At least since the mid-14th century, there has been an idea that medieval Christianity was a wrong turn for the West, that without monotheism polytheistic Greek-speakers might have sailed the stars, as Carl Sagan imagined. Yet as thrilling as ancient history is, and as remarkable as its achievements were, Roman society was very alien to us in a way that the medieval wasn’t.
A Roman father had total power of life and death over his children, and female infanticide was not unusual. Romans would happily watch an innocent man being torn to pieces by a wild animal for entertainment; slavery was ubiquitous and it was assumed that a man would sexually abuse his female slave; charitable giving outside the family was rare, and those who reached rock bottom in the imperial city would be left to literally die in the gutter.
This was Tom Holland’s realisation: that, although as a classicist he was fascinated by the Greeks and Romans, he couldn’t help but feel a revulsion about their worldview, one which almost completely lacked any pity for the weak. That was because he was a child of the great revolution that began on that Friday in Judea.
Like Holland, I previously imagined Christianity as being a fun-sucking succession of prohibitions, lacking the glamour and vitality of the ancient gods. I pictured ancient Valhalla as a sort of never-ending stag do, while the Christian Heaven appeared as an eerily quiet place where you sat having tea with some great-aunt who disapproved of everything. The Viking religion seemed like it was specifically designed by adolescent males, while Christianity was thought up by elderly women.
And there is a reason for that. Christ appeared that Sunday to his women followers, and, paradoxically for a religion that excluded women from senior roles, it was very female-dominated. Research from early Christian communities in Athens and Rome suggests that women may have outnumbered men by 5 or 6 to 1. The appeal of the new religion was that it domesticated men.
Men can be very idiotic creatures; our bodies start producing huge amounts of testosterone around the age of 14, which gives us the compulsive urge to fornicate or fight. Our brains don’t fully develop until 24 or 25 (and some of us don’t really grow up even after that). In that window between sexual and mental maturity the gender gap in every range of idiotic behaviour goes off the scale — car crashes, drink-related accidents, hospitalisation from violence.
Unlike the totalitarian quasi-religions of the modern era — including the one currently developing in America — Christianity had no naïve illusions about human nature. We are fallen creatures; young men in particular are barbarians who need to be tamed.
As Henrich notes, in bird species male testosterone rises as mating season begins and they prepare to fight other males. The world is cruel, and in both birds and mammals, males with higher testosterone levels tend to have more mates and offspring. Polygyny, the practice of a male having more than one mate, is also associated with higher testosterone, while monogamy comes with lower male testosterone — although in both cases the causal arrow goes both ways.
So while low-testosterone men are more likely to be monogamous, the state of monogamy lowers their testosterone. So does childcare. As men are drawn into family life their testosterone levels plummet faster than those of their single contemporaries; that’s why many middle-aged men become obsessed with exercise in order to naturally up their T-levels.
Divorce acts as a form of de facto polygyny if powerful men are able to produce offspring with multiple women. It was standard practice in Ancient Rome but Jesus of Nazareth forbade it, seeing it as desertion. His followers opposed infanticide, which was largely initiated by men against females; they also prohibited men from having sex with anyone but their wives. For women this had huge benefits; for low-status males it was an even bigger boon, producing a sort of sexual socialism, or at least sexual social democracy.
From the late second century, Rome was struck by a series of epidemics that fatally weakened the empire. The Plague of Cyprian in the 250s also had a huge cultural impact; all of a sudden Christianity, a minority religion practised by maybe 5% of the population, was everywhere. Traditionalists would have been stunned by the sudden arrival of Christian processions, of younger relatives adopting this strange new faith, worshipping a common criminal. It would have been popular among women in particular.
The western empire was already in ruins by the time that the fatal blow came with the Justinian Plague in the 6th century. That, combined with a war between the Goths and Byzantines and a freakish period of cold weather, left Rome a ruin of no more than 20,000 people and, like in many former Roman cities, the power vacuum had left the running of the city to the local bishop, who had long since adopted the title of Papa, Pope.
Catholic Christianity was not destined to conquer Europe; it might not even have triumphed over rival interpretations of the faith, such as Arianism. Its eventual dominance owed a lot to its adoption by one of the fiercest of the western tribes, the Franks. In 496 the Frankish leader Clovis, in the midst of a losing battle with a rival German tribe, the Alemanni, cried out to the Christian God who his wife followed; the battle turned in his favour, and in return Clovis was baptised in Reims Cathedral, along with his followers. And this was the fascinating tale I explained to my young children, who were obviously enthralled.
Clovis’s wife Clotilde was from Burgundy, and was already Catholic, but her husband her previously resisted her demands for him to adopt her religion. Now he was persuaded, and it began a close relationship for “the first daughter of the Church”, as France would become; Charles X would become the last of Clovis’s descendants to be crowned at Reims cathedral, in 1825.
Clovis’s conversion also set about a series of events that would transform Europe; in 800AD the Frankish king Charles came to the aide of the Pope in his conflict with yet another German tribe, the Lombards. When he arrived in Rome in triumph, the Pope placed a crown on his head and Charles the Great — Charlemagne — was named Emperor of the West. Victorian academic Sir James Bryce wrote of this event that “From that moment modern history begins”, but Charlemagne’s empire was less interesting for the usual violence than for the sex, or at least the lack of it.
As well as gathering around him a group of scholars who arguably rescued western Europe from the Dark Ages, Charlemagne’s greatest legacy was in enacting the Catholic Church’s marriage laws. No man was to have more than one wife, no one was to marry a relative. This would have a revolutionary impact on western society, setting us apart from 95% of global cultures. Without cousin marriage, clans grew weaker as people married out; they saw themselves less as members of a patrilinear line and more as wider members of society. Church rules on consent were also vital too; marriage was a sacred institution, and no one could now enter into it unwillingly.
Soon the almost unthinkable developed, the idea of marrying for love, a process known as the “Romeo and Juliet Revolution”. Adult sons and daughters were no longer subject to the patriarch but were individuals in their own rights; increasingly they would set up their own separate homes upon marriage. They were individuals.
These marriage rules were a way of taming men, in particular high-status men, and they brought huge benefits. Polygamous societies are racked by violence and turmoil, because large numbers of males are left without mates and inevitably cause trouble. The Vikings are the classic historical example, Scandinavia exporting its excess men to terrorise the British Isles, France and what is now Russia.
St Vladimir, who brought the Viking Rus into the faith, supposedly had 500 concubines before accepting Christianity and becoming an improbable saint. The Rus — the name probably means “rowers” — were Vikings who had sailed down the rivers leading to the Black Sea, creating a state that would eventually evolve into the world’s largest. The tenth century Arab chronicler Ibn Fadlan had spent some time with them, calling them “Allah’s filthiest creatures”, an adventure which ten centuries later would become one of the biggest box office bombs in history.
Ibn Fadlan recalled how at the funeral of one Rus warrior a slave woman was sacrificed, having first been drugged and forced to have sex with the dead man’s friends, passed around like meat before her murder. It was once thought that a lot of similar tales about the Vikings were Christian propaganda, but multiple examples of human sacrifice have now been uncovered in graves, including in the British Isles.
The Rus had been a nuisance in Constantinople — no more than 50 were allowed in at the same time, like a cornershop next to a troubled comprehensive — and it was left to the Byzantine princess Anna Porphyrogenita to convert them by marriage to Vladimir, a prospect which naturally horrified her.
Her barbarian husband had initially been attracted to Islam, which permitted polygamy — and had the future rulers of Russia been Muslim history would have been very different. It was said that he changed his mind when his ambassadors walked into the Hagia Sophia and felt they were in heaven; the alternative, and perhaps more plausible, explanation is that Vladimir then heard about Islam’s prohibition on alcohol, and lamented that the Rus could never live without drink (“Ivan, call those other guys back in”).
Some Vikings took longer to abandon the old ways; King Canute, whose grandfather Harold Bluetooth had adopted Christianity, still continued the old Danish tradition of a handfast, or second wife. But he was the last officially polygamous ruler of England.
Today we barely notice how unnatural our norms are in a world where traditionally powerful men behaved with the brutality of Caesar or the libidinousness of St Vladimir. That all changed one Friday on a hillside in Judea. I sometimes wonder, though, what we will lose as church attendance continues to slide and, like Romans of the 3rd century, we see our gods dying around us.
America has seen one of the most rapid de-Christianisations in the past two decades and the results so far are not good. What is left is not the rationalist paradise some naïve public philosophers were claiming at the start of the 21st century, but a sort of distilled Christianity, which without the supernatural elements is far less rational: and so what results is endless moral panics, a world seen in stark black and white between good and evil, competitive sanctimony and the sentimental glorification of victimhood in which everyone wants the glory of being on the Cross.
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SubscribeI had heard of how the Chinese had a great deal of converts once the crime of Christianity conversion became lessened – as they believed Christian thinking, morals, philosophy, was what gave the Western societies such a huge edge in the world’s prosperity and advancement.
Christianity is the most intellectual of religions. Thousands of Monks hand copied tens of thousands of books of classics and Philosophy in monasteries across the Dark age lands so education could progress to the barbarians. 100 of the world’s most respected 120 philosophers are Christians as the chess like logic of philosophy is natural to Christianity thinking. The scientific Method its self was created by the scientist Priests, and all the Universities came from the Church’s natural inclination to educate and think deeply. A Priest was a remarkably educated man, multilingual, and basically a university degree in the ages no education was the norm
This coupled with the teaching of Christ on Morals, and ethics gave a religion unparalleled. Then the lines of communication spread from every big community to every other in all Europe and Middle East, the treaties, the trade this allowed, the roads kept open, this was the source of prosperity, The Church, and the common language of Latin allowed it.
