We are at the end of 2025, which marked an important Constantinian anniversary. And in all, I found my own research and reading on the first Christian emperor to be profitable. Out there in the wider world, however, the old mythologies about Constantine remain as vibrant as ever. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised how much I have heard or read the guy haunting conversations adjacent to the New Religious Right (i.e., the various and sundry Christian nationalisms, integralisms, postliberalism, Protestant Franco-ism, and other assertive political theologies of a louder and more colorful variety).

Alas, most of the discourse surrounding him, his context, and his legacy remains excessively totemic: he’s either an exemplar to be imitated or a meta-narratival boogeyman inviting a shudder. This bifurcation has infected a lot of scholarly analysis too, arguably all the way back to antiquity, and I don’t have much hope that this will ever really change. But to the extent that such totemic deployment of Constantine has proliferated in the last decade or so, I sense it has been more common with the New Religious Right and its fellow travelers who are looking for positive blueprints to follow.

Most of these invocations badly mistake what was happening in the fourth century. Constantine is indeed an excellent model to think through pressing theo-political questions—maybe even the best model for twenty-first-century West—but only if one beings with a reasonably accurate view of the pertinent history. As it is, we are usually fighting about a caricature.

In what follows below, I attempt to limit myself to four historical areas prone to acute misconception or outright ignorance. After these relatively terse descriptions, I then offer a few conclusions as to how enthusiasts are probably learning the wrong lessons from Constantine.

The Eusebian Vision

This is, of course, the fons et origo of so much fraught thinking on the subject: a superficial reading of Eusebius’ testimony, especially as preserved in his oration to Constantine and his biography of the same. For a long time, the ostensible theo-political “vision” inferred here was taken as a kind of thesis statement for the Christianized Roman Empire and Byzantium. Byzantinists have rightly questioned that idea from various angles, such as the sacral monarchy (or lack thereof).

For my part, I have real doubts that Eusebius himself had such a “vision”—or that he was as naïve as he is typically presented in introductory courses on Rome, Christianity, or Western Civ. We have to remember a few facts when coming to Eusebius’ writings. First, his encomium to the emperor was rhetorically limited by its very genre: imagine combing a letter of recommendation or a commencement address for hard historical data about the author’s real opinion. It’s a distorted picture at best, and in Eusebius’ case, some have even seen him deliberately pushing back on the contemporary rhetoric that praised Constantine as divine. Modern readers are prone to miss this because most have picked up another such panegyric—much less from the same era.

Second, the unfinished Eusebian biography of Constantine was written immediately after Constantine’s death—just as his less-impressive sons began murdering political rivals and fighting civil wars between themselves. The point, I think, was to hold out an idealized model of their father for the sons to follow, especially if Eusebius was worried about how these new emperors would weigh in on ecclesiastical factionalism. One can see similar dynamic today where American right-wingers (and others) who otherwise clearly dislike Trump and distrust his instincts have learned that praising him can be the best way of getting him toward their policy goals.

Finally, such maneuvering on Eusebius’ part would have been a particularly reasonable for someone who had lived through the trauma of the Great Persecution. Indeed, we should probably read much more of Eusebius’ reflection on the Roman political environment through that prism. Once you strip off some the rhetorical and contextual gilding, the Eusebian assessment of Constantine actually looks a lot more murky and interesting. Athanasius’ last words to Constantine were famously blunter: in a fit of ill-advised anger, he blurted out, “God will judge between you and me!” This rhetorical framing was also much less effective in the moment, getting him banished to the other side of the Roman world as an interminable nuisance. Openly opposing the court with a high hand was usually not how Christian actors chose to maneuver, either before or after Constantine—especially if they wanted their cause to succeed.

Constantinian Pluralism

It is often forgotten, but the Edict of Milan guaranteed religious toleration according to individual conscience. Effectively, it was an even more pluralistic arrangement than the relatively open colonial communities one finds in Maryland or Pennsylvania that were founded with that express purpose in mind. This guarantee appears to have been more than a rhetorical gesture too, given that even disfavored minorities did better under the House of Constantine than under the Tetrarchy before it or the Theodosians that followed.

