Christianity begins with a man so committed he died for his beliefs. It evolves into a variety of forms, including both cults on the one hand and motivated individuals and small groups on the other, with mainstream religion in the middle somewhere. How does this happen?

One aspect is that to expand beyiond the initial group (in this case Jesus and his first followers) there must be structure. Structure by nature includes levels of power. Jesus’s teaching was (in my view and Yoder’s) about NOT having power. Thus the structure and the message are in conflict from the start. Throw in a Roman emperor, a multitude of kings, some power hungry cardinals, and some “reformers” who object to power being held by a few, countered by those who rejected this struggle and (in various ways) went off into the desert to seek God for themselves, and see what happens.

From what I’ve seen, a power-hungry person corrupts a message to serve their own ends. From Sri Lankan nationalistic Buddhism, to some of the evangelical splinter churches, to Marxist groups, to the Pacific Group, power twists the message, making the group more important than the result.

As to why sometimes this DOESN’T happen, I have no idea. Except that perhaps the imperfection of humankind does not reign supreme in God’s world.