The Far Eastern religions based on Confucianism supposed society was perfect, and thus any thinking which was outside the cannons was wrong at best, and apostasy at worse. 2500 years of his teachings set China and Japan in stone as thinking was limited to what was correct, nothing new, frozen.
Fatalist religions like in the East, Hinduism, Buddhism, missed that amazing Christian work ethic where one is put on the earth to work and produce as a societal and godly obligation, and not self contemplation, but duty, was the lot of man. ‘God helps those who help themselves’ ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop’.
Christianity gave the West, and thus the world, the intellectual basis – and the moral basis, for almost all which is good in the modern world. The problems is secular humanism has taken the intellectualism, but left out the morality, and thus what is wrong with the modern world.
Good heavens. There’s an opinion straight out of Victorian Britain. Not a single mention of the centuries of Islamic intellectual dominance and brilliance during which the Christian West was an unlearned backwater, or the remotest real understanding of the multi faceted beliefs and nuanced philosophies of the East, of which Confucianism was merely the simplest form, adopted by most (but far from all) Chinese emperors for its straightforward philosophy. Emperors tend to prefer simple religions – without too much need for contemplation of life beyond this world, and Roman Catholicism with its black and white approach to good and evil fits the mould well. (Even, of course, denying from the 9th century that ordinary humans have a spiritual aspect to their being, so that the only way to achieve a pure state was through approaching a priest for this spiritual input, not through one’s own individual and hence “heretical” practice).
Simric, you’re understanding and knowledge of the Middle Ages is unfortunately weak. Progress was always around, always happening.
Progress was not always around, it necessitates a few preconditions which in most cultures don’t exist. This is why many cultures still live as long time ago had they not been importing Western technology, and a few cultures still hunt and gather. You are taking progress for granted. Not that easy!
The great leap forward of the Christian world occurred because of the premises that God created the world with laws/constants and symmetry in structure. Those are the Laws of Nature and are predictable. This is why modern, systematic science developed in Christendom not outside of it.
Change always happen, progress, not!
Ah, the celebrated lack of “real understanding” which Simric of course possesses. As for “Emperors tend to prefer simple religions” this seems predicated on the belief that emperors have some sort of choice– as if choosing a religion were a bit like going into Starbucks, and the Emperor in front of you in the queue always goes for the espresso as the simplest choice. But in reality, most emperors don’t have the opportunity to select a religion which is, as it were, thrust upon them.
Nice to see Roman Catholicism selected as the punchbag of the thinking commentator again, although I’d certainly agree with Ed West that the recent manifestations of post Christianity are far more “black and white” than Catholicism ever was.
A myth. By brutal conquest Mohammed and his fellow murdering thugs conquered countries far more advanced than the primitive Arabs. For some years after the conquest, the civilising influence lingered, until stamped out by the curse of Islam Isam has produced nothing but violence and oppression for well over a thousand years.
Katy…really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world_contributions_to_Medieval_Europe
Guide us to “Christian World Contributions…” or else except Katy’s point as valid.
Wishful thinking Layla. Plus, wiki is not a reliable source. Better read the trusted work of Dario Fernando Moreira, “The Myth of Andalusian Paradise” and you will find document by document from Arab sources spilling out the truth. Or read Raymond Ibrahim, Sylvain Gouguenheim.
Islam doesn’t provide the prerequisite premises for the development of science. Islam had it’s Golden Age, from which it recovered, in contact with Christianity, where Islam was left alone, it’s just a tribal religion which doesn’t offer human or animal rights to its followers, let alone science!
Have you checked how many Muslim scientists won the Nobel prize?
Kathy, you are wrong about Islam. It is one of the three Great Religions of the Book, and should not be disrespected.
Sanford, Just in case you’re including Christianity as “a religion of the Book”, I would beg to differ. We follow Jesus of Nazareth, whom we believe to be the Word of God incarnate. Christianity is a religion of the Word. It was Muslims (who definitely are to be respected) who started defining us as “of the Book”, then many in the West followed suit. Big misunderstandimg.
God created mankind using words and communicates with mankind by His Word and through words which are written. Christianity is Jewish so if Judaism is a religion of the book then so it Christianity.
Neither Judaism nor Catholicism are religions “of the book.” The phrase came from the assumption by Muslims that the Bible was what made Judaism and Christianity what they were. It isn’t. The Bible is *tau Biblia,* the Books – emphasis on the plural. 72 books. A library.
With the New Testament, there are the telltale signs of mnemonic structures. In the beginning was the *preaching*. Even the Old Testament writers are more often prophets bring written about by others.
Islam, with its claim to beginning with a book effectively dictated by God, is inspired by Judaism and Christianity, but is very different.
Well said.
Think there are 66 books in the Bible
As Efrain points out, for Christians Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God, and He is a person, not a book. For Muslims, the Quran, a book, is the equivalent incarnate Word. So Muslims are “people of the book” in that sense. The reason they designate Christians and Jews as fellow “people of the book” is because whole sections of the Quran consist of (oddly garbled) versions of selected parts of the Torah/Old Testament, plus a fragment of Luke’s Gospel (the Annunciation story, taken completely out of context). Other stories referred to in the Quran are taken from apocryphal Jewish texts and non-canonical Christian legends that were around in the 7th century, such as the infant Jesus speaking from his cradle, or the boy Jesus turning lumps of clay into birds. The Quran gives the same weight to these as to actual Biblical stories, and the writers probably thought they were included in the Bible. Those are just a few of Islam’s misperceptions of Christianity, and Judaism.
You are such a learned and wise student of Islam, Hilary LW, what are your credentials and where did you study and what was the topic of your dissertation?
Or do you, like Jesus, speak on your own authority… ?
It seems you are a christian, so why do you say that Muslims are definitely to be respected? Islam has no respect for christianity as it denies the basic tenet of christianity , that Jesus was the son of God. In other words, Islam denies christianity any legitimate basis. So why would you respect it?
As Christ said:
I shall love my neighbour, that doesn’t mean to love Islam and those who follow it. Don’t forget that Jesus said, “And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” also, “Be gentle as doves and wise as serpents”. He warned us to see through lies and stand for truth.
I beg to differ. The more I know about Islam, the least I respect it. Unless I don’t believe in human rights. I believe even in animal rights.
“The centuries of Islamic intellectual dominance” are the centuries immediately following the conquest of the intellectual centers of Western Christianity in North Africa by Islamic invaders. Pure coincidence, of course.
Not to mention taking Byzantium.
Constantinople please! On Tuesday, May 29th, 1453, just before lunch.
Which the Western church refused to assist in because they wanted to see the end of the pesky Eastern church.
All civilisations, except the very first, build on previous ones. The Islamic Umayyad and Abbassid Caliphates were very enlightened by the standards of their day, and certainly much more open to Ancient Greek and Hellenistic thought that Christian Europe at the same time.
It was only later than I believe that Islamic scholars or jurists declared that, as I think, ‘the gates of itjihad’ to be closed, and Islamic tradition, Quran and hadith etc to be supreme over any other form of wisdom or knowledge.
It is certainly true that the Ottomans, who though they were more ‘tolerant’ by a long way than Christian nations of the same period, were notably uninterested in intellectual endeavour. Vastly fewer book titles were published by comparison even after printing’s eventual introduction in Turkey.
I think the point is that there is no equivalence of ‘Christian’ scholars etc. They were scholars, as are those that happened to be scholars etc when Islam was dominating. They should not be called “Islamic Scholars” (or whatever)…unless of course they are Scholars of Islam 🙂
Not sure where do you take this opinion? Because if we put it to the test, you fail…..
They were not tolerant, but extremely greedy and ignorant. They conquered East European territories and then demanded the rulers to pay the jizya, enslaved young women and boys. He turned the girls into servants or wives, and the boys into janissaries. A Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran wrote that there was no empire more impotent than the Ottoman. The conquered nations fought teeth and nail to reconquer their lands from the hands of the Turks. I could list you many battles to regain freedom. The West believes a lot of baloneys about the Islamic sophistication, art loving and other wishful thinking nice things.
Less coincidence than you imagine.
In the so-called dark ages, the study of classical philosophy had been abandoned. It had long since been put into distillations in compiled textbooks like the Sentences of Peter Lombard. People no longer had access to things like Galen or Aristotle.
When Islam was young, it prided itself on fearlessness. Imams engaged priests in debate – and got their asses handed to them. Included in those textbooks was a solid introduction to logic!
So every Islamic lord started sponsoring expeditions to seek works of classical philosophy. The resulting translation movement was a massive boon to the Arab world.
After encountering the Arab world in the Crusades, Europeans engaged in their own translation movement. At first, they translated from Arabic: then they got access to (and training in) Greek. By the twelfth century, Europems like Thomas Aquinas and Robert Grosseteste were translation from the original.
By the way:
Twelfth century Europeans liked to say they were dwarves on the shoulders, but they were lying to themselves. They were Titans on the shoulder of giants. They invented fundamental technologies the Romans never imagined. The crank – seriously – is a twelfth century European invention. So were iron ploughs – we were scratching with sticks before – three crop rotation, horse harnesses for agriculture, stirrups, and power technology. This is what let the West explode over Germany bottomland and found thousands of new cities in that century. Islam never imagined such progress: it was a Western Christian thing.
Most of those highly intellectual Muslim scholars were Greeks, Armenians, and not really the Arabs. But yes, Islam had its Renaissance, only there is a huge difference between the religions. First is Islam is secular and religious law. The Koran covers every act from how to eat, wash, brush your teeth, all social laws (which is why law courts are religious in Islam as secular law is an outside invention.). When Christ was asked if eating pork was allowed he replied ‘It is what comes out of your mouth, not which goes in, that can offend God’.
