Making it Real
Non-violent Movements Throughout History page 1.
33- 311AD
Contrary to how churches operate today, and after Constantine made Christianity the state religion in AD 311, all the early Christians lived communally and shared everything they had in common. Members sold their possessions and the money was shared “as every man had need” and used for various communal projects, like caring for widows and orphans. (Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-35) There was no personal ownership of possessions. The movement was pacifist and they were soon persecuted by the religious and political establishment, arrested, tortured, mutilated, burned, starved, and condemned to death to amuse spectators. These Christians were opposed to war, refusing to justify and to participate in it. Records indicate that about 150 years after Christ, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, entreated Christians to join his forces and then threatened them only to be met by refusal, leading to their torturous deaths.
1. The Early Christians
The burning at the stake of 224 Waldensians in France in 1243
2. The Poor of Lyons or “Waldensians” 1179-1532?
They forsook their wealth and lived as vagrants with no permanent place to live, criticising the powerful established church.
The founder was the first to translate the Gospels from Latin into the common language of his time. The movement refused to obey the church authorities who ordered members to stop preaching the teachings of Jesus without getting their permission first.
After excommunication from the Catholic Church they were hunted down in genocidal crusades for hundreds of years. Some historical accounts record...” These folk had been consistently pacifist by tradition, so that they did not resist when the invaders came. . . .The mercenary soldiers did not stop until they had obliterated every trace of the Waldensian villages. A few survived, but the lot of all the rest was either death by the sword or life sentences as galley-slaves on French ships.”