Meanwhile, his efforts to coerce Christian sectarians, such as the Donatists, into religious conformity were based more on enforcing secular legal pronouncements about church property. That same enforcement appears to have been half-hearted at most, as Noel Lenski has argued.^[1] Even at the peak of his frustration with Arius himself, about the most Constantine did was ban Arius’ tracts.

Constantinian Paganism

The aforementioned Eusebian Vision always leaves out all the other “weird stuff” (from a Christian perspective) he did with explicit pagan overtones. An easy one is the massive nude statue of himself in the forum of Constantinople, which deliberately portrays him in the iconography of Apollo. On the day of its dedication, we are told, the people burned incense to it, in much the same way as the imperial cult had been practiced for centuries. Not only does this put a late ancient spin on “Big Brother is Watching You,” it also took place more than fifteen years after his alleged vision at the Milvian Bridge. To this, we can add other examples, such as building new temples to Roman Tyche and Rhea in the capital, while leaving many of Byzantium’s older temples alone. A later source also claims he brought a cultic image of Athena from Rome to Constantinople. He even dedicated the new capital to a new tutelary spirit: Tyche Anthousa.

Perhaps strangest of all to us: Constantine inaugurated a new annual ceremony for posterity where a statue of himself with Tyche Anthousa was wheeled on a cart around the Hippodrome. Apparently, he himself made a gesture of obeisance to the statue along with the other spectators. Vasiliki Limberis’s monograph, Divine Heiress, makes a compelling case that this goddesses associated with the imperial cult were later absorbed by the Theotokos, who became the new supernatural patron of the city.^[2]

In light of these choices, Constantine’s alleged conversion of the empire looks a lot more ambiguous, to say the least, as it certainly would have in the moment. It’s another reason to suspect some Christians may have been wary of his broader program, even if they did not say so publicly. Probably, Constantine’s political goal in this religious/ceremonial policy was not to rock the boat too much. By acting more like a traditional emperor, he would keep his pagan subjects onside and not risk their overt opposition. And in contexts where we think Constantine did regulate or clamp down on pagan cultic activity, such as animal sacrifice, he could have found contemporary pagan elites who shared his outlook. Interestingly, there is evidence that something similar took place in the alleged Christian “conversion” of Aksum in the fourth century, where religio-political rhetoric of the regime seems to have conveyed different theological messages to different demographic audiences.

Constantinian Leverage

How did Constantine manage to start the eventually successful process of Christianization then, notwithstanding the aforementioned ambiguities? I think Peter Heather is basically on the right track here: in the cutthroat world of elite competition that depended on climbing one’s way through imperial administration, becoming a Christian would have distinct advantages for one’s resume when the court had an overt preference for Christianity.^[3] If this sounds familiar, it should. From about 2013 to fairly recently, a lot of the social dynamics of Wokeness worked similarly in institutional contexts. Now imagine those dynamics playing out over the course of two generations instead of a single decade.

In addition to patronizing Christianity, Constantine also continued the centralization of the Roman socio-political order begun by Diocletian, not least by creating a brand-new Senate in Constantinople that drew local elites and made them imperial elites. If you were an ambitious young man two centuries prior, you might have visited Rome, but your primary identity and matrix of prestige would have centered on your hometown in Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, etc. By the fourth century, you would be more likely to look to Constantinople or Milan; the competition would have increased and thus the pressure to find a sociological edge. In aggregate, the incentive to access the empire’s resources and prestige would pull many elites into Christianity over fifty or sixty years. Heather’s especially keen observation here is that the same process repeated itself in the early Middle Ages as elites converted to Islam.