Christ said secular law was the legitimate law of the land “Show Me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought Him a denarius. 20 ‘Whose imige is this, and whose inscription?’ 21“Caesar’s,” they answered. So Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.””
Islam is a religion of initiates, say like the Masons, where the secrets are only known to those high enough in understanding to learn them. I really recommend Burton’s Biography where he became an actual high spiritual leader in Hinduism, Seikism, and Islam (and the first Westerner to go on Haj) To hear first hand the fundamental differences between these religions. And this is why Islam always is exceedingly Hierarchical, it is a religion of authority, one which remains in feudal philosophy, and so their Renaissance did not grow like the Christian one did. It does not promote pure intellectualism and equality, which Christianity does.
Sanford, I admire your passionate defence of your favoured religion. The Sufis I know would rather disagree with you. (Sufism derives of course from the term Faylasufs, the intellectual philosophers who were praised in early Islam, as the caliphate did indeed gather books and people together from all their territories to make a cultural and philosophical melting pot, as well as beyond, such as their well known taking of decimal numbers and trigonometric tables from Hindu mathematicians). One commenter above suggests I denied progress always happened. I don’t, I enjoyed this article, and I certainly understand Christianity to have had many facets even in the millennium of Catholic dominance in the West, after Justinian closed the last schools of “pagan philosophy.” But you will find that there are official hierarchies of power in all the big religions, trying to impose a preferred set of beliefs usually favouring those holding the reins, and there are distinct, usually more interesting, challenges to those hierarchies. A fatalistic view in Hinduism, for example, which appealed to Northern Indian Brahmins in the 19th century who had the ear of their new British rulers, was rioted against extensively by Southerners who had at the time a very different set of more egalitarian beliefs, but the Empire imposed them as they were far more convenient for comfortable British rule.
Medieval Catholicism made a spectacular attempt to crush alternative perspectives which is indeed an obvious thing to attack (it wasn’t, of course, terribly successful at doing that, which is why I have more time for it than some of the hardline modern sects) and certainly aspects of modern Islam and modern atheistic/communistic/fascist ideologies have attempted the same.
Surely in some major respects Islam is a great deal LESS hierarchical than Christianity. Islam has no pope or bishopry to pronounce and rule on doctrinal orthodoxy.
That’s only catholicism…not biblical christianity
What ever that means to you….
Not a strong perspective! In Islam there is no separation of powers, therefore, the imams have great power as in Iran, or S Arabia, and they dictate what and how! They mean it with the sword. Not to mention that the same religion consider Muslims superior just for the fact that they are Muslims, and demean those who are infidels considering them lower than apes and pigs. On the other hand, Christianity teaches that we are precious just for the fact that we are God’s creation – this is the common denominator for all humans.
No they were indeed not really Arabs and the west really doesn’t use Arabic numerals and doesn’t use words like all-jibr (algebra) … right ? Am I right?
Those are Hindu numerals and the overrated Arab invention of algebra was practiced by Greeks as Diophantine numbers.
Yeah, not a lot of familiarity with the intellectual strain of Said’s “Orientalism” here …
Not so backward as you might think, but you are neglecting that there was a large, advanced, Christian civilization in the period you refer to, the Byzantine Empire. It would make more sense to compare China to Byzantium than to the “unlearned backwater” of the West.
And as I read Dario Fernando Moreira’s book, “The Myth of Andalusian Paradise”, the Spaniards and the Visigoth kings were much more civilized, but unfortunately the Moorish conquest meant the destruction of numerous cathedrals, artefacts and their lifestyle. It was a great loss for Europe. If it wasn’t for Charles Martel, later Pelayo, Isabella of Castile and Fernand of Aragon, Spain would look like Morocco or Algier.
The ‘Mustard Seed’ that Liberated Christian Spain from Islamic Rule (raymondibrahim.com)
I guess the question that immediately comes to mind is, what has happened to that great Islamic intellectual tradition? Looking around Islamic nations today it’s hard to see one that’s in any way progressive or tolerant, not to mention prosperous.
As Andrew Fisher mentioned above, the rise in “clerical” power and the closing of the gates of interpretation seems to be where the intellectual decline set in.
The Quran doesn’t allow interpretation. It is considered the word of God, end of discussion. The rest is blasphemy.
The Quran doesn’t allow freedom of though but submission. And that has consequences.
I don’t know if you deliberately ignore the christianity of the Byzantine empire that co-existed the one you call “Islamic intellectual dominance”. A great civilization was developed there which in 1453 was forcely moved to the west (when Ottomans conquered Constantinople) contributing to “Enlightement”. The Arabs highly interacted with Byzantium. Christianity is not all about the European west.
I’m not sure if we define “enlightenment” in the same way.
Well said
I wonder why present day China still persecutes Christians as managed properly they could be beneficial like Britain’s Quaker community in 18th and 19th century, in helping their economic miracle.
Marxists were and are Christophobes. Marxist don’t like competition.
Christianity is not the most intellectual of religions, that is very presumptuous and arrogant.
Religions are only based on a fear of death, but most intellectual religions avoid contractual promises which somehow gaurentee life after death but only if you behave and read the bible regularly or stand every Sunday in a freezer called a church.
And one small matter that bothers me is the possibility that I could be good, kind, sin free and a really great guy for all my life, but when I die a spiritual dude called Peter could tell me , ‘Sorry Guv, you’ve been really great but choose the wrong god, so off you go and burn ‘.
I really don’t think so!!!!
So what’s my point, well if you looked at all religions and tried not to judge them, they are all about life after death, so when you get up there don’t be surprised if god turns out to be a goat, or possibly a rabbit or even a fish, after all we are all gods creatures, OR ARE WE???
RICHARD,
PAGAN
Good thinking. But what if the god “up there” turned about to be anti-christian, and then all the christians were sent of to burn after arriving at the gates?
Thanks for an entertaining account of the god you don’t believe in. You may be pleased to know that many Christians share your disbelief in the god you describe.
I am not sure if you read the article above which contradicts you big time.
In fact, religions deal very well with fear, better than atheism which offers nothing. But, we should never put all religions in the same basket because their fundamental tenets are very different.
Christianity created a strong frame in which the unruly human temperament was tamed – with all the beneficial consequences described above (if you haven’t noticed: marriage, monogamy, rights for women and children).
The problem Sanford, with interpreting from a singular perspective is that such texts inevitably read like advertisements to persuade the reader of the authors authority within their cabal; non believers are expelled thereby welcoming us back to the middle ages and witch burning. I would rather encounter an intelligent being than a moral idiot.
The Middle Age was not dark, dark was the mind of atheist, anti-Christian “enlightened” French philosophers who created chaos in France during the revolution and far more deaths than the witch hunt, and perpetrated calumny against Christ.
The Witch Hunt – was overexaggerated by those who dislike Christianity in general and Catholicism in special. A Romanian religion historian I P Couliano actually studied the archives and concluded that the Inquisition convicted far less people than it was believed. But big lies die slow.
Yes, I heard John Favreau remark that the new atheists thought they would get rid of God, but didn’t realise that you can’t get rid of religion.
The present ’woke’ self-righteousness denunciations and blasphemies which separate the ‘called’ from the ‘damned’ is nothing less than fundamentalist religious fervour.
Except that while fundamentalists want to go back to some original truth or other, wokeists reject the past as fundamentally flawed and oppressive.
They’re fundamentalists of the future! Their foundational myth is “the unreality god”. This is really dangerous, because one is justified to destroy everything in the name of a non-existent future.
And, they become as powerful as gods.
they have the psychology of fundamentalists, but their beliefs comprise of a shifting web of consumer identity fashions, rather than any solid foundations, as in religious fundamentalism. A weird, sometimes farcical concoction.
Wrong. Basically the author just described the history of the first and still biggest woke movement… the Christian church, as it slowly ‘cancelled’ slavery, wanton cruelty, polygamy, infidelity, etc. Get it?
.
Yes, but wokeists seem determined to bring this back.
Christianity a woke movement? Really?
That doesn’t make religion bad, but the ideologies who follow fundamentalist fervour.
A great article! Thank you. But I find it disturbingly vague to refer to George Floyd as ‘another criminal put to death by the authorities’. To me he was a career criminal killed by excess police force.
But the force applied by the police was force that the police had been taught/instructed to use in such situations. And nobody complained when people like Timothy Timper died in the same way, because Timothy Timper was white.
The trial is not going well for Floyd. His chief witness has ‘taken the fifth’ and it seems that the (allegedly) fake $20 note was being used in a drug deal. We have also known for some time that Floyd said ‘I can’t breathe’ before he was put on the ground. Indeed, he asked to be put on the ground, having fought his way out of the police car.
However, as Tim Pool said yesterday, the jury may well find Chavin guilty anyway, for a variety of cultural and political reasons, or simply out of fear for their lives and/or fear of the rioting, killing, burning and looting that will follow.
the force applied by the police was force that the police had been taught/instructed to use in such situations.
I thought that was still very much up for debate. For instance, one of the witnesses, Chauvin’s own supervising officer, retired Minneapolis Police Sergeant David Pleoger, said Chauvin’s knee should have come off Floyd’s neck when he ceased resisting, when Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground, not after nearly ten minutes. And now, Minneapolis police lieutenant Richard Zimmerman has told the jury that it was not an acceptable use of force for Chauvin to press his knee to the neck of a prone suspect. Asked why, he responded, “If you kneel on a person’s neck, that can kill them.”
Well, yes, to the extent that I am familiar with the details you are probably correct to say the Chauvin should have removed his knee sooner. And I am aware of the fact that Chauvin himself had a dubious past and was, shall we say, still fortunate to have been on the force. But the fact is that Floyd was on all manner of drugs, had done all manner of very bad things, had all manner of medical issues, and had not taken kindly to his arrest. Something like this was going to happen to him sooner or later.
