Pt 1: Christmas Eve
Paganism in pre-Christian history.
Aside from having some magical powers, and perhaps the gift of immortality, the gods had normal concerns and shortcomings. They ate, drank, loved, envied, fornicated, cheated, lied and otherwise set morally 'unedifying examples'.
Stark goes on to explain that the reason paganism (and idolatry among Jews) was popular was simply because the monotheistic alternatives presented gods who were too unlike human beings.
Paganism and temple attendance was vastly different in Rome (Roman society) than it was in any other parts of the world/societies. Outside of Rome:
- Temples were almost fully funded by the state and quite tightly regulated by the state.
- Only a privileged few (wealthy/powerful) could gain entrance to the temple.
- Some temples did provide a viewing area for the general public. Often these viewing areas made it impossible to catch a view of the god - the idol.
- Most were served by an exclusive priesthood (hereditary caste/elite in society).
- The priesthood served a clientele rather than a membership
- Clients came to temple for festivals/personal benefits/feasts (eating animals offered in sacrifice).
In Rome paganism was different:
- the temples were not closed to ordinary Romans, nor were idols hidden from public view.
- Everyone was welcome and encouraged to give and fund temples.
- Priests were pert-time employed.
Here's a helpful description of temple activity that creates a contrast between paganism and early Christianity:
People only went to temples, they did not belong to them. Those who favoured a particular god did not identify themselves in those terms - no one claimed to be a Zeusian or a Jovia. In fact, most people patronised several temples and various gods, depending on their tastes and needs. There was no congregational life, because there were no congregations, in the sense of regular gatherings of groups having a common religious focus and a sense of belonging. Nor did the pagan priests need (or want) the support of congregations. They charged substantial fees for all their services and were, in any event, usually well funded by the state.
The origin of the gods
Rome's gods were of Greek origins, they in turn having come from Egypt, whose gods originated in Sumer! As gods migrated, only their names were changed.
Sumer was an ancient region of present-day Iraq, making up the southern part of Mesopotamia. From the 4th millennium BC it was the site of city states which became part of ancient Babylonia.
Other gods arrived in Rome from the East. Eastern religions always drew a lot of public attention and interest. One notable one was devoted to Cybele (known to Romans as Magna Mater - Great Mother) and Attis (an unusually handsome Phrygian - west Asia Minor - shepherd). So the story goes of these two gods:
Cybele fell in love with Attis. Unfortunately the young man (Attis) became sexually involved with a nymph and Cybele found out. In a fit of extreme anger Cybele caused Attis to become insane, and in his mad frenzy he castrated himself, lay down under a pine tree and bled to death. Cybele sorrowed and caused Attis to be reborn, and he became her companion ever after. Attis never became a major figure, remaining only a member of his lover's supporting cast. However, his self-castration became a major feature of Cybelene worship. For one thing, the most solemn ritual of Cybelen worship was the tauroboliumwherein a bull was slaughtered on a wooden platform under which lay new inititates who were then drenched in the bull's blood - all in commemoration of Attis's mutilation. It was believed that the blood washed away each initiate's past, giving each a new life. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect linking the Attis story of Cybelen worship is that all 'priests of Cybele were eunuchs; self-castration in ecstasy was part of the process of their initiation.'
Isis.
Isis was a nature goddess responsible for the flooding of the Nile. However Ptolemy I promoted her to status of the saviour goddess of more explicitly 'the saviour of the human race.' Followers of Isis met in congregations for worship. They did not disparage worship of other gods, but they themselves did not do it.
Temples were built to the various gods in Rome. The top were:
- Isis (11 temples)
- Cybele (6)
- Jupiter (4)
- Venus (4)
- Fortuna (3)
- Apollo (2)
The Magi - Zoroaster
Zoroastrianism - monotheistic religion originating in Iran in 6BC. Along with Judiasm these were the only two monotheistic religions in the world.
Zoroaster had a revelation that Ahura Mazda was the One True God.
The appeal of Eastern religions.
A section is written about the appeal and difference of new 'oriental' religions in Rome. The reasons offered for why these religions grew in success and popularity were:
- Emotionalism and religious experience often similar to modern day Pentecostalism.
- Individual appeal and atonement rather than simply atoning for the state or currying favouring on the ruler's behalf. These religions emphasised the need for and availability of individual purification.
- Written scriptures.
- Women's involvement and honouring
- Organisation and community. A people to belong to and a cause to rally around.
Followers of the Oriental religions could and did identify themselves by their religion as well as by their city or their family, in a way that earlier centuries would not have understood at all... it is hard to exaggerate the importance of this change.
The Jews had been doing the above since they began but this was new to paganism. Personally this is fascinating and with 'the eyes of faith' on I can see a
preparing of the ground in the general pagan populus ready for Christ.
Chapter 2: Many Judaisms
Although Judaism was the only mainstream monotheism there was as much divergence in it as there was in pagan Rome. Unwelcomed Samaritans or hellenised Greeks, those part of the dispora, not to mention the more well known sects such as the Pharisees, Sadducees & Zealots:
Number of Jews at the time:
On Christmas Eve there were about 9million Jews living in the Roman Empire (which had a total population of about 60million), about 90% of them living in the larger Roman cities west of Palestine. In addition, at least several million Jews lived in cities to the east of Palestine; there was a large Jewish community in Babylon
King Herod's death in 4BC led to an outbreak of bloody revolts by Jewish zealots. In response the Romans crucified thousands of Jews and placed Judea under the rule of a Roman Procurator (eventually a position held by Pontius Pilate).
Herod (73-4BC)
'only because the Romans wrote the history his Herod known as 'Herod the Great'.
Herod's father (Antipater) came to power when he backed Caesar in his war against Pompey. After he won, Antipater's son was given the rule of Galilee. They were not a Jewish family but after fleeing to Rome and securing the backing of Mark Antony post-Caesar, he was crowned by the senate 'King of the Jews'.
Herod wasn't accepted by the Jews and in an effort to gain favour with them he rebuilt the temple on a far more magnificent scale than it had been built before. He 'compromised this achievement greatly by placing a huge golden eagle over the main entrance.' It was smashed during the night by some Jewish zealots who Herod had killed.
As King he appointed the High Priest, one of whom (17 year old Aristobulus) he had drowned at a party he'd arranged. He then decided to appoint the Sadducees (the hereditary priestly class) to the high priesthood which helped gain him a base of religious supporters.
During his reign:
- ran through 10 wives
- disinherited all sons from previous marriages
- had at least 3 of his sons murdered
Late in his reign he became very alarmed at the rapidly growing outbreak of messianic hopes and prophecies, and anyone he suspected of being the Messiah he had put to death.
Samaritans
From Samaria (old capital of northern kingdom).
In 597BC Assyria took thousands of important Jews away as captives to be held in Assyria, they also settled some of their own people in Samaria. These Assyrian settlers requested to be taught by the remaining Israeli priests. In time these settlers began to identify themselves as Jews.
When Jews returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple they refused to recognise the legitimacy of the 'Samaritans' and wouldn't allow them to participate in the rebuilding of the temple. In response the Samaritans built their own temple at the foot of Mt Gerizim.
In 128BC The Hasmonean (Maccabean) ruler destroyed the temple in Samaria.
The hatred [between Jews and Samaritans] was such that to be called a Samaritan was a grievous insult... some rabbis said that to eat the bread of Samaritans was to eat pork, or to marry a Samaritan was to lie with a beast.
Hellenistic Judaism
Hellenised Jews were also thought to be outside the sphere of true Judaism. Alexander's conquering of the Middle East brought with it the influence of the Greeks and under Ptolemy this continued. Jews who had become 'hellenized' were accused of flirting with pagan gods and neglecting the law. The Hellenized Jews regarded themselves as being culturally superior and as such discriminated against the more traditional Jews. Jerusalem itself was so hellenized that it became regarded as Antioch-at-Jerusalem. During Epiphanes reign he provoked the traditional Jews to breaking point, even rededicating the temple to Olympic Zeus. This led to the Maccabean revolt. Soon after the traditionalists were in power and were force ably circumicising the sons of Hellenized Jews.
When Herod came to power, the hellenisation reached new heights. He built a Greek theatre, amphiteaters and hippodrome in or near Jerusalem.
Sects
Although the Talmud lists 24 sects around at the time we know very little about them. The three main ones (Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes) were the largest but, interestingly, probably numbered no more than 20,000 members out of a population of perhaps one million. All three were recruited from among the wealthy and privileged.
Sadducees
these were the 'official' Temple Judaism and were supported financially by national tithes. This was an hereditary class of priests led by the High Priest. The High Priest was the political and religious leader of the nation.
Their theology was quite worldly - they denied both the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body and taught that God's rewards are gained only in this life.
Pharisees
They believed in an immortal soul, in the resurrection of the good and in the condemnation of the wicked to 'eternal torment'. The 'good' were those who obeyed the Law both written and oral. They were important as well in that they established Synagogues. They were moderates who encouraged obedience to the Romans since they weren't interfering with religious practices.
