his arms before a battle and refused to fight. The young man, Martin, had served in the military for two years after his conversion to Christianity. One day Martin said, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” He was accused of cowardice, to which he responded by offering to go unarmed in front of the troops onto the battlefield. The emperor decided a fitting end to Martin would be to take him up on his offer, but before this could happen peace was negotiated with the Gauls.
    The battle never took place, leaving Martin to die a natural death sixty-one years later at the age of eighty-one.
    But others refused service, too, including Martin's friend Victricius. The Church addressed this Christian urge toward conscientious objection later in the century, declaring that a Christian who had shed blood was not eligible for communion for