Same with Jesus , eh? Something like that was going to happen to him sooner or later, right?
Out of the mouths of Annas, Caiphas and the most fascist members of the Sanhedrin, right?
Nothing happened to Jesus. The character “Jesus” you are talking about didn’t exist.
You just woke up and thought to enlighten us.
There is more documentary evidence that he existed than there is for Julius Caesar. Wishful thinking on your part perhaps!
Also the autopsy shows that whatever it looks like the pressure on Floyd’s neck wasn’t the cause of death.Christianity concerns the truth,hence the swearing in in courts. It is the new secularism that is subjective & if this continues might as well get rid justice system & have summary justice-at least it will be cheaper.
Yes, ten minutes sounds too long. Apparently training protocols adivsed that there was a risk of asphyxiation holding someone down on their chest for too long, so not sure if the officer was following his training properly.
Still, I don’t know if there is a provable causal connection between this, and heart-attack of someone on drugs.
A lot of hysteria surrounding this case, which muddies the waters obviously
Well his family and lawyers have ‘ trousered’
the incredible sum of $ 27 million.
“So all’s well that ends well”.
Source?
Minneapolis Civil Court Award! Madness!
Yes it did sound too long, maybe eight snd a half would be a good middle ground?
Are you fookin’ insane ?!
Are you fookin’ insane?
What about the toxicology report? Or was he just full of Lucozade?
When UK police mistook Stephen Waldorf for a wanted criminal and nearly killed him, the fact that he had illegal drugs in his system was brought up too.
Are you suggesting police should anticipate the results of toxicology reports and adjust their use of force accordingly?
Waldorf was shot five times by the Police at point blank range! In fact they had fired about twelve shots, but such was their pathetic marksmanship at least seven shots missed.
Had he died,as he very nearly did, the toxicology report would have been irrelevant.
This is in complete contrast to Floyd where the toxicology report is likely to prove that he died of ‘substance abuse’, and not throttling by a policeman.
Had he died,as he very nearly did, the toxicology report would have been irrelevant.
Are you suggesting it was of any relevance? I couldn’t see any, beyond an insinuation by the police that even if they had shot the wrong person, at least he was a bad person. If that was not the relevance, then what was?
And it remains to be seen whether the court will decide Floyd’s toxicology report proves Chauvin had nothing to do with his death.
No off course not, it was a gross slur by the Met, who as you may recall we used to describe as “The Best Police Money Can Buy!”.
In fact the two policeman were committed for trial and ultimately acquitted, but the taxpayer ended up paying £150K in compensation! (1985 prices).
However I can see no equivalence with the Floyd affair, which either way appears accidental.
In contrast the Waldorf affair was close to murder, particularly when you consider the choice language used by one of the policeman (unrepeatable on UnHerd off course!), in the final moments of that appalling incident.
I don’t think Floyd’s death is equivalent, though there are parallels.
However, his death appears far from accidental to me. Chauvin did not seem to accidentally place his knee on Floyd’s neck. Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe. For the last few minutes, he was limp and unresponsive. And bystanders pointed out again and again that Chauvin was killing him.
Well I’m afraid we shall have differ on this and await the Jury’s verdict.
A video shot from another angle shows that Chauvin was kneeling on his shoulder – which one of the police officers admitted in court (watch Ben Shapiro’s video on this), and that GF had so much drugs that could have kill a horse – which also affects breathing. Do facts matter?
Likely? Are you Jesus? Or a fortune teller?
Neither, but you are spot on in describing Jesus as a ‘fortune teller’ to put it politely.
Toxicology reports are irrelevant here except as slander and liable against the victim and justifying the crucifiers …
So what does that have to do with a police knee in your neck for ten minutes?!
It doesn’t kill you! But opiate abuse does.
Lt. Zimmerman testified that, “If your knee is on a person’s neck, that can kill him.” As head of the Minneapolis Police Department’s homicide division, he might know a thing or two about such matters.
A doctor’s professional opinion matters more than a police officer’s, in this matter.
There was a video from another angle which showed that Chauvin’s knee was on GF’s shoulder not neck, and GF complained that he cannot breath in the car when there was no one around him.
“We know where you live,” is a threat the jurors will take very seriously. A win by the prosecution, which is facing a panoply of high-profile gadflies in the woke bench, would confirm the left in its seeksorrow exploitation of minorities.
Thou shalt not bear false witness … and a sin against the Holy Spirit is the only sin not forgivable. You be going to hell or the purg for a long, long time, bro …
And your evidence for your claims is? And when you have given us the evidence, you can show us what logic is contained within your statements.
Don’t play God, because you aren’t. First of all, you need to place the facts into the right verses. Otherwise is just plain fraud.
Let’s not forget that (on this day, God Friday, according to the Gospel of John) Pilate said to the Chief Priests “Take ye him: for I find no fault in him”, not exactly the same type of criminal as George Floyd, and not the same type of group crucifying him. So it’s dubious at best to refer to Jesus as a criminal (which Holland and now West do)
Richard you just Pearsed the side of Jesus as the top of the spearse
I think the point is that absent the Xtian belief (i.e., the metaphysical belief in the human being as a temple of god), killing a junkie is a not unreasonable act (if, as appears from the absence of any particular motive, was Officer Chauvin’s thought process).
Of course! Only Christians can value human life!
Tired old nonsense.
Christians value human life as being unique, irreplaceable, and as an intrinsic value because we are all created in God’s image and likeness.
Other religions may value human life, but this is what characterizes Christianity.
No need to be so upset!
non-Christians are not the temple of god, as god will cast them down the waste chute of the after life.
Pure White Male Racist Christian White Fascist Supremacism.
And what might you be? And what gives you the right to spew neo-Marxist Newspeak empty words?
I have read Tom Holland’s book on this subject, and attended one of his interviews/lectures to promote the book. I sometimes find the arguments tenuous, and I don’t find him to be a good writer.
I can, however, just about accept that the West was shaped largely by Christianity. I cannot accept his argument that the woke/progressive movement is informed by Christianity, largely because it contains no mercy or forgiveness. Here I am much more aligned with Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory i.e. that the woke/progressive movement that began in the 1960s is the first movement that does not incorporate and build on any of the positive elements of the movements that brought us this far. Instead, it throws them all aside and insists that we start again. The disasters of this can increasingly be seen. Wilber labels this the Green Stage or something like that (not in an environmental sense).
As Ed says, the West has been unique in human history in that we have been the first societies not to have been governed on the strong man principle. However, perhaps owing to the collapse of Christianity and/or the increasing influence of what Ken Wilber calls the Green Stage, we are now ruled by incompetent, stupid, self-regarding fools who are even worse than strong men, some of whom have been and are at least competent.
One sees this most starkly in the form of Putin, a strong man who is deeply unpleasant and corrupt but manifestly competent relative to the delusional, corrupt and self-regarding twerps who run the EU and all western European countries.
Greece and Rome shaped the West, Christianity was an afterthought.
My perfectly mild response to your post is ‘Waiting for Godot’, so to speak.
Sadly my innocuous reply has been censored!
UnHerd is worse than
the Spanish Inquisition!
12.56 BST: The Censor has relented.! Hallelujah!
As a Polytheistic society you could ‘worship’ who or you what liked. The only caveat for Religion’ was that you didn’t kill people and you didn’t expect the State to fund you.
By say the first century most ‘worshiped’ In the Arena, the Circus, Theatre or Baths!
Slavery was on its way out as not a worthwhile economic model. ‘Hire & Fire’ was much better.
The rise of Christianity and the contemporary Barbarian invasions paradoxically helped to preserve Slavery.
The Church only became ‘excited about Slavery in the late 18th century, fourteen hundred years after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Tell that to the Jews, the Druids, and the Manicheans, all of which were repressed by polytheistic Rome. Not to mention, of course, Christians, who were burned, crucified, and fed to wild animals by the thousands.
Oh dear. The Jews were not ‘persecuted’ because of their religion. Why do you think Pilate was kind enough how to crucify the Nazarene on a Friday, at the request of the Jewish hierarchy?
The Druids, were said to perform human sacrifice, but crucially were the core of the Britons resistance to Roman conquest.
The Manichaeans were seen as pernicious Sassanian Persian sect, and persecuted accordingly.
It has long been acknowledged that the persecution of the Christians had been grossly exaggerated for all too obvious reasons. Even the ‘great’ persecution of Diocletian has been described by Robin Lane Fox as “too little too late”
I thought the very idea of the West went back to the ancient Greeks and their wars with Persia, or the East. Which isn’t to deny that Christianity has shaped the West since.
The West is built on revelation (Jerusalem), and reason (Athens).
Wokeness is what you get if you take the Christ out of Christianity, especially if your Christianity was in the Calvinist tradition to start with. In that light it is easy to see the “Woke” viewing themselves as the Elect, and the rest of us as the damned.
Yup.
Woke is not liberal, not progressive, not socialist, not Left and social justice warriors are the equivalent of the rift wing fascist John Birch Society. So only in that sense are you correct about it haven arisen in the 1960s.
Christianity is not progressive.
Christianity is truly progressive, but progressives have distorted so much language that words don’t mean anymore what they use to mean.
You made a claim, but reality contradicts you. You’re not a fan of truth do you?
The trial is ongoing. It has not yet been proved that Floyd was killed, let alone “put to death”, as opposed to dying of a self-inflicted drug overdose.
Exactly. It is most disappointing that some many writers, who really should know better given their position in forming opinion, are disregarding the fact that a trial is in progress.
I can’t help wondering if your attitude, and that of some other commenters, would be the same if video had surfaced of Floyd kneeling on someone’s neck for nearly ten minutes, after which that someone was found to have died.
IF Floyd was a policeman on duty trying to restrain a drugged-out criminal refusing arrest, then your wondering may present a valid question.
