Cinderella and the Emerging Church, Part 1

I love the story of Cinderella. I don’t know what it is, the idea of dancing at a ball, the glass slipper, the ugly step-sisters, don’t know what it is. I just really like this story and I like all the old and modern versions I’ve seen and read. It’s just a delight.

So, here we are again in a kingdom far, far away. However, in this particular story our heroine is not necessarily royal. She comes from wealth and prominence, but that’s all we know of the situation. In the earliest stories she has no name in the beginning. Cinderella is a name of derision given by the step-sisters. We do know that her mother dies and her father re-marries. Sounds like Snow White, doesn’t it?

In all of these stories the father figure is pretty uninvolved in what’s going on under his own nose, so many versions assume he dies. I’d like to think these father figures represent the world, or mortality - this world in which we live - a place of opposites and opposition. These fairy stories also come out of a time where men did not pay much attention to family matters. The woman of the house was responsible for hearth and home. The man was responsible for work and money. It was rare for either one to cross the line into another’s world, in fact, it was strongly discouraged. In our version of Cinderella from “Best Loved Fairy Tales,” compiled by Joanna Cole, the father of Cinderella is alive and well, but unaware of what is happening. Whatever the reason for his indifference, he does not cross the line and interfere in the doings of the household, the domain of his wife, even as it relates to his daughter. He is as impartial as mortality, which allows each of us to make our own choices.

The woman father marries has two daughters of her own which she brings into the family, and like most mothers, she can’t help putting her own children first. Jealous of Cinderella’s beauty, she assigns the girl servants work, gives her rags to wear, and no place to sleep but in the kitchen with the cinders. Her own daughters are given fine clothes to wear and no chores at all. They are pampered and given every privilege. The soot on Cinderella’s face cannot mask her beauty, and the fine clothes of the step sister’s cannot hide their ugliness.

So who are all these women?

I believe we can identify Cinderella as the Church of God. And just as the nickname “Christian,’ originally meant as an insult, becomes the positive definition of a follower of Christ, Cinderella comes to mean one raised from a lowly to an exalted place. Cinderella is beautiful and her nature is kind, compassionate and humble. She serves without complaint in an unfair situation.

We can pin-point the step-mother as the whore of all the earth. The usurper. She is very like the vain queen from Snow White. She likes prominence and social status and teaches her daughters the same values. She is jealous of Cinderella’s beauty and so thrusts her out of her site and into obscurity.

But who are these step-sisters? This took some pondering and piecing bits of history together, but I think I know who they represent. Let’s look at the history of Western Civilization at the time of the Apostosy.

In the year 306 A.D., a roman by the name of Constantine, the son of a Breton woman and a Roman military ruler, Constantius, had managed to maneuver himself into a position as one of the 3 rulers of Rome after the death of the emperor Diocletian (a severe persecutor of Christians and Christianity). His parents were not married and so by Roman standards, he was illegitimate, with no right to rule. But he had learned well from his father and was a great military strategist. He was not content to be one of three rulers and over the next few years managed to war his way to the title of “Augustus Caesar.”

It is reported that Constantine had a dream before his final battle with his last rival. Quoting Wickepedia, “Eusebius describes another version, where, while marching at midday, ‘he saw with his own eyes in the heavens a trophy of the cross arising from the light of the sun, carrying the message, In Hoc Signo Vinces or "In this sign, you will conquer."’ The sign is described as the Chi Rho, the Greek sign for Christ. It is said Constantine put that sign on himself and all his soldiers, and because of it, won the day.

As emperor, Constantine, elevated Christianity from a persecuted sect of Jews to the state religion - with a few changes to doctrine, of course. The Church in Rome grew under state funds. Constantine then moved the capital of his government from the city of Rome to the small town of Byzantium (present day Istanbul in Turkey) and renamed it Constantinople. There were now two competing capitals - and two competing Churches. And they hated each other.

During the apostasy, there were many crying lo here and lo there, but none were as big, as wealthy and as powerful as the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. They both claimed authority from the Apostle Peter. They had wars with each other. They each called the other heretics and blasphemers. They both clothed their leaders in scarlets and gold and fine linen and laces.

They were the two ugly step-sisters.

Next week: Part two - “The Prince is having a ball!”