The Essenes
'they were typical of the many high-tension ascetic sect movements that abounded in Israel.' they disappear from the stage of history after the revolt against Rome.
The Zealots
Believed that pious good Jews would resist any authority other than Jewish authority since they, the Jews, were God's chosen people. The Zealots rejected paying taxes to any authority since it violated the first commandment. The first of the Zealots was a man named Judas of Galilee who was killed along with 2000 others by crucifixion.
The most extreme Zealots were known as Sicarii because they concealed sicae, or small daggers, under their cloaks and used them to kill Jews who were not sufficiently opposed to Roman rule.
Josephus reports that the
Sicarii:
murder people in broad daylight... mixing with the crowds, especially during the festivals... [they would] stealthily stab their opponents. Then, when the victims fell, the murderers simply melted into the outraged crowd... The first to have his throat cut was Jonathan the High Priest, after him many were murdered daily.
Remarkably, Stark notes, the Sicarii 'were probably a group of teachers in membership as well as leadership.'
40 day wanderings
Interestingly Stark says that there were such people into ascetism (self-denial) that lived in the wilderness eating shrubs and taking cold baths.
It was common for Jews (both men and women) to go on short-term retreats, often for a period of 40 days in memory of Moses' time on Sinai.
Chapter 3: Jesus and the Jesus movement
There really aren't any credible biographies of Jesus other than the 4 gospels.
The four gospels were written in a way that follows the form of Greco-Roman biographies of their day.
'half or more of each gospel is devoted to the last week of Jesus' life'.
How could a carpenter's son become a rabbinical student? It appears that his family was sufficiently affluent to have supported him. For example, they could afford to go to Jerusalem every year for Passover something most families could not do. Indeed, it is not unlikely that Jesus's borther James... also trained as a rabbi.
People needn't always have been wealthy however in order to have received an education. Perhaps the story of the 12 year old Jesus was meant to indicate how it was that he got 'picked up' and educated.
It is more than likely that he had been educated formerly since people called him 'rabbi' and:
in a Jewish setting an illiterate rabbi who surrounds himself with disciples, debating Scripture and halakhah with other rabbis and scribes, is hardly credible.
He usually preached in Aramaic although in Hebrew to more sophisticated audiences. Some scholars believe that he also spoke Greek since Nazareth is only five miles from Sepphoris then the capital of Galilee and a Greek speaking city.
Jesus spent most of his time (nearly all of it) preaching along the Sea of Galilee. It is less than 25 miles from Nazareth to Capernaum where most of Jesus's ministry took place.
The Sea of Galilee:
is of course a lake fed by the Jordan River and is only about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide at its broadest point.
Plotting Jesus' movements on a map:
almost no where Jesus is reported to have visited is even a full day's journey away from either Nazareth or Capernaum and... it would have been quite feasible to regularly return to a home base in either town. In fact Peter had a house in Capernaum, and perhaps Jesus did too. In any event as one scholar notes, 'after preaching elsewhere, Jesus would return to Capernaum.'
Can we trust the gospels? (9%)
For several centuries there has been a long and aggressive campaign to discredit as much of the historical content of the Gospels as possible. Some scholars claim that all of the Christian literature is pure fiction and can tell us next to nothing about the actual historical Jesus.
Despite its many critics, credible answers have always been found to explain some of the things scholars dislike. Some scholars believed that the sailing accounts of Paul in Acts were fictitious because of the strange routes the boat took. When it was explained that for good nautical reasons Paul made the stop offs he did, they respond only by saying 'it must have happenned to someone else and not Paul'.
Geographical accuracy.
For one thing the NT provides a very accurate geography not only of Israel but of the Roman Empire. Places are where they're supposed to be. Reported travel times are consistent with the distances involved. Thetopography is accurately described and extends to tiny details such as the location of wells, streams, springs, gorges, cliffs, city gates and the like.
Accuracy of description of people.
Commenting on Luke's accuracy F.F. Bruce:
'He has sure familiarity with the proper titles of all the notable persons who are mentioned in his pages. This was by no means such an easy feat.'
Politarchs::
Luke used the term politarchs to identify the officers of magistrates in Thessalonica. If correct, this term would apply only in this city, as it is used nowhere else in ancient literature. That turns out to be the case and Luke has been 'completely vindicated by inscriptions' in Thessalonica. Many similar instances have been reported.
Caiaphas:
A recently discovered ossuary identifies Caiaphas as the high priest who resided over the Sanhedrin when it condemned Jesus, just as the Gospel and Josephus maintained.
Pilate:
An inscription found in Caesarea Maritima in 1961 identifies Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea precisely when the NT places him there. Morevover, accounts by both the Jewish historian Josephus and the Jewish philosopher Philo characterised Pilate as the callous figure depicted in scripture.
On Jesus:
- There were still alive Christians who had heard and seen Jesus - including members of his own family, when the gospels were written.
- Followers of Jesus who would have been in their 20s at the crucifixion would only have been in their sixties when Mark began to circulate.
Oral tradition?
The claim that the Gospel writers depended mainly on oral traditions now seems unlikely. Since some of the apostles could read and write, is it credible that they regularly heard Jesus teach and never wrote any notes? Indeed, Saul Lieberman (1898-1983) pointed out that it was the 'general rabbinic practice' in those days for disciples to write down the teachings of their masters.
The spread of Christianity:
We know next to nothing about the spread of Christianity eastwards. We know that there were missionary efforts here since Paul spent a decade their following his conversion and by the second century AD there is a significant Christian presence there.
We know nothing about the spread of Christianity across the empire and indeed what happened in the 20 year period between the resurrection and the missions of Paul.
We shall probably never know how Christianity arrived in Rome. Arthur Nock (1902-1963) says that the reason for this was because 'the earliest congregations in the West, including the one in Rome, were the result of the migration of individuals, not of organized missions.
By the time Paul wrote to the Romans (57CE) there were 'at least 7 house churches in Rome.).
The Holy Family:
Jesus' family were an essential part of early Christianity. Stark believes that his own family were among some of his first converts and (citing Origen) explains that the famous 'who are my mothers and brothers?' is more figurative used to express the identification of faith as well as blood and not an outward denial of his family.
The memory of his family soon went into eclipse however as the tradition developed of the perprtual virginity of Mary. The idea developed in the second century and the brothers and sisters of Jesus were at first transformed into cousins and eventually ignored altogether.
The persecuted church in Jerusalem:
The first Christians identified themselves as Nazarenes but related to the church in Jerusalem as the 'mother church'. Intially at least they all still regared themselves as devout Jews. The leaders attended daily prayers in the Temple and afterward held evangelistic sessions in the outer court.
Life in the church:
From the perspective of rank and file members, the life of the Jesus Movement was centered on gatherings in private homes, with 'a focus on a common meal.' This probably had aspects of the 'last supper' and of course, allowed everyone to participate in the sacred, communal life. A vital part of the group's mission was to preserve and transmit the teachings and activities of Jesus.
Stark then deduces from this:
Thus it seems likely that the first written collections of Gospel traditions were produced in Jerusalem.
In 62CE James, the brother of Jesus, was killed by the high priest. According to Josephus. Ananus (hp) in the absence of a Roman procurator to govern, had James convicted and pushed from a tower - he survived the fall to then be stoned and beaten to death.
We don't know what happened to the other apostles except that plots were laid against them and they were banished from the land of Judea.
We don't know the fate of the Jesus movement during the Great Revolt of the late 60s but it is likely they relocated east of the Jordan River in Pella of the Decapolis. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE we know that there were still Christians in Palestine to be persuected by Bark Kokhba during the Second Revolt (132-135).
Mission to the world:
From earliest days, the Jesus Movement appears to have devoted its primary efforts to the East, as reflected in the rapid growth and spread of eastern Christianity, once stretching from Syria to China.
Paul converted in around AD35. Executed in around AD65.
We know far more about his missions (simply because?) as he was accompanied for 2 years by a competent historian.
Although Paul is famous as a travelling missionary of the 9 years 'on the road' recorded in Acts more than 2 years were spent in Ephesus, 3 years in Corinth and at least 1 year in Antioch. That leaves about 3 years for his three long mission journeys.
Paul's approach:
In the beginning Paul & Barnabbas may have just walked into a town with several apprentices in tow and started preaching in the synagogue. If so, Paul soon learned better and refused to go anywhere without careful prior arrangements and some commitments of support. Typically, he began a visit to a new community by holding 'privately organised meetings under the patronage of eminent persons... who provided him with... an audience composed of their dependents.' Paul did not travel alone, or even with a few supporters. Instead, he often was accompanied by a retinue of as many as forty followers sufficient to constitute an initial 'congregation' which made it possible to hold credible worship services and to welcome and form bonds with newcomers. -- Stark citing also from Malherbe '03, Judge '60
Paul would have likely had scribes accompany him on these trips.
Helmet Koester:
Paul's missionary work, therefore, should not be thought of as the humble efforts of a lonely missionary. Rather, it was a well-planned, large-scale organisation.