But he wasn’t.
If Chauvin had been trying to restrain Floyd, your comment might have some validity. Surveillance video from a nearby restaurant casts severe doubt on police claims that Floyd was resisting arrest, and for the last few minutes of his life, he was prone, handcuffed, and totally flaccid. Whatever Chauvin was trying to do, it didn’t look like restraint.
Excellent! Floyd kneeling in Chauvinist’s neck for ten minutes, mebbe?
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. A writer who writes well but doesn’t really understand what he’s writing about….but many will read this and think he does and that his comparisons are correct…I’m not sure the writer even thinks these comparisons are correct. It’s just a fluf article that he can link to the history of this weekend to somehow give the fluf weight.
Bravo, you encapsulate the much needed revisionist view perfectly. The trope of Christianity as solely vehicle of patriarchal oppression need to be done away with. Else, Christianity will be seen as irredeemably sexist racist etc. When in fact it did more to saves us, from those horrors than anything else and we owe it, and Judaism, a profound debt of gratitude,
The Inwuisition and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Curia thank you . Mussolini thanks you. Franco thanks you. Hitler, a Roman Catholic, thanks you.
There is a lot of chaos in your thinking. Word sausage is not reasoning.
George Floyd, another criminal put to death by the authorities,
why even bother with the trial when the judge sits among us.
This article illustrates how the beautiful aroma of Christ’s teaching and influence has blessed the world for 2,000 years. I’m particularly interested in the history of Christian Revivals. It is very significant how a period of revival can transform a community and nation for the better. But it doesn’t last because subsequent generations do not have the same passion and conviction of the Revival generation – until the next Revival springs up.
So Ed when you write about “losing Christianity” and “the sea of faith has retreated” and “rapid de-Christianization” you do not take this into account. You’re not alone. You, some of your fellow columnists and some commenters do not understand that Christianity has a supernatural source of power which can bring it back to life in the face of apparent terminal illness and indeed death. Resurrection power is at the heart of the Church’s life. Rumours of the Church’s demise are greatly exaggerated because we have Someone in charge who rose from the dead and pours out His Life giving Spirit upon His people.
Christianity is a desert weed — it does not flourish among the comfortable, much less the respectable.
My comment about another desert religion has been removed thereby proving my point.It is interesting that the protestant version of Christianity is growing fast in South America-Protestant version helped the growth of capitalism-claiming personal relationship in prayer and bringing translation Bible like St James’ but eventually meant people had to provide their own social services ,so brought about secularism as people no longer needed religion to provide schools and hospitals.
You should be interested in Christian Massacres … that is, the genicides committed by Roman Catholic Christians the world over … and those committed by Protestant Christians like the English and the Dutch snd the Germans the world over. Such Blessings!!!
Religion does get caught up in politics and bad things happen in its name as a result. But that should not blind us to the overall benefits which Christianity has brought to the world.
People aren’t christian or catholic or muslim because they come from a country that claims to be so..
wasn’t it jesus who said “by their fruit you will know them”. You will know who christians really are by what they do…..and it wasn’t by doing evil…but good…
This is theory obviously…as all of this is..
Christ’s aromatic teaching stinks.
Why do you think that?
It’s always interesting to hear about religion from the point of view of people who don’t believe in the supernatural side of it. This happened that happened, usually with some statement quantified with an adjective like ‘incredibly’ or ‘amazingly’.
That criminal crucified on the hillside, according to at least one Roman eye witness, “was the son of God”.
So perhaps it was less of a surprise when he wasn’t in the tomb on the third day.
The resurrection had to happen.
Thanks Mr West. A most interesting article especially about the Vikings the admiration for whom has always eluded me especially after finding out about their treatment of slaves. Christianity WAS revolutionary in its moral teachings. Those of you who are unsure, read Galatians and reflect on what Paul is saying about equality in the eyes of God. Imagine how the Christian listeners would have reacted to the reading of that letter – and the pagans too…….
Yes Galatians us a fine book. Paul crested Christianity with it.
Christianity teaches (as do all semitic doctrines) that the world is divided up into two groups of people. “Our gang”, the favoured, and the others beneath consideration who do not have “our” superior insight in to the true nature of the world.
Semitic doctrines are fundamentally racist.
You are confusing Christianity with Gnosticism, Manicheism, Islam. In Christianity people have equal dignity, it also teaches that we are unique and valued as such.
How does Paul know how “God” sees equality?
According to Christian myth, the only “way to god” is through Christ. Does that “God” see Christians and non-Christians as equal? As a non-Christian, it doesn’t seem very likely to me. I see it more as a victim of racism would see racism.
This was a very good read from a rarely seen perspective today, thank you Ed!
The last paragraph, of this otherwise brilliant revision of church history, leaves me dismayed. Had the author considered the true roots of the Inquisition and the meaning of the Cather movement and had he grown up in transcendental New England, he might have reached a more sanguine view of the change taking place in America. To do that, however, he would necessarily have to realize that history is not just the singularities but also the process. He would have to recognize that the lens through which we look matters and that his is uniquely Euro-centric and cast in Catholicism. There are certainly other ways we can look at the events of this world.
Well said
Interesting argument flawed by superficial history. The history of Rus was centered in Kyiv, not Moscow. It was Kyivan prelates who taught Muscovy Christianity. Please don’t go along with modern Russia stealing history the same was it steals land from other countries. Russia never traced its history to Rus until the modern age. It was called Muscovy, not “Russia” for centuries. Please make that clear.
You mean the way the English Spanish and Portuguese stole land?
And the way the muslims invaded and stole land, and then subdued, exploited and abused the people, all with the (surprise, surprise) of their god _allah
It is always surprising and unsettling to me when intelligent, articulate people such as the author glibly and unquestioningly take for granted conventional narrative and cultural dogma.
Religion is powerful, scary in a way. We have convinced ourselves that we cannot question it, that supernatural beliefs must be respected, even to the detriment of others. So people with antithetical beliefs and absurd dogmas are able to establish cultural footholds in societies which claim to see diversity only as a desirable social component, whereas the very people they tolerate do not accept diversity of thought in their own restricted thinking. Religion is the obvious, but not the only collective to cultivate restrictive thinking. But we give religion such a pass that it is frowned upon, if not possibly dangerous to say to a Jew, that Moses never existed, to a Muslim that Abraham did not, or to a Christian that Jesus only came into fictitious existence some 50 years after his supposed death. This gets people riled. There is little tolerance for diversity of thought, as one’s identity is so caught up in the fiction.
In this article the conventionally assumptions about the Jesus figure and the origins and progress of Christianity, though numerous (dare I say legion) are accepted by many as fact, never to be disputed or subject to intellectual inquiry. So inviolable is religious dogma to legitimate question.
This article, while well written and even amusing, is nothing but Christian apologia.
Attacked in the comments by the most devout of the devout lol !
“The impact of the faith, and of the Roman Catholic Church in particular, would revolutionise the way humans think, and how they related to each other, in ways that evolutionary biologists and psychologists are only now beginning to explain.”
It depends on the time frame in question. Jordan Peterson’s synthesis Maps of Meaning came out in 1999, 22 years ago.
In my view it is surprising a nod was not made to Peterson’s contribution.
I read that work long before Peterson’s fame, and it is good, but let’s not get carried away about its influence, shall we?
Ayn Rand? Mein Kampf?
Mr West, your ancestor Walter Leaf would be very disappointed!
Presumably you are one of those who believe that Galleys were rowed by slaves, a la Ben Hur?
The entire matrix of the Western World was developed in Ancient Greece centuries before the ‘Immaculate Conception’ and the arrival of the Nazarene. Politics, Philosophy, Science, Literature,
Art, Rhetoric, Poetry, competitive Sport, all the result of that intellectual phenomena known as Ancient Greece. Additionally the Romans would toss in Law, superb Architecture, and that almost unique ability to exercise Imperium (to Rule).
What could Christianity bring to such a Party? Sentimentality and an a denial of the finality of death, plus until recently, merciless persecution rather similar in to its ‘cousin’ Islam.
Incidentally Tom Holland took a double first in the English Tripos at Cambridge.
Since graduating, to my knowledge, Tom Holland has not made a direct contribution to the economic well-being of the citizens of the UK.
A double first in the English Tripos is a poor substitute for training in a hard and logically based discipline.
As with nearly all Arts & Humanity degrees, interesting but ultimately ephemeral.
Science like its brother War, is “ the father of all things”.
Interesting article. Arguably Christianity was a cultural solution to the excesses of agricultural societies which developed spectacular inequalities. Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies tend to be much more egalitarian, at least serially monogamous, and less stratified in rank or kinship.
21st century and we still haven’t educated people out of religion. Depressing.
What should take its place?
Self actualization, self awareness, compassion, conscience, empathy and mutual benefit and peaceful solidarity not requiring a Zeus or Brahma
All the structures of religion but without God. Easier to accept a concept of God and live by that, surely?
Ed you’re one of my favourite writers in the whole wide world.
It’s obvious to see Christianity as the evolution from ‘eye for an eye’ to ‘turn the other cheek’ and the domino effect of that, but not so easy for people to get a grasp of what we do with the inevitable leadership vacuum that results after a revolution. Are we simply not evolved enough to be self-governing? It’s a question that has taken up a lot of my brain. Thanks for a lovely article.
I wonder the same thing. Reading the comments here provides more evidence that we are not …
Today we barely notice how unnatural our norms are in a world where traditionally powerful men behaved with the brutality of Caesar or the libidinousness of St Vladimir. That all changed one Friday on a hillside in Judea.
Oh please. As if there weren’t hundreds of brutal, libidinous Christian kings. All those put upon ladies-in-waiting probably would have been much better off as 12th wives.
