This was a loyalty test to the Pax Romana, targeted especially at Christians, for whom pagan sacrifices were inherently sinful. Failure to sacrifice to the ancient gods was punishable by torture and death. Some Christians refused and were martyred, including Pope Fabian himself. Others went into hiding. Some went through the motions, made the sacrifice, and so were excommunicated.

After the persecution died down, a furious row erupted within the church concerning the re-admission of the lapsed. Some maintained there was to be no readmission whatsoever. Others were content with a simple confession and repentance. An ideological war broke out between these sides, both electing their own bishops, both setting up a church within a church to battle it out with each other.

Some church leaders, notably St Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, tried to steer a middle path. He was largely successful, not least because of the credit he had established on both sides through his widely appreciated pastoral response to the pandemic that came to be named after him. But despite his success in ameliorating a divided church, there was one principle on which he wouldn’t budge, and his formulation of it became a central feature of Roman Catholic doctrine: extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the church there is no salvation. The fallen had to be re-admitted to the church because outside the church there is only eternal damnation.

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Parallels with the current travails of the Labour party are hard to miss. Pope Starmer has re-admitted the lapsi, based on a flimsy expression of repentance, hoping the fact that he is generally perceived to be having a good pandemic will distract the No Readmission party. And it may. But although these parallels are something of a historical parlour game, the principle that lies behind them remains as strong and as contentious as ever it was: extra Ecclesiam nulla salus – outside the party there is no salvation.

To many of us, who just don’t care about party politics as much as those within the Westminster bubble, the comings and goings of Corbyn, or indeed of Cummings for that matter, are nowhere near as important as they are to the true believers. Corbyn protested his suspension by re-affirming his total loyalty to the party of which, he reminded people, he has been a member of for 54 years. Nor could he bring himself to update his Twitter profile: “Labour MP for Islington North.” Life outside the party would be unimaginable for him. In a Cyprian-like compromise, Starmer has now allowed Corbyn back in to the Labour Party; though, for the time being, without the party whip. It doesn’t make much sense. But that isn’t really the point. Like Cyprian, Starmer is trying to manage some bitter divisions, and a messy compromise is the obvious path to tread.

Of course, there are many who have flourished extra Ecclesiam. Ed Balls reinvented himself through sequins, from a party hack with something of a hard man reputation, to become a personable almost national treasure. Something similar happened with Michael Portillo and trains. There is, it seems life beyond the party. Politics isn’t everything. Indeed, it is precisely by accepting that idea that some find rehabilitation, new life.

And here we come to the heart of Corbyn’s fundamental weakness as a politician. He is too much in love with the party, with its ideology, with its internal struggles, to connect up with those for whom politics is not everything. One just cannot imagine him outside the Labour party, and nor, it seems, can he. And because of this, he has missed his opportunity for redemption.

This is what he should have done. He should have put on his wellington boots and settled down on his allotment to tend his leeks. A period of silence would have been welcome. And a more genuine act of contrition. But above all, he, like so many politicians, just needed to discover who he is outside of the confines of his narrow little church. I don’t know what the secular equivalent to this is, but he needed to spend a bit more time on his own with his God.

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Princess Margaret was given a very perceptive line in the new series of The Crown. Invited to a weekend up at Balmoral, Mrs Thatcher continued to work on her dispatch boxes rather than go out stalking with the royal family. No time for fun, Thatcher insisted tartly. But she might find something much more important than fun out on the moors, the Princess shot back. She might find “perspective”. And in that single word, the princess captured so much that can be lacking in the professional politician.

Everything may be political, but the political isn’t everything. Most people have far more important things going on in their lives – their loved ones, their families (not necessarily the same thing), doing the shopping, listening to music, yes, even watching Strictly and The Crown. Generally speaking, the Conservatives tend to understand this much better than the Labour party. They are often the political party voted for by those who do not think that politics is the most important thing in the world. It is significant, for instance, that the Conservatives have something like just 190,000 members, whereas Labour has well over half a million, most of them having joined after Jeremy Corbyn became leader.