On conversion:
It has long been assumed that conversion almost always occurs on the basis of appeal to doctrine or a felt need in someone. Sociologists have conducted studies that show those assumptions to be wrong. Instead they noticed that conversion (or nonconversion) was almost always done on the basis of social ties:
People tend to convert to a religious group when their social ties to members outweigh their ties to outsiders who might oppose the conversion, and this often occurs before a convert knows much about what the group believes. In the normal course of events conversion (or nonconversion) is primarily an act of conformity.
Stark:
This principle has by now, been examined by dozens of close-up studies of conversion, all of which confirm that social networks are the basic mechanism through which conversion takes place. To convert someone you must become their close and trusted friend.
Doctrines don't remain secondary of course but at least in conversion they are not as much of a deciding factor as we might think.
Stark likens Paul to Billy Graham. Graham's success wasn't a result of him founding churches or bringing the irreligious into faith. What he did
was to greatly energize the participating local churches by intensifying the commitment of their members, which often led them to recruit new members:
So it was with Paul's visits. When he spoke to the unconvinced as in Athens and Lystra, the results were meager at best. But when he spoke mostly to the converted or to converts-in-process, as he usually did, he aroused them to far greater depths of commitments and comprehension.
Conclusion of chapter on the growth of Christianity:
The spread of religious movements is not accomplished by dramatic events and persuasive preachers, but by ordinary followers who convert their equally anonymous friends, relatives and neighbours.
Chapter 4: Mission to the Jews & Gentiles
The Jews of the diaspora were like the Jews exiled in Babylon in 597BC. They had been assimilated into a non-Jewish world and picked up many non-historically Jewish ways of thinking. Philo of Alexandria was a particularly influential Jew who wrote about Yahweh in terms that would have been understood in the Greek thinking world of Plato & Aristotle. He was also the first Jew who felt it necessary to explain the logic and reason behind many of the laws in the Torah. It was not enough for them to simply state 'God has said so' they had to explain as best they could, why God
would say so.
Thus did the image of God sustained by the influential Jews of the Diaspora shift from that of the authoritative Yahweh to a rather remote, abstract, and undemanding Absolute Being.
Socially:
most of the Diasporan Jews found it degrading to live among Greeks and embrace Greek culture and yet to remain 'enclosed in a spiritual ghetto and be reckoned among the barbarians. Consequently many failed to fully observe the law especially the prohibition against eating with Gentiles.
Consequently, Stark says, since paganism offered no real alternative and had been abandoned even by the philosophers of the Greek world, many Jews longed for a way to remain and Jew and yet also have entry into the elect society of the Greeks.
Monotheism with deep Jewish roots, but without the Law. should have had wide appeal.
Those most likely to convert are those with a very loose commitment to a faith.
It is easier to convert to a religion with similar religious capital (Christianity to Mormonism is easier than Christianity to Hinduism).
Thus Stark says, for Jews in the Diaspora it was attractive to convert to Christianity especially since Christianity presented itself clearly as the fulfilment of Orthodox Judaism. There was also a clear social network among Jews in the Diaspora and until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, synagogues in these regions were quite used to receiving teachers from Jerusalem:
So that's where the earliest Christian missionaries went, and Paul followed their example.
Paul's mission, despite being called a mission 'to the gentiles' concentrated a lot on the Jews in the Diaspora many of whom were longing to be free from the social restrictions imposed upon them by the Law. Had he have kept himself to pagan/gentile circles he would have largely been left alone by the Jews, but as it was he received beating after beating from Jewish leaders.
The mission to the Jews:
12%-13%
It could easily be assumed that the mission to the Jews fizzled out by the end of the 1st Century and was replaced by a largely gentile-origin church with a few Jews on the margins. This is inconsistenet with a lot of findings. It seems that Christians had for a long time a strong connection with Judaism and many of their converts and practises still came from Judaism. As late as the 7th Century archaeologists have discovered evidence of a Jewish and Christian community living in close harmony with each other.
The mission to the Gentiles:
There was a yearning among pagans for monotheism as the rise of the Oriental Cult form of pagan religious life shows. Stark cites a study he found that lists the major Greco-Roman cities that contained a temple to Isis. Out of 17 cities, 11 had a Christian community in it by 100AD and of the ones that didn't (14) only 2 had a Christian congregation by 100AD and 7 still had no congregation in the year 180AD. Cybele. Of the 10 cities with temples devoted to Cybele, 8 had a Christian congregation by 100AD while only 5 of the 21 cities lacking such a temple had a congregation that early.
Pagan cultural continuity:
The story of Christ seems to 'tap into' many of the prevailing stories of ancient paganism and fulfils them just as it fulfils the Jewish longings. God's communication with us is always in terms of our current capacity to understand. St Gregory of Nyssa wrote in the 4thC: 'God is so far above our nature and inaccessible to al approach
that he in effect speaks to us in baby talk, thereby giving to our human nature what it is capable of receiving.'
Stark draws from this:
If the Christ story seems steeped in pagan conventions, this can be interpreted as having been the most effective way for God to communicate within the limits of Greco-Roman comprehension. These were 'proofs' of Christ's divinity that pagans could most easily recognize.
Cyril Bailey (1871-1957) put it like this:
At the time Christianity arose men were looking in certain directions and couched their religious aspirations and beliefs in certain terms. Christianity spoke the language which they understood and set its theology and its ritual in the forms which to its own generation seemed natural... the Gospel could not have won its way if it had not found an echo in the religious searching and even the religious beliefs of the time.
Chapter 5: Christianity & Privilege
It has long been assumed that Christianity got its first foothold on society from among the poorest members of society. Karl Marx's collaborator wrote:
The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome.
Working on this assumption, Karl Kautsky, the German editor of Marx's works built the case that Jesus may have been one of the first socialists and that
the early Christians briefly achieved true communism.
It has also long been assumed that all new religions first take root in the lower classes of society.. Richard Niebuhr wrote that a new religious movement is always 'the child of an outcast minority, taking its rise in the religious revolts of the poor.'
Subsequently, the most popular explanation of why people initiate new religious movements came to be known as 'deprivation theory' which proposes that people adopt supernatural solutions to their material misery when direct action fails or is obviously impossible. (Glock)
Recently it's been shown that
Deprivation Theory fails to fit most, if not all, of the well-documented cases of new religious movements - whether Buddhism in the 6thCBCE, of the New Age Movement in the 21st C.
Contrary to prevailing sociological dogmas, religious movements typically are launched by the privileged classes.
Interestingly Stark points out that the passage in 1 Corinthians 1 'not many of you were powerful/of noble birth' is actually a statement that
'some were' which in Roman society when a tiny proportion of people were well off was quite remarkable that a small Christian community would have some.
Stark then makes a claim that Jesus wasn't the poor peasant he's often presented as and that the Jesus Movement attracted many from the wealthier circles of society:
- 2 Corinthians 8: 'consider Jesus who though rich, became poor' is to be taken literally as referring to worldly wealth (which the context supports).
- Rabbis often have to have a trade to fall back on.
- Very few of his illustrations/parable involve carpentry.
- Many of his parables involve money: land ownership, investment, borrowing, having servants, tenants, inheritance.
- It's been noted that the parable of the talents shows familiarity with banking practices.
- These may not suggest a privileged Jesus but they do suppose a fairly privileged audience.
- Members of the upper classes would rarely be drawn to entertain the ideas of someone from a lower class.
- The disciples were decidedly more well off than has been assumed: Peter and Andrew left their father fishing 'with the servants', Peter possibly owned two houses in Bethsaida and Capernaum, Mark's mother owned a house in Jerusalem large enough to serve as a house church. Matthew was a tax collector (hated but wealthy).
- Zacchaeus, a tax collector was 'honoured' to have Jesus as his guest.
- Jairus the synagogue ruler sought Jesus out for help.
- Joseph of Arimathea was an early convert and very wealthy.
- Joanna the wife of Chuza was steward to Herod Antipas and contributor to Jesus' mission.
- Susanna was another wealthy woman who helped finance Jesus.
- Even the woman who pours perfume on Jesus' feet was wealthy enough to have kept by something as costly as being valued at the equivalent to a year's wages.
Paul:
- Both he and his father were Pharisees
- He left Tarsus for Jerusalem to train under Gamaliel
- Lydia (trader in purple cloths) was among a convert who offered her home in Philippi.
- Theophilus sponsored Luke and likely Paul as well.
- Erastus the city treasurer assisted Paul
- Gaius had a house ample big enough to put up Paul and host Christian meetings. The same is true of Crispus.
To a considerable extent it seems:
Christianity was a movement sponsored by local patrons to their social dependants.
E.A. Judge identified forty persons who sponsored Paul. All of whom were people 'of substance, members of a cultivated social elite.' He also say that of the 91 people associated with Paul's work, a third of them have names indicating Roman citizenship.
