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The Roman philosopher Celsus warned his second century audience that if the "seditious rebels" called Christians were allowed to prosper, they would threaten not only ancient pagan tradition but the entire Roman order. "If everyone were to do the same as you Christians," he wrote, "there would be nothing to prevent the emperor from being abandoned, alone and deserted, while earthly things would come into the control of the most lawless and savage barbarians."

Celsus did not get it exactly right, but by the middle of the fourth century, Christians were indeed helping create a new world order. Crucial doctrinal and political battles were fought by fierce competing factions, and some of the key players were the new "martyrs," monks and hermits who had "died" to self and to the world. They opposed and attacked—sometimes physically—any authority they deemed unrighteous.

The political influence of monks was most obvious in Egypt. Even Antony, despite being a hermit and a teacher of semi-eremetic monasticism, helped shape the larger theological movements of this day. In the Arian controversy (Arius denied the divinity of Christ), he stood with the orthodox side at a time when the imperial court was Arian-dominated. It was among Egyptian monks like Antony, in fact, that Athanasius (c.296-373), bishop of Alexandria, found protection for five years when the secret police of the Emperor Constantius II, an Arian, sought to arrest him.

At one point, according to Athanasius, Antony traveled to Alexandria and "denounced the Arians, saying that their heresy was the last of all and a forerunner of Antichrist." He even called the heretics "madmen" ("Ariomaniacs" in one translation). Despite the efforts of the Arian Emperor Valens (364-378) to destroy pro-Nicene monasticism in Egypt, pro-Nicene monks only grew in influence. The Christian historian Sozomen wrote that, "The monks were prepared to subject their necks to the sword rather than to swerve from the Nicene doctrines."

With the help of pro-Nicene Theodosius I, Nicene orthodoxy won in 381 at the Council of Constantinople. Theodosius then began a campaign to hinder paganism in the empire, and the desert monks became key players in this campaign.

When the emperor outlawed polytheistic rites in 391, the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus (reigned 385-412), confiscated pagan properties, especially the Temple of Sarapis, the most sacred site of Greco-Roman Alexandria. Seeing that the pagan population would not go down without a fight, Theophilus requested imperial troops for assistance and, according to one ancient source, "summoned some fathers to go to Alexandria one day, to pray and to destroy the heathen temples there."

When the monks arrived, they tore down the Serapeum and other smaller temples. Such heavy-handed tactics, as well as his program to build grand churches in place of the old pagan temples earned this bishop his nickname, "church pharaoh" of Egypt.

These monastic allies, however, were not easy to control. In 399 Theophilus found himself in trouble with the monks when he publicly defended the teachings of Origen (whom opponents said denied the importance of created matter, among other things). One source says, "The majority of the fathers (at Scetis) decreed that … the bishop ought to be abhorred by the entire body of the brethren as tainted with heresy of the worst kind." In anger the monks left their monasteries and again marched to Alexandria, "where they excited a riot against the bishop … and threatened to put him to death."

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