This is often seen as a Labour strength, and, of course, having activists turn out and bang on doors, is a real campaigning advantage. But it comes with its downside too. For when a political party is dominated by true believers, perspective narrows and it becomes obsessed with what Freud called the narcissism of small differences. It’s not unlike that with church. Yes, it is good to have people who make the church their life. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the church being able to continue without such people. But this also is true: too much religion is bad for your faith. What begins as a life transforming dialogue with the infinite can all too easily end up being a bitter row with the flower arrangers, or about who gets to sit in what pew.

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That is what Corbyn did to the Labour party. Yes, his lazy and complacent attitude towards anti-Semitism – even complicit attitude – has damaged the party for a generation at least. But there was something else that he got badly wrong: he seemed to act as though his party was more important than the country that he apparently wanted to lead. And he inspired others to think the same. Party above all things. That is why his suspension from Labour was so impossible for him to bear. He is a man who has nothing left outside the party, a man whose identity is so consumed by left wing ideology that there is nothing remaining when that is gone. Corbyn without Labour was the shell of a man. And very few ordinary voters can identify with such a view.

The greatest ever Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, offered a very different perspective to that of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. He argued that the church is “the only organisation that exists solely for the benefit of non-members”. It’s a great line — though it is not only churches that work like this, and indeed, a great many churches don’t. Under Corbyn, the Labour party retreated down the rabbit hole of increasing ideological purity, obsessed with their own inner workings. And what many members still fail to grasp is that, unlike them, most people don’t like politics. And these are the people whose votes they need. This is a kind of paradox: to really succeed in politics you have to care more about things beyond it.

The Al Smith Dinner is hugely significant. It is one of the last events in which both presidential candidates appear during election years — and even made it into The West Wing. Traditionally it is marked by the two candidates making good-natured speeches mocking each other, all watched by a merry Archbishop of New York.

This year, though, as Trump boasted of the nomination of conservative Catholic Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and Biden spoke of how his own Catholic faith has guided his politics and given him strength through personal tragedy, the stakes of appealing to this — traditionally Democrat — audience were especially high.

It’s easy to overlook the impact of the Catholic Church on US politics. Catholicism has often been marginalised and even despised for much of American history, its adherents the victims of often vicious prejudice. A friend of mine from graduate school who grew up in the Midwest once explained to me that his hometown was historically a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan, despite having virtually no black population.

That is because there, and in many parts of early-20^th century America, the KKK was more an anti-Catholic hate group than an anti-black one. Throughout the 19^th century, fear of Irish and other Catholic immigrants was a major feature of American politics; it inspired the only successful nativist movement, the American Party (nicknamed “the Know Nothings”).

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On top of general hostility to immigrants from Ireland, as well as southern and eastern Europe, there was a fear that the Catholic Church, as a foreign state, would interfere in American political life. On an official level, the US cut ties with the Papal States in 1867, and didn’t restore full relations with the Vatican until 1984.

Al Smith, after whom the dinner was named, was the first Catholic to be nominated for the presidency, in 1928, but lost due to a combination of “Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity”; like the vast majority of Catholics, he opposed the ban on selling alcohol, a movement which had a strong sectarian undercurrent. It was not until 1960 that America’s one and only successful Catholic candidate for president, John F. Kennedy, was elected, and only after reassuring the American public that he would put American interests ahead of the Pope’s influence.

Catholics tended to vote for Democrats, partly because the Republicans were associated with the Protestant northern elite. But in recent years, the huge reduction in anti-Catholic prejudice among voters — which has all but disappeared since Kennedy’s time — has changed that dynamic, and Catholic voters are no longer defined by external prejudice.

Instead, internal divisions within the Church itself have limited its political influence. Today, American Catholics tend to vote along ethnic and party lines rather than as a united bloc. Even Catholic candidates are not enough to win a party the Catholic vote — and often get more scrutiny from some Catholic circles. Last year, a priest denied Communion to Joe Biden over his pro-choice stance on abortion. Similar threats were made against other Democratic Catholics, including 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry and Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 running mate, Tim Kaine.