The point isn't that Christianity attracted rich people instead of poor people, but only that it
did attract rich people. Perhaps the most telling example of this comes from Ignatius who wrote a letter to the church in Rome that he was part of. He had been sentenced to die in the arena, being torn apart by beasts. Rather than appeal this decision he embraced it willingly. He wrote to the church urging them not to intervene something that wealthy and influential members no doubt could have done:
I am afraid that is is your love that will do me wrong... let me state emphatically to all that I die willingly for God, provided you do not interfere. I beg you, do not show me unseasonable kindness. Suffer me to be the food of wild beasts. -- Igantius
Pliny the Younger wrote to Trajan stating that:
this wicked cult involved many individuals of every age and class.
By the end of the Second Century Tertullian claimed that Christians were present at every level of society in Rome, including the palace and the Senate.
Christian Literacy
No one other than the Jews (and a few of the new Oriental Cults) had produced scriptures of any kind. The Christians wrote sophisticated scriptures.
It is more probable than not that the early Christians would have carried 'notebooks' to write down things Jesus said/did. The use of such devices is common among the ancient world but also Paul's request that Timothy 'bring me my parchments' is clearly indication that he (and therefore we can assume, others) travelled with writings and writing materials.
Insufficiencies and Opportunities of Privilege
The history of religious movements and Christianity shows that it is often (usually) because of the wealthy that such ideas can gain influence and take hold in a society or community.
The reason, Stark suggests, that scholars err on assuming that religious movements begin and grow primarily and almost exclusively among the poor is because, none of them have ever been wealthy. The assumption is that once you have wealth, you don't need anything else most of all religion.
The fact is:
wealth and power do not satisfy all human desires.
Maslows hierarchy of needs pictures 'self-actualisation' at the top. Many think that wealth brings this whereas the truth is people often find it in religious movements.
What this reflects is that what worldly utopias inevitably fail to deliver, spiritual salvation does not. Buddha could not find satisfactory purpose and meaning when living in a palace; he found is under a Banyan tree.
Stark lists the economic background influential Christians through the ages and concludes:
Growing up in privilege often generates the conviction that one has the superior wisdom needed to transform the world and the right, perhaps even the duty, to do so.
Marx might just have easily wrote:
Religion often is the opium of the dissatisfied upper classes, the sigh of wealthy creatures depressed by materialism.
Chapter 6: Misery & Mercy
A study based on ancient tombstones has established that early Christians outlived their pagan neighbours. They did so because of their commitment to what was an unusual virtue in ancient times: the quality of mercy.
On cities and city life
The largest city in
Galilee, Sepphoris, was probably home to some
5000 people and most villages probably had fewer than a hundred. In this era
Jerusalem's population probably exceeded
25000 only when it was crowded with refugees fleeing Roman armies. Despite ancient claims that more than a million Jews were slaughtered when
Jerusalem fell in 70CE, it likely never grew beyond 50k.
When Paul visited
Corinth it would have been around 50k,
Thessalonica 35k,
Athens 75k and
Rome the largest city in the world (Loyang, China, was second), probably only had around 450k, although many historians claim outdated figures of a million.
Despite their small population they were probably still very crowded as they covered such small areas. Life in an ancient city was like living on a crowded beach in summertime. Rome was estimated to have 302 people per acre compared to 122 in modern Calcutta and 100 in Manhattan.
People lived in constant fear of fire since most buildings we built out of wood and buildings would often collapse. In tall buildings the poorer inhabitants lived at the top and there was often so many of them that the sheer weight of people brought the structures down.
Houses
Private housing was rare as well. In Rome there was only one private house for every 26 apartment blocks.
Sanitation
Soap hadn't been invented and due to the overcrowding and poor water supplies, cities were filthy places to be. Stagnant water, faeces lined streets and insects abounded.
Crime and disorder
Amid all the concern that modern cities lack community, being filled with newcomers and strangers, it is forgotten that ancient cities were even more so. They needed a regular influx of newcomers to stop the cities collapsing into ruin since there was such a high mortality rate among city-dwellers.
Disease
Tapeworm and whipworm eggs have been found in abundance in the remains of decayed human fecal remains indicating that most people suffered them.
In ancient descriptions of persons, in an age without photography, personal scars were relied upon to identify individuals. Most people would have had some identifying marks as a result of sickness and disease they'd lived through.
Stark:
Women were especially susceptible to health problems due to child birth and to widespread abortion by means of unsanitary and crude methods.
Christian mercy (19%)
In contrast to the Christians, mercy in the pagan world and especially among the philosophers was regarded as a character defect. The reason for this was because mercy involved providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice (which is what people deserve).
Classical philosophers taught that
mercy is not governed by reason and that humans must learn
to curb the impulse. They went further saying that
the cry of the undeserving for mercy must go unanswered.
Pity was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up.
These attitudes stood in stark contrast to the Christian virtue of charity and mercy. In 251AD the bishop of Rome wrote a letter to the bishop of Antioch in which he mentioned that the Roman congregation was supporting 1500 widows and distressed persons.
One distinguished scholar put it like this:
The Christians... ran a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.
It was because of the congregational life of a Christian that meant they were insulated from many of the deprivations of ancient life. Even if they were newcomers they were not strangers but brothers and sisters in Christ. When calamities struck, there were people who cared - in fact, there were people having the distinct responsibility to care!
All congregations had deacons whose primary job was the support of the sick, infirm, poor and disabled.
The
Apostolic Constitutions outlined the role of the deacon:
Deacons are to be doers of good works, exercising a general supervision day or night, neither scorning the poor nor respecting the person of the rich; they must ascertain who are in distress and not exclude them from a share in church funds; compelling also the well-to-do to put money aside for good words.
The immense benefits of Christian life are seen in the responses to the two great plagues that struck the empire:
In 165 AD during Marcus Aurelius' reign a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Some historians say it was the first appearance of Small Pox in the west. It killed between a quarter and a third of the population. Aurelius describes caravans of wagons and carts hauling out the dead.
People were seen to abandon their loved ones when the first symptoms of the plague appeared, the streets often lined with the dead and dying, 'half dead creatures trying to make it to fountains for refreshment.'
What could people do? Pray? Even if they had gone to temple they would have found them empty as priests fled the cities for fear of their lives. It was also widely believed that the gods didn't care for humans, didn't intervene and show them mercy.
For the Christians things were different. They believed and were taught that this life is a test for the next. They exhorted one another to not flee, to not fear death and to not abandon loved ones to the plague. They saved many lives by their care and compassion. Dionysius of Alexandria wrote a pastoral letter to his members, extolling those who had nursed the sick and especially those who had given their lives in doing so:
Most of our brothers showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains.
Many Christians who had been stricken, survived a fact that didn't go unnoticed, lending immense credibility to Christian 'miracle working.'
The Christian percentage in the population would have increased dramatically as well since every Christian who was afflicted would have received nursing by another, thus dramatically increasing the chance of their survival. As the pagan population dwindled, the Christian influence in the population greatly increased as a result of both plagues:
what went on during the epidemics was only an intensification of what went on every day among Christians. Because theirs were communities of mercy and self-help, Christians did have longer, better lives.
In comparing Christians and pagans we must keep in mind that whereas Christians believed in life everlasting at most, pagans believed in an unattractive existence in the underworld.
Chapter 7: Appeals to women
Women have always been predominant in Christian congregations. Most of Paul's converts were women and many of them 'leading women'. In a sample of senatorial class Romans who lived between 283-423CE it was found that 50% of the men were Christians and 85% of the women were.
Why?
- Religious movements have always attracted more women than men.
- Studies have shown that women are more religious than men in terms of both belief and participation.
Women were particularly drawn to Christianity:
- because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.
Pagan & Jewish Women:
Women in early Christian communities were considerably better off than their pagan and even Jewish counterparts.
Stark points out that it is hard to generalise about the treatment of women across the Empire as it varied. Hellenic women were a lot more restricted than Roman women which may explain why Christianity grew a lot faster among the Hellenic cities. Jewish attitude to women also varied. Expressing one attitude to women in Judaism (an extreme view perhaps) Rabbi Eliezer is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud (90CE): Better burn the Torah than teach it to a woman.
Despite that the Jewish law states: honour your father and your mother and elsewhere reverses it 'mother and father'.
In general Jewish women were better off than pagan women but had less freedom and influence than did Christian women.
Christian women
Objective evidence has shown that women enjoyed a far greater degree of equality with men than did their pagan/Jewish counterparts.
- A study of Christian burials showed that women were just as likely as men to be commemorated with lengthy inscriptions.
- True not only of adults but children as Christians lamented the death of a daughter as much as they did a son. This was especially unusual in its day.
- Christian women often held leadership roles in the church.
- Christian women enjoyed far greater security and equality in marriage than their pagan friends.
Church Leadership
Women held positions of leadership and honour in the early church. Stark thinks it necessary to dismiss Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 'women are to remain silent' as being 'non-Pauline' and a later insertion.
In 112AD Pliny the Younger writes to Emperor Trajan about two young Christian women he tortured who were called 'deaconesses'. Clement of Alexandria (150-216) wrote of 'women deacons' and Origen (185-254) wrote of Romans that it teaches with the authority of the Apostle that there are as we have already said, women deacons in the Church.
