Christians equated worldly success with divine truth despite a religion of martyrdom

Evidence

The real interest of Christians was in their consciousness that the Providential dispensation accorded extremely ill with their own strong wish that worldly success should set a seal on religious truth. It was natural that they should bitterly resent that their failure should be attributed to their sins by anyone but the rightful occupant of a Christian pulpit. Ricoldo, usually so derivative, here thought originally; he spoke articulately for the unexpressed disappointment of many who were extremely reluctant to accept a situation in which Christians were powerless. Material success became too easily the criterion of divine justification, even for people whose religion is founded on the blood of martyrs. SEMEL LoguiTuR DEus. The difficulty was to remember and to accept that Christianity was revealed once and for ever, and not as a religion of power. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 747

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general pattern of religious communities measuring divine favor through material/political success, which resonates with ideas in ‘A Very Minor Prophet’ about faith and worldly outcomes. — connects to: Muslim success did not prove divine approval because even godless Tartars triumphed
• DEEPTHINKING: A remarkably compressed insight about how the criterion of worldly success infects even religions founded on the failure of their martyrs — deserves sitting with.