The Roman empire had collapsed and Europe was a mess. Since the barbarians that brought down Rome were influenced by Christianity and not the religion and politics of Rome, this made it possible, with the emperor out of the way, to solidify a position of power and establishing the Holy Roman Empire of which, in spite of its having an emperor, the pope would have total control.

Disobey or in any way displease him, and the pope could call down the wrath of God.

But with establishing of power comes the need to maintain it. One way is to conquer others and become their hated leader always looking over your shoulder, the other is finding or establishing some common bond that unifies otherwise disparate peoples.

The one thing all those who needed to be ruled had in common was religion. Many traditions and practice of various groups of people were based on a need to have some convenient sort of divine powers whether one God a or a committee that could be the go to reason or explanation for the unexplainable, later to be recognized as science, and someone who seemed intelligent enough to be a go between to speak with this unseen power which over time was seen as a powerful means of control.
Predisposed to religious thinking with its built in fear that the eternal life you face might be worse than the life you are living, the nose under the tent was not a camel but religion, one unifying religion with the strictest rules to avoid a horrible after-life with a new aspect not experienced by the various people until then, money, and lots of it, became part of the game.

It wasn’t enough to rely on effective preaching and willful conversion based on the message as people had been pretty accustomed to their old ways and may not convert.

Charlemagne, the first Holly Roman Emperor had a solution for this.

Needing to establish the Empire in the remote parts of Germany, those he conquered were forced to choose baptism or death. Thousands ended up being herded to the rivers to be forcibly baptized or be subjected to all the wrath of God and the things He dreams up to exercise it at the ends of swords and spears.

It was conversion or extermination.

Of course you could fake it and not really accept conversion, but the fact that you were still around implied the conversion, so, besides obeying or violating the laws of a few men in control who wanted to keep it that way, man’s and the laws of God each having their punishments and each demanding money, the church had the advantage over the state because, unlike the state whose jurisdictions and punishment ended with death, the Church could threaten punishment in this world and threaten punishment in the next.

Once The Holy Roman Empire established itself as the power in Europe, Abbeys, monasteries, and religious houses sprang up everywhere and the new Christians supported the church through tithes, with the boss of the Emperor getting his chunk in Rome with the Emperor knowing if he failed to pay up, the pope would say God wanted a new Emperor, and also supported the nobility with taxes.

While the abbeys, monasteries, and other religious establishments may have sent money it collected to Rome. Their special status had them paying nothing to the Empire from which they got protection, or else, God’s wrath.

Charlemagne has been praised for establishing a unified Europe. What is not spoken of is how he did it be massacring those who chose not to follow his religion, forcing people to abandon their own religious beliefs, and having the Christian ones become the law of the land so that obey or die became the lynch pin of European power subjected only to the power that threatened eternal punishment of disobedience in an after-life no one has ever seen or come back to report on.

Okay, there was Lazarus, but you notice he is rather quickly removed from the Gospels as if someone coming back from the dead would not have had the Apostles, especially John, asking more questions and writing more about it. They did mention he smelled, so they obviously observed details and noted the important ones.

Lazarus was never interviewed about his experience, or they were so dull as not to really matter, and Jesus, the only other person on record to come back, had a vested interest in promoting the streets paved in gold lit by candy cane gumdrop street lights, and all the rivers running pass the many mansions being made of chocolate.

And thus, Europe became a unified, Christian continent.

It was not voluntary.

We did not have a war this time. There has been societal evolution so the way this time was more subtle and centered more on temporal law and punishment to bring about a mass conversion.

Lying about others, scaring people into obedience, and finally getting their own onto the Supreme Court, has been the chosen method of conversion.

You may still be in the religion you have been in and do not have to subscribe to the beliefs of another religion, but now that one religion’s beliefs as held by the Justices and not necessarily by the majority of citizens or even in the denomination who see them as fringe and extreme, are codified in civil law, you are required under penalty of time or fine to follow that belief or pay a price.

The horn of Roland called to summon Charlemagne, and the United States Constitution was lost.

Looking at history between Charlemagne and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the subsequent Protestant Reformation, it might have been the source of religious Euphoria over taking spiritual and forced temporal control over a continent and then eventually pushing this idea globally, but when people met a certain level of education, the system collapsed but the infighting among the various Christian denominations for dominance is ongoing.

With the present make up of SCOTUS, they are wasting no time forcing us into the river at sword point.