Infanticide
The exposure of unwanted infants was 'widespread' in the Roman Empire ad girls were far more likely than boys to be exposed. Legally this decision rested entirely with the father.
Even in large families more than one daughter was hardly ever reared.
In keeping with their Jewish origins, Christians condemned as murder the exposure of infants. So substantially more Christian (& Jewish) female infants lived.
Marriage
It was common practise for girls to be married around age 12 or 13. The historian Dio Cassius (155-229) agreed: girls are considered to have reached marriageable age on completion of the their twlfth year.
Looking at 100s Roman funerary inscriptions shows a stark contrast between Christian and pagan women:
- 20% of the pagan women were twelve or younger when they were married.
- 4% of the pagan women were only ten.
- Only 7% of Christians were under thirteen.
- 50% of pagan women were married before age fifteen.
- 20% of Christians were married before age fifteen.
- 48% of Christian women had not married until they were eighteen or older.
Most Christian women married when they were physically and emotionally mature and most had a say in whom they married, and enjoyed a far more secure marriage.
Ratios and Fertility
One reason Roman men married young women was to be sure of getting a virgin, but another important reason was because of the shortage of women. Writing in the second century historian Dio Cassius noted the extreme shortage of Roman women. A society cannot routinely dispose of a substantial number of female newborns and not end up with a very skewed sex ratio.
Tullia, Cicero's daughter, was not untypical: married at 16... widowed at 22, remarries at 23, divorced at 28; married again at 29, divorced at 33 - and dead soon after childbirth, at 34.
A best guess was that there were 131 males per 100 females in Rome, rising to 140 males per 100 females in the rest of Italy, Asia Minor and North Africa.
The difference in Christian communities meant that per the same number of people Christian communities grew a lot faster and may well be another reason for the rise of Christianity.
The primary reason for low Roman fertility was that men did not want the burden of families and acted accordingly: many avoided fertility by having sex with prostitutes rather than their wives, or by engaging in anal intercourse.
There also follows a graphic and brutal description of how abortions were carried out; too graphic to want to type up here. (22%)
Plato & Aristotle both wrote about a citizens duty to abort a baby for the sake of population control. This widespread practise was opposed by Christians. In the Didache it was written: thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.
Recognising their need for more children Roman society tried to change its practises:
In 9CE Augustus promulgated laws giving political advantages to men who fathered three of more children and imposing political and financial penalties on childless couples, unmarried women over the age of twenty-five.
This and other attempts failed and by the third century there is solid evidence of decline in both the number and the population of Roman towns in the West.
Conclusion:
The rise of Christianity depended upon women.
In response to the special appeal that the faith had for women, the early church drew substantially more female than male converts, and this in a world where women were in short supply. Having an excess of women gave the church a remarkable advantage because it resulted in disproportionate Christian fertility and in a considerable number of secondary conversions.
Chapter 8: Persecution & Commitment
During the summer of the year 64 the emperor Nero sometimes lit up his garden at night by setting fire to a few fully conscious Christians who had been covered with wax and then impaled high on poles forced up their rectums.
Tacitus claims Nero did these things to avoid being blamed for a fire that destroyed parts of the city:
Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.
Stark: Among the victims may have been Peter and his wife as well as the apostle Paul.
Episodic persecutions
Nero's persecutions resulted in nearly a thousand deaths. (Stark cites Frend) Although others suggets it was a mere few hundred.
Pliny the Younger's letters to Trajan discuss how and why Christians ought to be killed.
Harold Mattingly (1884-1964) thought that the ban on Christianity originated with Nero and remained in force because 'Romans of character and position continued to speak of Christianity as a horrible superstition and have no doubt that mere persistence in it merited death.'
Marcus Aurelius (161-180) was told that the plagues that wiped out millions were sent by the gods because they (the Romans) had been affronted and neglected.
Stark:
It was a very bad time to belong to a group notorious for refusing to sacrifice to the gods.
In 177 a vicious persecution broke out in Lyons.
During this persecution the young woman Blandina was executed:
Initially she was suspended from a stake, exposed as food to wild beasts. When the beasts ignored her she was taken down and subsequently subjected to every torture, again and again. then after the scourging... after the frying pan, she was at last thrown into a basket and presented to a bull... then she too was sacrificed, and even the heathen themselves acknowledged that never in their experience had a woman endured so many and terrible sufferings.
In 202 a 22 year old Carthaginian (Tunisian) noblewoman with a nursing woman was, along with 4 others thrown to the beasts in the arena and after she survived was killed by the sword.
In 248 a bloddy anti-Christian riot broke out in Alexandria.
Imperial Persecutions
Rome was a devout city/empire. They genuinely believed that the gods had made them a great empire and as such Christianity was an affront to the gods. Empire-wide persecutions that broke out weren't so much a dislike of Christianity but a desire to please the gods.
Emperor Decius came to power and convinced as he was that Rome's current crisis could be resolved by religious revival ordered every citizen to sacrifice to the gods and eat the sacrificial meat. Christians refused even this 'simple' request and often did so loudly and publicly.
Following the execution of Pope Fabian, Decius is quoted as saying 'I would rather receive news of a rival to the throne, than another bishop in Rome.'
The Roman persecutors paid primary attention to the church leaders:
The bishops of Rome and Antioch were tortured and executed almost at once. The bishops of Jerusalem and of Antioch died in prison. Efforts to arrest Dionysius in Alexandria and Cyprian in Carthage failed when both went underground. But some ordinary Christians were seized, including harmless elderly women such as Apolonia of Alexandria who had all of her remaining teeth smashed out before being burned alive.
After Decius was killed in battle Valerian replaced him as emperor who continued the persecutions. He himself was killed in battle by the Persians who tortured him, skinned him and stuffed his skin with straw and kept it in their temple. Valerian's son Gallienus replaced him and set about repealing all of the charges against Christians. The reason for this?
His wife was a Christian.
In 303 the 'Great Persecution' broke out. Diocletian was emperor. Before this date he was sympathetic of Christians (his wife and niece were Christians) and so he hadn't persecuted them. However when the empire suffered some humiliating defeats he needed to turn some where and so he turned to the edict of Decius and ordered Christians to offer incense again. They refused and again he had them put to death.
In the case of a member of the imperial household named Peter, who was discovered to be a Christian, Diocletian had him 'stripped, raised high, and scourged all over.' Then salt and vinegar were poured on his wounds and he was 'slowly roasted' alive.
All told,
approximately 3000 leaders and prominent members were executed, and thousands of others were sentenced to slavery and sent to the mines.
However the public and popular attitude to Christianity had changed. Christianity had become 'respectable'. No mobs, no informants.
In 311 Diocletian revoked all the decrees and asked Christians to pray for his recovery from an illness he had.
Stark thinks that in 250 at the start of Decius's persecutions Christians probably already made up nearly 20% of the populations of major cities and in 303 at the start of the Great Persecution at least 10% of the entire empire were Christian.
The Basis for martyrdom
Given the horrendous way so many Christians were tortured it seems incredible that any would go through with it especially since a simple denunciation could have set them free. And yet so many did. In fact so many wanted to that the church fathers had to forbid voluntary martyrdom. Even so:
Surviving documents reveal an astonishingly large number of volunteers
Stark points out that most academics think that the martyrs were simply people who enjoyed pain or were mentally ill. They cannot understand how and why anyone would endure such a death. Another reason Stark puts forward has to do with the infamy and celebrity status offered to martyrs by the church both before and after they died.
On the surviving church:
The Romans assumed that the bishops and clergy were the active elements of the church and should they be destroyed, the masses of ordinary Christians would simply drift away. This was no doubt true of the pagan temples and perhaps for the Oriental faiths. But it was a misreading of Christianity where behind each bishop, priest, and deacon there was a line of lay persons ready and able to replace them.
He also rather beautifully describes the church:
The church was an independent social sphere wherein hight status was entailed by positions within the group, whatever one's status outside - a separate world wherein a high city official and a slave could meaningfully call one another 'brother'. And within this Christian status sphere, no higher rank could be accorded than that of a 'holy martyr.'
Galen wrote of Christians that 'their contempt of death... is patent to us every day.'
Chapter 9: Assessing Christian Growth
There are no figures to go on when assessing Christian growth however it is worth pointing out that there were 'substantially more Christians in the East than in the West at all points in time until after the Muslim conquests.'
Ancient Statistics
Until modern times writers didn't mean for their numbers to be taken literally, but used them simply to indicate 'many' or 'few'.
Fulcher of Chartes (1059-1127) wrote about the crusades and presumably knew that his number was inaccurate. He wrote that 6million French Knights went off on the First Crusade. Absurd given that this numbered even larger than the entire population of France.
Stark dismisses Luke's claim that 3000 souls were saved at Pentecost and instead proposes that there were a total of about 1000 Christians in the empire in the year 40.
Robert wilken suggests that by about the year 150 'Christian groups could be found in perhaps forty or fifty cities within the Roman Empire... the total number of Christians in the empire was probably less than 50k.'