Conclusions

So what does that all mean for the New Religious Right with its itch to enact some kind of sweeping reconversion? I can think of at least three relevant takeaways:

1. We need to think more three-dimensionally about Constantine’s ends. Instead of “converting the empire,” Constantine might be better remembered as a seminal figure in the history of political pluralism and religious liberty. This is not to suggest that Constantine held to some iteration of the First Amendment as it is currently adjudicated; Roman conceptions of politics and religion didn’t work that way, of course. Rather, as a statesman or “magistrate” (to borrow some Reformational lingo), his ends seem to have as much or more to do with comity, continuity, and consensus than a confessional state.
   
2. That raises the question of means. Insofar as there was a Constantinian program to advance these aims while also promoting and patronizing Christianity, its strategy stands diametrically opposed to the New Right in general and its religiously animated cross-sections in particular. To my mind, this is the most salient point of all—and here I will most risk playing the modern political pundit. In what I have highlighted, Constantine looks like a politician who was keen to maintain a broad base of support. Successful Roman emperors did this for centuries—or invited a usurper, which happened about once a decade on average over the empire’s long history. In earlier centuries too, Christian apologists routinely played up areas of confluence between Christianity and the Roman mainstream (e.g., law and order).The New Right, by contrast, shows vanishingly little interest in broadening its coalitional appeal. The political champion that it claims for itself has never been particularly popular by historical standards; whatever electoral victories it has won have come in a climate of high polarization and even more unpopular competition; policy successes durable enough to withstand a hostile presidential administration have been slim; its grievance-saturated rhetoric can find older counterparts aplenty on the Left. By now, the thing New Right seems to do best is generate colorful internet celebrities. None of this is news, and it was all fairly predictable, not least because the New Right has never really had clearly articulated policy goals distinct from its various cults of personality.
   
   But the same cannot quite be said for the New Religious Right, which has a much more apparent set of revanchist goals and historical models related to Christianity and public life. Yet I have increasingly come to suspect that, for better or worse, the New Religious Right isn’t particularly serious. Deep down, it has much less much less to do with restoring a Christian order and much more to do with indulging aesthetic and poetic urges, cultivating an audience and selling books, jockeying for status on the Right, and forming a distinct identity. It is fundamentally sectarian: it exhibits no meaningful interest in broadening the tent or finding common cause with infidel allies in other factions. It is mostly panache with precious little tact, lacking the very “prudence” adherents often like to invoke.
   
   To put it another way: the more that avowed Christian nationalists, for instance, advertise their program as such, the less likely it seems to succeed. Many people—even those like myself who could find some areas of agreement or sympathy—look at the project with suspicion because it loudly presents itself as a sectarian revolution hoping to circumvent rather than move public consensus. If we could ask him, Constantine might suggest that the first rule of Christianization is that you don’t talk about Christianization—at least not as a political project per se and certainly not in a deliberately noxious fashion.
   
3. Finally, even if one of Constantine’s goals was to set the Roman polity on a course that would eventually create a confessional state in a few generations—and I’m not sure it was—it is not clear that our society has comparable non-coercive levers. There would need to be even greater centralization of power with ever more acute control of intermediary institutions and local identity, and the requisite mechanisms might just as easily abet a new and even more oppressive wave of Wokeness first. Of course, this scenario precludes truly extra-constitutional measures, such as a successful but violent and (by all present indicators) highly unpopular revolution. While this all utterly offends my conservatism and federalist longings, some on the New Right openly fantasize about such an outcome. And a new monarchy or protectorate might indeed manage to enforce a fresh religious conformity—at least for a time.
   
   Maybe I’m wrong and that’s where everything is headed, perhaps as a form of chastisement. But if so, I suspect the new Christian order will look an awful lot more like the persecutions of Galerius and Diocletian than the reign of Constantine.

1. Noel Lenski, “Constantine and the Donatists: Exploring the Limits of Religious Toleration,” in Religiöse Toleranz: 1700 Jahre Nach Dem Edikt von Mailand, ed. Martin Wallraff (De Gruyter, 2016). ↑

   
   

2. Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Making of Christian Constantinople (Routledge, 1994).
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3. Peter Heather, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300 (Knopf, 2023). ↑