Comment Re:Jesus isn't that influential (Score 1) 231
Arguably, yeah. When Constantine "donated" the western Roman empire to the Church, it basically turned Christianity into a (known)-world-spanning empire in one fell swoop. It's not as easy as that, of course, but it was a massive leg up that led to Christian domination of Europe, and from there to the Western Hemisphere during the Age of Exploration.
Jesus was only indirectly involved in that, unless of course you believe that he actually did give Constantine the victory at Milvian Bridge.
Now, that's all kinda BS, since the "Donation of Constantine" is a forgery and the real path to Christian domination of the Roman empire is more complicated. But he did pave the way for Christianity in both the eastern and western Roman empire, so while he might not be more important than Jesus to the domination of the religion, he's surely way up there. (And anyway I'd argue that Paul was more important than Jesus when it came to setting up the religion as we know it.)