Nearly all historians in an agreement that by the year 300 there were approx. 6 million Christians in the empire. By 350 AD it is generally agreed that Christians were in the majority - if barely - amounting to somewhat more than 30million 'who were at least nominal Christians'.
Taking these milestones (above) it is estimated that Christianity grew at a rate of 3.4% per year. By doing so it grew from 1000 believers in 40AD to 31.7 million in 350AD amassing 52% of the entire population.
It is believed that the number of Christians in Rome around 100AD was probably close to 1000.
In about 200AD Tertullian boasted:
nearly all the citizens of the cities are Christians.
Part 3: Consolidating Christian Europe
Chapter 10: Constantine's Very Mixed Blessings
Constantine was Emperor from 306-337. The Orthodox Catholic Church recognises him as a Saint, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't.
After generations of skepticism it is now widely accepted once again that Constantine did appeal to the Christian God for aide in his battle at Milvian Bridge... it is also accepted that his subsequent conversion was real, not pretended as too many historians claimed for too many years.
Constantine's mother, Helena, was a Christian long before Constantine and even donated her house to the Archbishop for use as a church.
Evidences of his conversion being genuine:
- after the battle he didn't offer incense as was expected.
- he planned a thoroughly Christian funeral service for himself. A service that showed his 'depth and extravagance of conviction'
- he had a shrine built to 'perpetuate for all mankind the memory of the Saviour's Apostles' (himself taking the place of the 13th Apostle).
- in light of his subsequent personal involvement in Christian affairs it is obvious that he 'believed sincerely' that God had given him a special mission.
- he didn't persecute or outlaw paganism which showed a commitment to religious harmony. This is something modern historians regard as being key to recognising Constantine's sincerity of Christian faith.
Constantine built the church, literally. He launched an immense church building program all across the empire. He commissioned dozens of church buildings to be established in prominent cities. He also donated rental money in Rome to the church 'thus paving the way for the church's enduring wealth in later centuries.'
Official religion?
Keep in mind that, contrary to popular belief, Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire:
What he did was to make the Christian church the most-favoured recipient of the near-limitless resources of imperial favour. Legal privileges and powers were lavished on the clergy. Episcopal courts were given official status. The clergy were exempted from taxes and civic duties. And bishops now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators... and were expected to take on the role of judges, governors, great servants of the state. As a result there was a sudden influx of men from aristocratic families into the priesthood which transformed the church into a far more worldly and far less energetic institution.
Constantine attempted to unify Christianity by centralising its beliefs, shocked as he was to discover divergence of thought within the faith he converted to.
Circumcillions. This unusual group of people associated themselves with the Donatists in North Africa. Donatists considered themselves to be the 'true' church. During the persecutions members of clergy who defected were considered beyond the pale of restoration and they also went a step further claiming that any sacrament performed by these now traitors isn't valid. Circumcillions or Agonisticis (fighters for Christ) considered martyrdom to be the highest virtue a Christian can achieve. To bring about their own martyrdom they would attack people with wooden clubs (not swords since Jesus forbade it) in order to provoke the victim to turn on them and kill them.
Constantine commissioned an army to go and 'deal' with the Donatists. For the first time the state was used as an arm of the church to crush dissenting groups. Constantine was used to using force to bring about political unity and so he simply carried over his methods into religious affairs as well. There was now a relationship between state and church and far from Christianity becoming fully legalised it was now clear that only some types of Christianity (the legally approved ones) would be allowed to exist.
The Persian Massacres
As a result of Constantine embracing Christianity the Persians massacred Christians. The number of Persian Christians killed in this massacre probably greatly exceeded the number who died in all the persecutions by the Romans put together.
In 344 Shapur II (King of Persia) became worried about the Christians in his empire. Aware that Constantine had conferred special status on Christians he became paranoid that they would betray him in battle. He was also told by Zoroastrian priests that 'there is no secret' the Christian bishops do not reveal to the Romans.
On Good Friday 344 Shapur had five bishops and one hundred Christian priests beheaded outside the walls of Susa, and the massacres began. For the next several decades Christian were tracked down and hunted from one end of the empire to the other. Tens of thousands of Christians were killed. Nevertheless substantial numbers of Persian Christians survived and the faith soon reestablished itself as a major presence.
Conclusion
The establishment of a rich, powerful and intolerant Christian church was the primary legacy of the conversion of Constantine.
Chapter 11: The Demise of Paganism
For a long time historians have held that the rise of Christianity occurred because Christians empowered by the state, stamped out paganism which at its core is a peaceable and tolerant religion.
But, Stark says, that isn't true!
Consider this clause from the Code of Justinian (529-534):
We especially command those persons who are truly Christians, or who are said to be so, that they should not abuse the authority of religion and dare to lay violent hands on Jews and pagans, who are living quietly and attempting nothing disorderly or contrary to law.
Paganism was not obliterated. Instead it seeped away slowly. There were still organised communities sacrificing to Zeus-Hadad in the last quarter of the sixth century.
In 639 when Mulsim forces threatened Harran, pagans still outnumbered Christians in the city.
although the medieval church went to great lengths to stamp out Christian heresy they largely ignored the persistence of paganism.
Coexistence
Categorical statement by Stark:
Constantine was not responsible for the triumph of Christianity.
The reason:
By the time he gained the throne, Christian growth already had become a tidal wave of exponential increase. If anything, Christianity played a leading role in the triumph of Constantine, providing him with substantial and well-organised urban support.
St. Augustine of Hippo struggled to convince his flock that such matters as bountiful crops and good health were not, in effect, sub-contracted to pagan gods by the One True God. Such was the superstitious/pagan grip on the psyche of the people. Such also is this an example of how long paganism 'hung around' in the wider 'Christian' culture. In many parts of Europe, Star says, the use of paganism as magic has continued into the modern era.
Julian's Folly
Flavius Claudius Julianus, now known as Julian the Apostate had a brief (361-363) but disastrous rule as emperor. Despite that he has been seized upon by anti-religious intellectuals, some of whom have turned him into a hero. A novel was made of his life in which he was presented as a noble person looking to revive paganism in a tolerant spirit. The truth, Stark says, is quite different.
Julian, upon his succession, loudly declared his disdain of the 'Galileans' and several instances of brutal killings of Christians went unpunished. There was no imperial response when the 'holy virgins' were torn limb from limb and their remains thrown to the pigs for instance.
when knowledge that a pagan emperor now rule prompted pagans in Alexandria to torture the city's Christian bishop, to tear him limb from limb, and to then crucify 'many Christians,' Julian's main concern was to obtain the dead bishop's library for himself.
Julian also forbid Christians to teach the classics which meant that upper-class parents had to choose between sending their offspring to be instructed by pagans or deny them the opportunity to acquire 'the language, the looks, the innumerable coded signals that were absorbed unconsciously withe classical education without which Christian children would not have been able to compete in the elite culture of classical antiquity, as Julian knew full well.
He ruled for only 18 months and yet his name still terrorised Christians a generations later.
Persecution and persistence
Paganism was an active faith 'built upon the conviction that the world was filled with the divine, and that proper sacrifice brought the human into intimate communication with the divine.
Emperors appointed Christians as well as pagans to positions of consuls and prefects, as can be seen from this spread of Christian and Pagan emperors:
Christian Pagan Unknown Number
Constantine: 56% 18% 26% 55
Julian: 18% 82% 0% 18
Valentinian: 31% 38% 31% 32
Theodosius: 27% 19% 54% 83
The word 'pagan' derives from the Latin word 'paganus' which originally meant 'rural person' or more colloquially 'country hick.' It became a term with religious meaning only after Christianity had triumphed in the cities. Most of the pagans were rural people.
Trickle-down
Since Christianity had most firmly taken root among the upper-classes Christian leaders soon adopted a 'trickle-down' theory. It was sufficient that the upper classes in an area acknowledged the authority of the church and then to wait for their example to eventually trickle down the ranks until the peasants were Christians too. But the peasants responded to Christianity as they always had to the appearance of various new gods within paganism - to add the new to the old rather than replace it.
There's a wonderful example of this from an Icelandaic piece of literature. Helgi the Lean:
Believed in Christ, but invoked Thor in matters of seafaring and dire necessity.
Interesting... Pope Gregory the Great advised Abbot Mellitus on his missions trip to Britain:
I have come to the conclusion that temples of the idols among that people should on no account be destroyed... For it is certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstinate minds at one stroke. Instead the pope recommended that altars and sacred relics should be placed in the pagan temples which would transform them into Christian edifices.
Also in the same vein:
The hundreds of magical springs which dotted the country became 'holy wells' associated with a saint, but they were still used for magical healing and for divining the future.
It was a missionary effort to influence and affect paganism before it was a genuine belief in the mystical in Christianity. Again:
The famous healing shrine just outside Alexandria, dedicated to the goddess Isis, underwent an elaborate transformation into a Christian healing site when the remains of two martyrs were placed inside. The same process of assimilation was applied to the plentiful sacred groves, rock formations, and other pagan sites. People continued to visit these sites for the original reasons, even if these sites now took on Christian coloration, although many of the visitors continued to direct their supplications to the old gods.