What teachings of Jesus did these “Christian” kings use to justify their libidinous brutality?
That’s the point though isn’t it, their Christianity didn’t stop them.
Then I would have to say that biblicly they weren’t christian….btw I’m not a believer..
Christianity is a belief system. A Christian is someone who holds that belief system to be true. . A Christian can do wrong, while at the same time as he still holds that belief. He still a Christian.
btw, I am not a believer.
No true Scotsman eh?
I’d imagine their justification was some variant of render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
All that brutality and licentiousness is now readily available to all via the miracle of television and cinema. Only the venues have changed since Roman times.
This is irrelevant, Christianity has never claimed people won’t be brutal and libidinous. The point is how that brutality was understood, not as a strength but a failing, and one that it might be possible to overcome.
Oh puh-lease! You are making me blush !
Of course it is relevant. The author explicitly claims “traditionally powerful men behaved with the brutality of Caesar or the libidinousness of St Vladimir” and then “that all changed” when Christ came along. To which I responded, no . .it didn’t.
It created a counter current which ended up creating the West. You cannot expect to change humans fast. It required hundreds of years to cut the hedonistic nature, unfortunately, Marxism brought that back because they like to play with human weaknesses.
Not too many surprises here — after all “the West” was called “Christendom”
I will note that the author left off the first and possibly most impactful “martial conversion” — Constantine and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
It was Constantine’s mother, Helena who was the real problem.
Rather like something out of that epic film “The Life of Brian” (1972).
What problem?
I wonder about China which has never been Christian (or Muslim or Jewish). Also India – at least the Hind part. Should they still be eating babies (at least female ones)?
The First Crusaders are said to have eaten babies, mistakenly believing them to be Muslims’.
Are said to have … like Jesus us said to have … ?
That must have been a problem given the practical/ religious prohibition of eating pork in the Levantine.
It’s a pity that beheading is not prohibited.
“Are said” by whom?
Haven’t the Chinese substituted Dogs for female babies over the past few years?
I gather it counts towards their much heralded ‘rise out of poverty’.
Just Buddhist
Without the evil British colonialism they would still burn alive their wives.
Has either Ed West or Tom Holland addressed the reasons why the Christian mytheme no longer has the attractive power it once had?
As the author points out, “the New Atheists have won.” But they were merely piling on a mythological tradition which has been slowly dying for several centuries.
When myths stop gripping, you can’t blame the people who are no longer moved by them. It means the myths have been played out.
The status of Christianity now reminds one of Plutarch’s lament over the abandonment of the ancient oracles as he hears the cries of a dying Pan–a perception of the passing of one mythological tradition and the start of a new one.
Jung offered a fierce critique of Christianity saying that it was not psychologically tenable. He cited its overvaluation of the masculine vs the feminine, the spirit vs. the body, light vs. darkness, perfectionism vs. completeness. And its God is psychologically inadequate because he has to split off his own evil onto an external shadow figure–the devil. His only hope for Christianity’s future was if it could transform the male trinity into a quaternity by an inclusion of the feminine as divine and its god could own up to his own evil instead of projecting it onto a shadow figure. Obviously Christianity has been able to do neither, and is languishing.
That’s why for healing Jung and his followers turned for psychological healing to Eastern religions as well as reanimating the ancient pagan gods who still lurk in the collective unconscious, where they have been banished by Christianity.
An offshoot of Tom Holland’s thesis may be that now because of Christianity’s emphasis on love and mercy and the dignity of the individual, we can now see the horrid barbarity at the heart of the Christian mytheme–where non-believers are sentenced to either an eternal torture or annihilation. And a second coming is longed for where the enemies of Christ will find eternal destruction in a lake of fire while Christ’s followers will enjoy an eternity of reward. Most modern people find that notion quite repulsive.
Add to Christian eliminationist fantasies, the central features of Christianity–human blood sacrifice, sado-masochistic pleasure, scapegoating, ritualized cannibalism and you have pretty abhorrent core of beliefs, however ornate and perfumed the wrapping.
Have I missed it or have these people like West or Holland, who are in a phase of overzealously praising Christianity, offered a critique of the Christian myth itself and its inadequacies? Have they given an explanation of why it no longer stirs the hearts of people in the industrialized West, other than that Christianity’s effects have been largely integrated?
Well-said!: Jung offered a fierce critique of Christianity saying that it was not psychologically tenable. He cited its overvaluation of the masculine vs the feminine, the spirit vs. the body, light vs. darkness, perfectionism vs. completeness. And its God is psychologically inadequate because he has to split off his own evil onto an external shadow figure–the devil. His only hope for Christianity’s future was if it could transform the male trinity into a quaternity by an inclusion of the feminine as divine and its god could own up to his own evil instead of projecting it onto a shadow figure. Obviously Christianity has been able to do neither, and is languishing.
That’s why for healing Jung and his followers turned for psychological healing to Eastern religions as well as reanimating the ancient pagan gods who still lurk in the collective unconscious, where they have been banished by Christianity.
The Ancient Roman ‘trinity’ of Jupiter,Juno & Minerva, was very practical solution.
However as Christianity is a misogynistic Semitic cult, we are unlikely to see a female Pope, or Mama for sometime!
Yet the UK has had several Queens and two female Prime Ministers, and the Queen is both Monarch and Head of the Church. So it’s some kinds of Christianity that lead to the things you mention.
Beside the practical solutions, the fact that slavery was the norm, children had no rights, women were objects for pleasure, polygamy widespread, slaves were teared up by wild animals, etc. does that matter to you?
Paganism is a regress of mankind. It meant human and child sacrifice, tribalism, dire poverty, no technology but stare at the moon, cannibalism, illiteracy – is this how you envisage the bright future? eventually we can go back and live in the (Plato’s) cave.
God is not evil, the Devil was created by God and chose another path, he had free will.
The feminine is the figure of Mary.
What we needed (religiously speaking) is redemption not feminine-masculine archetypes.
Jesus paid our debt by his sacrifice.
You are projecting Jungian mish mash on a different ontological realm therefore your conclusions are as valid as you premises: none.
“An offshoot of Tom Holland’s thesis may be that now because of Christianity’s emphasis on love and mercy and the dignity of the individual, we can now see the horrid barbarity at the heart of the Christian mytheme–where non-believers are sentenced to either an eternal torture or annihilation. “
Imagine a world in which many people have committed horrible things and they would enjoy heaven just as those who lived a moral, decent life. It is not tenable.
It is justice not barbarity. This world is predicated on laws, and those who trespass those laws will endure the consequences. Responsibility is a major attitude of a mature person.
By the way, punishment for sinful behaviour is not taught solely by Christianity. Why singling it out?
The church has stood, a rock colossus of bigotry, in the path of ten thousand proposed reforms. Sane efforts to legalize birth control information, the manufacture of proper birth control appliances, appliances for the inhibition of the spread of venereal disease, public instruction in sex hygiene, free clinics for the treatment of venereal disease, the inspection and treatment of prostitutes, controlled prostitution itself, the publication of psychological and physical sex information, aid for unwed mothers—myriad attempts by sane men acting sanely on real problems — have been fought down by church-frightened legislatures and church-dominated courts. — Philip Wylie
Ermmmm, uhmmmm, when you say ‘the church’ do you mean those other Christians who accept birth control, or are they off your targetting system? As to the rest of your scatter shot, are you claiming that no Christian, those programmed into your targetting system and those apparently not, has ever supported the items on this list of yours? Quite a mighty claim to make.
God, eh? Well Rome and Rus sound remarkably like modern societies where a later version of that very same ‘god’ is worshipped. Anything to say about why he changes his mind and his message so drastically?
Once Ed West described as brilliant a book by that arch hagiographer Tom Holland my level of scepticism rose dramatically. Before I was half way through the article irritation was added to my scepticism.
The entire article is narrow minded and provincially Western. It makes the absurd claim that almost all human progress was down to Christianity. I would argue that the brutality of Western colonialism – much of it justified by spreading the ‘Word of the Lord’ and ‘civilisation’ was demonstrably no better for the colonised than what went before in many instances. The highly selective examples of where Christianity did, indeed, contribute to human progress (while omitting the sheer awfulness of clerical ‘terrorism’ over centuries) are used simply to distort the overall picture. This is mere hagiography dressed up as erudite history.
Probably the worst article I’ve ever read in UnHerd.
There is a creeping conservatism on UnHerd which is unsettling, but it is very British…God and Queen, these traditions fog up the brain a good deal.
Utopian socialism in all its variants fog up the brain even more.
Do you prefer unscientific socialism and opiniology?
Actually, Western colonialism was less brutal than Marxists teach it nowadays, and it had many good sides: built schools, hospitals, infrastructure, brought modern mentality to lands where tribalism was the norm and fatalism. And it is important to know that many things taught in schools nowadays is propaganda concocted in the Soviet Union. I know it because I read east European sources. The Soviet Union didn’t have a strong economy, neither a strong army, the only thing they excelled in was disinformation. That included to forge documents and twist historical facts so Christianity looked as a terrible religion and Western Civilization was the worst.
There were inventions in other parts of the world, but systematic science and the invention of modern technology is a product of Christian thought. If you don’t like that’s fine, you don’t have to.
Ah, it is all so deceptively complex, the more i have read today on UnHerd the more I am not so sure the Old Norse concept of Ragnarok isn`t the true way after all…(or should that be deceptively simple?)…
Chritianity brought about gay marriage and women’s emancipation? What have you been smoking?
In this new simplistic Christ-osculating narrative, everything that happened after Christianity appeared is due to Christian beliefs.
Makes thinking about history a lot easier, right?
Christianity fiercely opposes gay marriage and feminism.