In contrast, Evangelical Protestants have been one of the most potent political forces in the United States for the past 40 years. Yet with all the focus that’s been paid to Evangelicals in American politics (even by this author), it’s easy to forget that Catholicism remains the largest single religious denomination in the United States.

And unlike Evangelicals (at least white Evangelicals) who have firmly been in the Republican camp since switching from Jimmy Carter in 1976 to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Catholics remain one of America’s largest swing votes. Catholics narrowly broke for George W Bush over John Kerry in 2004. Barack Obama won the majority of the Catholic vote in 2008 and 2012, while Trump bested Hillary Clinton in 2016.

A few weeks ago polls put Biden 12 points ahead of Trump among likely Catholic voters, who make up to 20% of the population in key swing states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Then came the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which added a further twist to the election, placing Catholicism central stage with the drama over her replacement.

Now, in an unpredictable election year, both Trump and Biden hope Catholics will come out for their campaigns. As was fully evident at the Al Smith dinner, both camps are appealing to Catholics as Catholics, but with very different approaches.

After heavily courting the Evangelical vote, Trump is now attempting to make a similar appeal to this bloc: despite not being of the faith himself, his administration has promoted Catholic values and appointed members of the faith to high positions.

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Biden, meanwhile, has built a career on personal connections and empathy, placing personal stories (his own and his constituents’) at the forefront of his political appeal. His Catholic faith, despite criticism from conservative circles, remains a key part of that story. As he has many times, Biden spoke in his Al Smith dinner video about his faith informing social justice, and he also reflected on the comfort his family received from meeting with Pope Francis shortly after the death of the then Vice-President’s son, Beau Biden, from cancer.

For both Trump and Biden, winning over Catholics also means overcoming criticisms about their relationship with the Church. For the President, these criticisms have come even from Pope Francis himself, who once questioned Trump’s Christianity over his border wall policy.

There remains no love lost between the current Pope and the Trump Administration; Francis recently refused to meet with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the latter’s visit to Rome, with Francis’s deputy, Cardinal Piero Parolin, saying that they would not “receive politicians close to elections”. Francis’s hostility towards the Trump administration, interestingly enough, might actually gain Trump support among conservative Catholics who are not the biggest fans of the current Pope.

Meanwhile, Biden not only has to deal with criticisms of his political stances not matching his Church’s commands; Republicans are also trying to paint the Democratic Party as anti-religion and specifically anti-Catholic. Even Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, has been accused of criticising judicial nominees based on their faith.

And the death of Justice Ginsberg has opened the way for the subject to blow up further, with the Republican nomination of Barrett to the Supreme Court, adding a potentially decisive vote against Roe v. Wade. (The Supreme Court is one area where Catholics are over-represented — Barrett’s confirmation would mean that six of the nine justices would be Catholics).

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Barrett has faced numerous criticisms of her faith during previous confirmation hearings as a federal appeals judge; Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein remarked to Judge Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you”, a remark that has been resurrected by conservative pundits who are painting the Democrats as anti-religion.

Should Barrett’s nomination go ahead in the Senate, which Republican leaders have said will happen despite growing COVID-19 cases within their ranks, Democrats could be hurt if they appear hostile to the judge’s faith. Less than a month before election day, it remains to be seen which ticket will triumph in this wrestling match over Catholic voters, and both campaigns are poised to fight for this key demographic until the last moment.

The political impotence of the Catholic Church in the US, despite its sizable numbers, has been an historical anomaly. Elsewhere the Church has long leveraged its religious authority into considerable political power, and for centuries the Church even reserved the right to crown rulers in a number of monarchies, such as the Holy Roman Empire. Only in the United States, because of its historic separation of Church and state and the population’s suspicion of Catholicism, has it always remained relatively powerless.

Now, with the US presidential election less than a month away, American Catholics might emerge as the kingmakers between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.