Holidays and symbols:
Festive dancing
Bell ringing
Candle lighting, and especially singing
Macmullen notes:
Among christians singing was at first limited to psalms, as had always been the custom among Jews. After the mid-fourth century, however, more is heard of a different sort of music not only at private parties... but in the very churches as well... The intrusion of music into a sacred setting must obviously be credited to the old cults.
Augustine of Hippo comments on this assimilation being common even before his day:
When crowds of pagans wishing to become Christians were prevented from doing this because of their habits of celebrating feast days ot their idols with banquets and carousing... our ancestors thought it would be good to make a concession... and permit them to celebrate other feasts.
Feasts:
May day became the feast for Saint Philip and James
Midsummer Eve became the Nativity of St. John
Easter replaced the Spring Equinox and the name may have come from the Saxon goddess Eostre
All Saints Eve sat on top of the harvest festival
Chapter 12: Islam and the destruction of Eastern and North African Christianity
'Christianity did not start out as a European religious movement. In early days far more missionary activity was devoted to the East than to the West.
We don't how Christianity spread in the East but we do know that it was extremely successful there, soon becoming a major presence in Syria, Persia, parts of Arabia, Mesopotamia, Turkestan, Armenia and on into India and even with several outposts in China.
North Africa was:
the most Christianised region of the Western empire, home to such great leaders as Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine.
By the year 300 it is plausible that more than half of all Christians lived in the East and Africa. In 325 at the Council of Nicea 55% of the bishops invited were from the East.
At around 500 more than 2/3 of the Christians were living in the East and the 'centre of gravity' for Christianity would have been Syria, not Italy.
This is a shocking statement:
Christianity became a predominately European faith 'by default' when it was destroyed in Asia and North Africa. The destruction began in the seventh and early eighth century when these areas were overrun by Islam. The number of Eastern bishops (as measured by council attendance) fell from 338 in 754AD to 110 in 896AD.
Muhammed and the rise of Islam
Muhammed was born in 570 AD
Initially he hoped Jews and Christians would accept him as a prophet who fulfilled both faiths. Frustrated when they didn't, and when he had sufficient means to do so, he attacked the last Jewish tribe in Medina and drove them out making somewhere between 600-900 men dig their own grave before beheading them and selling the women into slavery.
In what became known as his farewell address Muhammed said:
I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but Allah.' This is entirely consistent with the Qur'an (9:5): 'slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.'
Sunnis & Shiites
Islam was divided into two after a bloody civil war broke out over who was the true successor to Muhammad. Muhammed's cousin and son-in-law Ali was pitted against Muawiya, cousin of Caliph Uthman who had just been murdered. The result was a divided Islam into two; the Sunnis and the Shiites (who had backed Ali - lost civil war).
North Africa:
By 705 after Carthage was 'razed to the ground and most its inhabitants killed' all of Christian Africa was now under Muslim rule as was all of the Middle East and the Christian portions of Asia. In 711 Muslim forces from Morocco invaded Spain and a century later Sicily and Southern Italy fell to Muslim forces.
Conversion to Islam wasn't as rapid as people often think. Outward compliance for convienece or gain isn't the same as genuine heart change. In societies that were newly muslim non-Muslims had to endure many humiliations and hardships, including far higher tax rates. Moreover, just as many pagans embraced Christianity because of the financial and social benefits, so too did many embrace Islam for similar motives:
The more surprising fact is not that many such conversions resulted, but that so many people chose to remains steadfast Christians or Jews.
There was very low tolerance of those who wouldn't convert to Islam in Muslim-led societies. Christians/Jews weren't allowed to build any new churches/synagogues, were prohibited from praying or reading their scriptures aloud, not even in their homes or churches/gogues. Christians and Jews were forbidden from riding horses (at most they could ride mules) nor were they allowed to wear certain marks of their religion on their costume when among Muslims. In some places they were forbidden from wearing similar clothes to Muslims, were forbidden from carrying arms and were invariably taxed severely.
The Crusades: At the time of the crusades the Muslims paid little attention to them and current anger about them originated in the twentieth century.
The eradication of Christianity from the East began in 1321 when Muslim mobs began destroying Coptic churches. These anti-Christian riots occurred throughout Egypt until large numbers of churches and monasteries were destroyed.
Then again in 1354 these mobs 'ran amok' and began attacking Jews & Christians, throwing them into bonfires if they refused to pronounce the shadadatayn (to acknowledge Allah as the One True God).
Soon there were no churches left that had not been destroyed.
In Mongol Armenia similar events were taking place:
Local authorities were ordered to seize each Christian man, to pluck out his beard and to tattoo a black mark on his shoulder. when few Christian defected in response to these measures, the Khan then ordered that all Christian men be castrated and have one eye put out.
Conclusion:
Philip Jenkins put it thus
'Christianity became a European faith because Europe was the only continent where it was not destroyed.'
Chapter 13: Europe Responds
The case for the Crusades.
It is often argued that Muslim bitterness over their mistreatment by the Christian West can be dated back to
1096 when the First Crusade set out for the Holy Land. It is widely believed that the Crusades were but
'the first extremely bloody chapter in a long history of brutal European colonialism'.
It is also widely held that the crusaders marched east:
- in pursuit of land and loot
- at the command of power mad popes
- seeking to convert Mulsim masses
- the knights of Europe were barbarians who brutalised everyone in their path
In 1999 the NY Times proposed that the Crusades were comparable to Hitler's atrocities or to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Also in 1999 hundreds marched along the route the crusaders took in a 'Reconciliation Walk' with the words 'I apologise' in Arabic printed on t-shirts. They released this official statement:
Nine hundred years ago, our forefathers carried the name of Jesus Christ in battle across the Middle East. Fueled by fear, greed, and hatred... the crusaders lifted the banner of the Cross above your people... On the anniversary of the First Crusade... we wish to retrace the footsteps of the Crusaders in apology for their deeds... We deeply regret the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by our predecessors. We renounce greed, hatred and fear and condemn all violence done in the name of Jesus Christ.
Western condemnations of the Crusades originated in the 'Enlightenment'
that utterly misnamed era during which French and British intellectuals invented the 'Dark Ages' in order to glorify themselves and vilify the church.
According to David Hume: The Crusades were the most signal and most durable monument to human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
Edward Gibbon claims that the crusaders really went in pursuit of 'mines of treasure, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense.
Stark then concludes:
Thus it is the accepted myth that during the Crusades an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalised, looted and colonised a tolerant and peaceful Islam. These claims have been utterly refuted by a group of distinguished contemporary historians.
Instead:
- The Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations
- by many centuries of bloody attempts to colonise the West
- by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places
- the initiating endorsement of the pope had nothing to do with converting Islam
Claims that Muslims have been harbouring bitter resentment about the Crusades for a millennium are nonsense: Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did not appear until about 1900 in reaction against the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of actual European colonialism in the Middle East.
Provocations:
By the time of the First Crusade, Christendom had been fighting a defensive war with Islam for more than 450 years. The fact remains that the Crusades were fundamentally defensive. The provocations that led to the Crusades included the destruction of and threat to holy places in Jerusalem and the murder, torture and enslavement, robbery and general harassment of Christian pilgrims.
The Pope's (Urban II) rabble rousing speech that marked the beginning of the Crusades did invoke God in the fight and make a glory out of dying in Jerusalem but it was also preceded by descriptions of torture of Christians at the hand of brutal Muslim Turks. Jerusalem was a golden place in the imagination of the European masses. To visit the place that the Son of God had walked, died and risen gave concrete reality and the offer of redemption to a people trained in warfare with much need for redemption. The Crusades also gave the young men and itching-for-a-fight feudal Lords the chance to fight in a legitimate war for a legitimate cause. It also had the added of effect of unifying the nations of Europe around a single cause.
Why They Went:
The crusaders sold crosses on their breasts and marched East for two primary reasons, one of them generic and the other specific to crusading. The generic reasons was their perceived need for penance (medieval Britain was a warring, familiar with death sort of place). The specific reasons was to liberate the Holy Land.
The medieval church had many 'profound reservations about violence and especially about killing.'
Pilgrimage was extremely common, with over a thousand making the trip to Jerusalem every year. The reason for this was because the knight of Europe were both very violent and very religious.
On June 7 1099 the first crusaders arrived at Jerusalem. Originally numbering perhaps 130000 there were around 15000 who actually made it as disease, starvation and other misfortunes thinned their numbers. Those who reached Jerusalem were starving having long since eaten their horses. Nevertheless on July 15, 1099 the crusaders burt into the city and after 460 years of Muslim rule, Jerusalem was again in the Christian hands.
The Knights Templar:
Originally created to protect the empires of the Crusades their original name name was the Knights Hospitaller, founded initially to care for sick Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. In 1120 it expanded its vows from chastity, poverty and obedience to include the armed protection of Christians in Palestine. The new vow created the new group the 'Templars'. Whereas the Hospitallers wore a black robe with a white cross on the left sleeves, the Templars wore white robes with a red cross on the mantel.