So what? In the UK, at least, the Head of the Church is not a politician. By the way, she’s also female. You might want to distinguish different kinds of ‘Christianity’ which is not, and never has been, ‘one thing’. Church membership is optional, and voluntary.
I guess you have never come across feminist theology.
I think the author is able to ignore the intolerance of Christian orthodoxy to sexual ‘deviance’ for two thousand years by concentrating on the very noble concepts included in Paul’s letters, like ‘God is love, if you love you live in God and God lives in you” (paraphrase). Such precepts are not exclusive to Christianity, but they are almost impossible to realize in the flow of daily existence, especially when God is hovering over you and watching everything, ready to criticize as in a dominating relationship. Ekhart Tolle’s idea of living in the NOW can give one a similar high of tolerance and acceptance. The trouble is that individual love, or awareness cannot be institutionalized. Christianity did empower the individual, however it also brought along for the ride Judaic traditions. It is, iff effect, a Jewish sect, which combined Judaism with the saviour cult, which was very popular at the time in the Roman world.
Tolerance of human sexuality is not the result of Christian tolerance. It has far more to do with the Enlightenment and our increased respect for science and ratiocination.
This is a tremendous article, wonderfully well written and very thought provoking.
It’s a great pity that many of the comments are so partisan and “shoot from the hip”. This piece deserves very careful inner consideration. It is one of those writings that really lead one to a repositioning of what one believes.
Thank you, Ed
All of this cultural baggage and history is fascinating, and it certainly explains a lot about how we arrived at this present scenario.
But forget not, Ed, the victory of one very special man over death itself. That conquest has a quite unique drawing power for any individual.
Jesus was the only human in all of history to suffer a criminal death and then live to tell about.
Victory over death is a state of being that has significant drawing power for any person who is willing to believe it.
The alternative is just a dark hole, the other side of which nobody knows.
I’ll remain with the One who returned from the dark side and then issued a worldwide invitation to join him on the other side.
Not only that, but marriage to one woman has its benefits, which I have been enjoying for 41 years. Our three grown offspring still approve of us.
I find this long and rambling but the odd point here or there is of interest. The vital importance of marriage laws in shaping a society is one, in particular the banning of cousin marriage to weaken clan loyalty. Not many people are aware that roughly half of British Pakistanis marry cousins, mainly from Pakistan, effectively exporting their clan structures into this country. A huge number of birth defects arise as a result. The introduction of an essentially christian form of marriage into China, by the communist party no less in 1950, hugely reshaped that society from one of polygamy to monogamy, although the maintenance of what is in effect a harem by powerful men (as examplified by the recent case of Lai Xiaomin who juggled 100 mistresses!) still demonstrates that the earlier societal structure lives on.
You should make a pilgrimage to Goodmanham, this year, as you won’t be allowed to leave the country. You could visit Aughton church and remember Robert Aske while you’re at it.
If at Aughton you should also visit the site of RAF Breighton close by, and see the memorial to 78 Squadron.
Just over 77 years, on the night of the 24th March,1944, 21 Halifax Mk II bombers set off at about 1830hrs for the ‘big city’, Berlin. Taking off to the southwest, they swung left over Hemingbrough, the needle like, magnesium limestone spire of its Church being the last they would see of England for the next 8 hours.
Of the 21, 2 turned back early due to electrical problems, whilst the remainder ploughed on to the target, where the German fighters were waiting .In the ensuing maelstrom 6 were shot down with loss of 42 men.
Two days later they were off again to Essen, and four days after that to Nuremberg, for the most costly RAF bombing raid of the war. No time for PTSD in those days.
I wonder if the Station Commander at Breighton would be impressed to learn that seventy six years later his counterpart at RAF Scampton saw fit to desecrate the grave of the ‘black’ dog belonging to the late Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, DSO, DFC.? And all in the name of Political Correctness.
Such a pathetic, gutless, woke, disrespectful person should not be allowed to command a Boy Scout troop let alone RAF Scampton. My blood boils.
Oh, Christ! Black Dog is Jesus in a grave?
Come on ! Get with the plot!
Can an animal grave be consecrated? Let’s get things in proportion.
Everybody knows that its Turtles All The Way Down. Or that the Earth world is a minute speck floating in and Infinitely Radiant Sea of Conscious Light!
.But where does the religious Process originate?
True religion is the product of the inherent biological or total psycho-physical urge to the evolutionary fulfillment and the ultimate transcendence of Man in the Radiant Reality, or Life Principle, in which he/she and the world are spontaneously arising.
The Process that is True Esoteric Religion is not a matter of (naive) belief, in the (presumed) evidence or results of religious activity on the part of certain few historical individuals. Religion is not exclusively a matter of “revelation” in the sense of the specific historical communications made by rare and prophetic individuals. Rather, True Religion is the Process itself – the evolutionary and self-transcending Process of the psycho-biological transformation of man (male and female) one at a time.
The Process that is True Religion is inherent in the psycho-biological structures of every human being, except that it is only more or less developed in each individual. The structures of the religious Process are already in the biological anatomy of the human individual. But the development of these structures depends upon cultural adaptation. And of course no such comprehensive culture of adaptation can be found in main stream institutional religiosity. Nor does such knowledge exist.
The problem is that religion is not commonly understood as a native psycho-biological function in Man (male and female). Religion is associated with symbolic cosmologies, archaic belief systems, and illusions of mystical escape from the world. In that case, True Religious acculturation is suppressed and obliged to remain at an infantile level. And the more adolescent movement of scientific materialism is gradually, and also rightly, destroying the credibility of such childish religious culture.
The phenomenon generally and popularly known and promoted as religion is a childish, even infantile, expression of our possible higher acculturation and evolution. It is always associated with childish cultism, symbolic rituals, and irrational belief systems that can never be penetrated to the point of establishing the True and Universal Religious Process.
How important does the author (of this excellent article) think are the following:
Good article, although Stephen was a deacon, not an apostle.
Also Paul was a disciple not an Apostle, that is, NOT one of the Twelve either before or after Judas Iscariot.
Actually Paul was both…..as were all the other Apostles, think about it.
“How God Created the West”, by Ed West… 🙂
I sometimes wonder, though, what we will lose as church attendance continues to slide and, like Romans of the 3rd century, we see our gods dying around us.
America has seen one of the most rapid de-Christianisations in the past two decades and the results so far are not good.
One of the most challenging things about the phase we are presently living through is that key problems cannot be properly scrutinised, nor subjected to rigorous thinking, because the analytical tools needed to do the job are still not available to the general public consciousness. The public’s conceptual tool box is inadequately supplied.
To understand what we face, it is necessary to distinguish between spirituality and religion, spirituality here being the umbrella term, and religion a particular expression of it.
According to the modern initiate teacher Dr Rudolf Steiner, religion appeared around 3000 BC to fulfil a new need for outward spiritual instruction on the part of populations who were losing their old, shared, instinctual clairvoyance which had enabled them to perceive spiritual worlds directly. Outer teachers were now required, so religions arose, each specific to a time and place and particular people. Eternal truths were henceforward funnelled through cultural lenses.
Fast forward to the present. Now we see religions dying in front of our eyes, as the author points out. But this should not be taken as evidence of the end of spirituality. On the contrary, what we are seeing is merely a transition from the now old forms of religion to new forms of spiritual path.
This is a good thing, a positive evolutionary movement towards higher stages of consciousness/conscience. Human beings are now maturing and, instead of being looked after like children, by Mother Nature and by the priest, we are being asked to take hold of the steering wheel and learn to drive responsibly for ourselves. This means taking control of our own spiritual development by actively doing hard work upon ourselves, not just passively going to church and obediently doing what we are told, or not. Spiritual guidance is of course still available, but we are now fully responsible for our actions and behaviour on this planet, which we are supposed to be stewarding, not plundering.
One aspect of the new consciousness/conscience which is gradually coming in is that a new clairvoyance is emerging. The doors of the spiritual worlds are beginning to open again. Steiner states that this new clear-seeing will eventually become a natural birthright for all human beings, not replacing our present individualised consciousness but building upon and transcending it into a new “we-consciousness” which eventually will extend to the whole of humanity This development, Steiner explains, is a result of the events on Golgotha 2000 years ago. Many younger people are already manifesting this evolution.
A cause for real concern is that it will increasingly be essential to be able to discriminate among manifestations of the new clairvoyance. Did St Joan really hear beneficial guiding voices of higher spiritual beings, or was she subject to lower, demonic forces? This challenge faced by the Church those few centuries ago was a first sign of the advent of new times. We will need psychologists and psychiatrists and counsellors and spiritual guides in abundance to help people understand their new experiences in times to come. And it won’t help if many members of these professions are still stuck in old ways of thinking, particularly those trapped in a narrow atheism which sees only an outdated religion within its blinkered worldview.
A good part of Dr Steiner’s voluminous teachings may be found online at RSArchive.org.
The first and more decisive elevation of Christianity took place before 496. In 330 AD Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor, ended a long period of brutal persecutions against Christians, converted to Christianity and relocated the capital of Roman Empire to Constantinople, “the city of Constantine” in greek, (now Instabul) starting the first Christian empire. The relocation was aiming at distinguishing the paganistic former empire from the new christian, which evolved to the most powerful and glorious empire of that time (that’s why Vlandimir and the Rus were so impressed).
Constantine just blended the pagan and the christian to make it palatable to more people…a true politician
Haha.. let’s just forget the dark ages and the spanish inquisition ever happened….
I’ve read the bible completely though not a believer and clearly see that jesus and the new testament was a great advance on the barbarism of the old testament.. but I also see how much at odds catholicism is with christianity ..a blend of christian and pagan ideals to speak to as many as possible…..with the aim of controlling as many as possible….
The problem with all religions is it’s us weak humans worshiping some greater than human deity..we are still humans, still fallible, still capable of “evil”…even in the name of a greater than human deity..
And as for roman and greek depravity….the texts we still have from roman and greek philosophers contain by far the most intelligent and humane and sensible writings from the era and a lot of these writings still govern our modern social and political thought….though christians like to ignore that.
Thankyou for a most stimulating and informative article.
Can you enlighten me as to why a Viking tribal group such as the Rus, with all the appalling barbarian characteristics you describe, should be among the progenitors of modern Scandinavian culture, with its high civilisation featuring in particular the elevated role of women? I am unable to reconcile the earlier warlike “barbarian Viking” with peaceful modern Scandinavia.
I am aware that there is some academic discussion around the real nature of the Vikings who settled the British Isles, some saying they were peaceful settlers of farming families, at least in Orkney. I would appreciate your view on this apparent conundrum. Thankyou.
Hmm! Abortion on demand and improved birth control have contributed more to womens’ emancipation than did about 1960 years of Christianity and their efforts further to ‘tame’ men have accelerated no end in the last half century. There is bound to be a violent reaction to this by males at some point but again it seems unlikely to have much to do with Christianity. One real offspring of Christianity was science and perhaps nothing more exemplifies the death of Christian principles than the retreat of science in the face of scientism. A new irrational, apocalyptic ‘climate change’ religion is replacing both Christianity and genuine science while claiming the support of both.
I’m not sure about this beneficial emasculation of the West by Christianity in contrast to the testosterone-fuelled rampaging pagans. It seems a little tendentious Ed. I mean, what about King Duncan (aided by Macbeth) sticking it to the Norwegian Vikings, Harold Godwin doing the same at Stamford Bridge, King Alfred breaking the Danelaw, the battle of Tours against the hairy-arsed Moors, the ejection of the Moors from Spain, the mighty Christian coalition which defeated the Turks at Lepanto, the Siege and Battle of Vienna and don’t get me started on the Crusades….
Certainly we should never forget the history of Xtianity – those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, and we wouldn’t want to do that!
In order to avoid repeating the mistakes caused by that absurd belief systen we need to make sure that we keep a firm grip on all thwe nonsense it has produced over the centuries.
Another interesting point raised is that of Arianism. When earlu christians were trying to figure out how to reconcile the father, son and holy spirit there was a row. What we have now, the Trinity, where the father, son and spirit are in effect all made of the same thing, the same “God substance” or “spirit”, was not the only option on the table. The Arians believed Jesus, as the son of God, was not co-eternal with him and in effect was subordinate to him in a father-son relationship, hence there was no Trinity of ectoplasm/spirit. The Arians were finally cast out as heretics although many leading early christians were Arian. When you think about it, the whole idea of God impregnating a human virgin and creating a clone of him/her/itself made of the same God-substance spirit is pretty strange and never happened again in history. If the basic tenet is so unbelievable and so disagreed upon by early christians themselves then you have to wonder what the point of it all is.
I don”t understand how (reintroduction of?) ‘supernatural elements’ would ever be effected or, exactly, how this would help? Does anyone, here?
Ask Catholics in south-eastern Irleand, who quite recently (less than 10 years ago) ‘saw’ a stone statue of the Virgin Mary ‘move’ of its own volition. ‘Tears falling from the eyes’ have also been ‘seen’. Few in that area of Ireland seemed to think this unusual. The press reports I read focussed on the experiences, largely devoid of any questioning.
The article would be better titled “How our Idea of God created the West”. That idea continually evolves as our awareness of what is “our tribe” also continually expands. Enlightened altruism realises that continuing sustainable human existence requires respect for all “creation”. God is the ultimate human idea, ultimate reality for our species survival.
Thank you for the article! I am very interested with this subject and adds valuable information to what I read already!
God did not create the West. Human beings did. That helps to explain why it is now in such a parlous state, in spite of its many relative successes.
If human beings want to make further rapid progress, they need to put aside the semitic gods of Judaism, Christianity and islam which were born in the morass of the primitive Middle East.
It is not true that God created man in his own image.
Men (that is mainly men), and some pretty awful men at that, created “God” in their image which is why “God” is such a failure.
When Europe was Christian, it had a strong interest in its pre- Christian past, especially the Greco-Roman part. Now that it is whatever it is now, it’s taking a strong interest in its Christian past. And, Christianity is not dead; it’s worldwide, and is gaining strength especially in the Africa-China axis.
You know I enjoyed the article and took it on its merits. It’s a 3,000 word article, not a 3000 page book. Why are there so many pedants that make comments on this site that can’t critique an article as an article, rather than critiquing it as though it were an encyclopaedia length multi volume book. “Grumble grumble, tut tut, you make no mention of any eastern civilisations in this article on the Christian west! Tut tut tut!”
I don’t buy a word of this. Religion is an accoutrement of progress, not a driver of it.
Also, there’s no such thing as an atheist.
. . . but the people who call themselves atheist think there is such a thing!
They’re mistaken.
“Self-sacrifice is the ultimate statement of belief in the value of an entity other than oneself, whatever that entity may be. It is the ‘ultimate decision’ in the sense of being final for the decision maker and in the sense of being the most significant feature of all human life, history and thought. Collective and individual histories are defined by decision-making. The extent to which human beings have free will correlates with freedom to make decisions.
Generally, the choice reduces to one between sacrifice and nihilism or between life and suicide. And generally, through reason, religion or whatever means, humans choose to believe in the worth of existence.”
https://www.physicaleconomics.org/test
Superb piece, but not convinced I buy into the central theses being suggested. South America was as Christian as Europe, as was Mexico, but both lagged the US very significantly.
This read to me like a very biased and glowing apology for Christianity by one of the many highly intellectual and academic Christian apologists that’ve been popping up in recent years. I’m guessing Mr. West is still a Catholic.
A bit about me. I was born and raised a Catholic, American, rural, lower working class. My paternal grandmother was a “devout”, and probably would’ve been seen as a fanatic by many. My Dad was a dutiful and obedient son. Back in my day, corporal punishment was the order of the day, both at home and in public school, so you knew the possible consequences of disobedience. I’m not complaining, whining, or making myself out to be a victim, just telling it like it is. My Dad, for his own reasons, stopped taking us to Mass when I was 13. I had my “atheist” epiphany at about 14, and it was exhilarating. My mind was free! And oh, I had so many possibilities to explore!
About age 20, I converted to Buddhism. I followed that with devotion and zeal, but by age 50 I’d pretty much drifted away, plagued by doubts. Trying to pretend I was still a Buddhist made me feel like a hypocrite, a fraud.
Write now I see myself as “religio-philosophical”. I’m not against religion, even organized religion, but I’ve stepped away from it to explore my own spiritual good, in both philosophy, and religion. I read and I think.
Okay. So Christianity got rid of the cruelties of classic Rome and Greece, and other Paganism, and made the culture more individualistic. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own problems, its own cruelties. I think professers in academia are cushioned from the cruelties of Christianity much more than the common rabble under its yoke. People could write books on how horrible their involvement with Christianity and Christians have been.
I don’t know. The whole essay just seems so rosy and simplistic. Obviously a devout Catholic and cultural conservative isn’t going to write a balanced piece on it. Mr. West is the senior editor of Unherd I thought Unherd was about seperating from the “herd”. But aren’t Christians, metaphorical, a herd of sheep under the all-wise care of their “shephard”, Jesus?
I must admit I haven’t read this but the title is highly amusing and exactly what I would expect from Ed WEST
You did see that the headline refers to “the West”, and not to “Ed West”?
Dumbkopf!
One of the failures of Christianity – or is it perhaps Christians – is that it /they refuse(s) to acknowledge the ability of human beings to choose a worthy moral direction for themselves. In so doing, it encourages Christian believers to imagine they have some kind of moral superiority over others. While this article is an interesting read, it sadly supports this view.
The example of wokeness suggests that when people choose a ‘worthy’ moral direction for themselves it always involves the misuse of power, judgemental attitudes and no opportunity for redemption.
And yet, wokeness is largely the child of Christianity, with much of its DNA.
Yet again there are more forms than just one of ‘Christianity’
Whatever “group” you belong to and whatever “group” you are against, both are populated with humans who make bad decisions and do bad things, even if they both believe they are right and do good things.
I’m not at all well up on theology, but I thought a central idea of Protestantism, Martin Luther and all that was individuals reconciling their own consciences with God’s will. And being an atheist, for me that boils down to choosing their own moral directions, albeit as parts of a community.
I’ll agree, but add inn the word ‘chosen’ before the word ‘community’. To the woke ‘community’ membership is not optional.
I thought the central message of Christianity, or of the humble Jesus, was be nice to everyone and be humble.
No, Christianity is not niceness. It is a warrior’s religion as much as a pacifists. Jesus called Soldiers good people and Christian, he said to give to Caesar that which was owed to civil government although Roman civil law was not nice at all, but that society must function for people to thrive, and so be able to live within gods laws in their personal choices.
Christianity is not pacifist, it fits with marching armies, and hospital Monks and Nuns. It is about Gods Laws, and one has Free Will, and one must chose Gods Path freely, although if you go wrong God will always forgive if repentance is sincere.
I was being ironic, but yes, you’re right. There is something malevolent about the last two Abrahamic religions, especially. Both institutions have and are responsible for great suffering since their establishments. Take Catholicism here in South America that has denied abortions to abused children and excommunicated doctors for saving a child’s life. A church that continues to preach against birth control to the poorest in society and does nothing to alleviate extreme poverty whilst god’s ‘representatives’ live in palaces in Rome, London and elsewhere wanting nothing.
Catholicism does not equal christianity…even if it takes it’s name…clearly political powers who advocate such things are not living out the christian religion.
Glad to see someone getting it right. Ecclesia Militans is the earthly state of Christianity.