Strangely it seems that Western historians overlook the great barbarity of the Muslim commanders and armies and focus only a (potentially inflated) account of the crusaders cleansing Jerusalem. Saladin, praised by the west for his chivalry, was far from civil or mild-mannered and barbaric Muslim-led slaughters receive little or no mention by western historians. In one account of the recapturing by the Egyptian leader Baybar what followed was 'the single greatest massacre of the entire crusading era.' It is estimated that seventeen thousands men were murdered and tens of thousands of women and children were marches away as slaves.
Stark acknowledges the brutality of the crusaders but recognises that since many of them had been raised since childhood to kill, we can expect little else of them:
Pope Urban II called them solders of Hell. No doubt it was very unenlightened of the crusaders to be typical medieval warriors, but it strikes me as even more unenlightened to anachronistically impose the Geneva Convention on the crusaders while pretending that their Islamic opponents were either UN Peacekeepers of hapless victims.
Rediscovering the Crusades
Many people suppose that the problems in the Middle East today stem from the Crusades. That may be so but in reality before the end of the nineteenth century Muslims had not shown much interest in the crusades 'looking back on them with indifference and complacency.'
38% shows how the theme of the Crusades became popular in western literature particularly around the time of WWI and then in turn it took root in the Muslim mind also.
Conclusion
A stark conclusion is pronounced:
The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimised the cultivated Muslims. The Crusades are not a blot on the history of Christianity. No apologies are required.
Chapter 14: The 'Dark Ages' and Other Mythical Eras
Renaissance is a French word meaning 'rebirth'. It was a cultural movement that matched the Enlightenment for what it did. Renaissance identifies the era beginning at the end of the fourteenth century when Europeans rediscovered long-forgtteon classical learning, thereby causing new light to break through the prevailing intellectual darkness.
According to the standard historical account, the Renaissance occurred because a decline in church control over major northern Italian cities such as Florence allowed a revival of classical Greco-Roman culture.
The Enlightenment (also known as the age of reason) is said to have begun in 16th C when (aided by the Reformation) secular thinkers freed themselves from clerical control and revolutionised both science and philosophy, thereby ushering in the modern world.
Bertrand Russell:
[the] Enlightenment was essentially a revaluation of independent intellectual activity, aimed quite literally at spreading light where hitherto darkness had prevailed.
Helpful summary of Western history:
1) Classical antiquity
2) the Dark Ages (when the church dominated)
3) The Renaisaance-Enlightenment
4) Modern times
The Myth of the 'Dark Ages'
The Romans didn't develop much beyond providing a level of mere-survival for most people. Stark points out that many intellectuals behave like tourists who stand and gape at their architecture but don't look at what's really true that is for the Empire's size and potential it didn't achieve very much at all.
I'm beginning to get the impression, since he's mentioned again here, that Edward Gibbon's antireligious intellectualism coloured much of his now very influential works.
Stark:
Perhaps the most important factor in the myth of the 'Dark Ages' is the inability of intellectuals to value or even to notice the nuts and bolts of real life. Hence, revolutions in agriculture, weaponry and warfare, nonhuman power, transportation, manufacturing, and commerce went unappreciated. So too did remarkable moral progress. For example, at the fall of Rome there was very extensive slavery everywhere in Europe; by the time of the 'Renaissance' it was long gone.
Progress in Technology
The Romans made little use of water or wind power preferring manual labour performed by slaves.
In Contrast. In the ninth century it was found that one-third of the estates along the Seine River in the area around Paris had water mills, the majority of them on church-owned properties.
Many dams were constructed in the 'Dark Ages' one built in Toulouse built around 1120 was more than thirteen hundred feet across.
Also in the 'Dark Ages' Europeans harnessed the wind, erecting tens of thousands of wind mills.
Agriculture was revolutionised.
Also of immense importance was the invention of chimneys. Also eyeglasses.
In warfare the invention of saddles and stirrups came in the 'Dark Ages'. True sailing and cannon fitted warships came in the Dark Ages. Several inventions and advances in warfare that should have come from the warring Roman Empire actually came in this period instead.
Inventing Capitalism
Capitalism, widely believed as being one of the primary reasons the west developed like it did, originated in the 'Dark Ages'.
Thus, Stark says, by no later than the 13thC the leading Christian theologians had fully debated the primary aspects of emerging capitalism - profits, property rights, credit, lending, and the like.
Moral Progress
All classical societies were slave societies - both Plato and Aristotle were slave-owners, as were most free residents of Greek city-states.
Amid this universal slavery, only one civilisation ever rejected human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice!
Amazing! All this in the 'Dark Ages'
Developments in Hight Culture
Romans and Greeks sang and played monophonic music. It was medieval musicians who developed polyphony (the simultaneous sounding of two or more musical lines).
Art: The art of the period although called 'Romanesque' surpassed anything done in Roman times. the Gothic architecture, scorned by intellectuals of its time for not being more 'Roman' was amazing. The artists used oil paint rather than wood or plaster meaning the painter could take his time... the art of its time seemed able to perform 'miracles'.
Literature and education: Universities were developed in this period as was literature like Chuacer and Dante.
The 'Enlightenment'
Stark makes the point that although the leading voices in creating a secular 'enlightenemtn' the progress they hailed came from science not literature. the men who coined the term 'enlightenment' referring to the advance of secular reason devoid of religion were irreligious and yet the actual scientists who made the discoveries were deeply religious.
A great quote:
What the proponents of the 'Enlightenment' actually initiated was the tradition of angry secular attacks on religion in the name of science - attacks like those of their modern counterparts such as Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Presented as the latest word in sophistication, rationalism, and reason these assaults are remarkably naive and simplistic - both then and now. In truth the rise of science was inseparable from Christian theology, for the latter gave direction and confidence to the former.
Boom!
This next quote has me quaking with excitement in my seat:
The truly fundamental basis for the rise of the West was an extraordinary faith in reason and progress that was firmly rooted in christian theology, in the belief that God is the rational creator of a rational universe.
Chapter 15: The People's Religion
Medieval times have often been described as the 'Age of Faith' since it's believed that this is this era when 'everyone believed what religious authority told them to believe.'
I have often thought that this was the time in England when everyone went to church and by and large this is the report that people are taught. It isn't true.
In 1410 anonymous authors of a popular publication wrote that 'the people these days are loath to hear God's service. And when they are forced to attend they come late and leave early.'
In Saxony (1574): 'You'll find more of them [the peasants] out fishing than at service... those who do come walk out as soon as the pastor begins his sermon.'
In Seegrehna (1577): 'A pastor testified that he often quits his church without preaching... because not a soul has turned up to hear him.'
When people did come they were quite often so badly behaved that they weren't easy to handle: nudging their neighbours, course joking, spitting, knitting, letting off guns, farting loudly... you name it they did it. So bad was their behaviour that some people were charged with indecent behaviour in church.
In Germany in 1594: 'Those who come t service are usually drunk... and sleep through the whole sermon, except sometimes they fall off the benches, making a great clatter, or women drop their babies on the floor.'
In Peipzig (1579): 'they play cards while the pastor preaches, and often mock or mimic him cruelly to his face... cursing and blaspheming, hooliganism, and fighting are common... they enter church when the service is half over, go at once to sleep, and run out again before the blessing is given... Nobody joins in singing the hymn; it made my heart ache to hear the pastor and the sexton singing all by themselves.
In the 14th C the preacher John Bromyard asked a local shepherd if he knew who were the Father, Son & Holy Ghost. He replied: 'The father and son I know well for I tend their sheep, but I know not that third fellow; there is none of that name in our village.''
Not only were the peasants by and large an uncivilised unChristian lot, the clergy themselves were often quite lazy and uninformed:
William Tyndale reported in 1530 that hardly any of the priests and curates in England knew the Lord's prayer. When the bishop of Gloucester systematically tested his diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord's Prayer.
In 1380 St. Bernardino of Siena observed a priest who 'knew only the Hail Mary, and used it even at the elevation during mass.'
Training of clergy was almost non-existent. There were no seminaries and they often picked up what little they did know as apprentices from priests who knew very little themselves.
Clerical drunkenness and absenteeism were widespread.
Rural Neglect
the term
pagan comes from the Latin word for rustic or rural-dweller (paganus).
Christians tended to ignore country dwellers. The corrupt and lazy clergy were often no where to be found among them. Thus in 1520 a bishop's visit to 192 parishes in Oxfordshire found that 58 pastors weren't in residence.
The reason that vigorous efforts failed to reach the peasantry was the failure by both Protestants and Catholics to propose a Christian lifestyle that was appropriate and attractive to ordinary people, and their failure to present Christian doctrines in simple, direct language rather than as complex theolgy. .. the only model for the Christian life and that was the ascetic lifestyle of monks and nuns. The ordinary laity were encourage to imitate clerical piety.
But asceticism only appeals to those for whom it is a choice. Fasting has little appeal to those for whom hunger is an actual threat; hours of prayer presuppose having considerable leisure; and poor people never chose to increase their poverty.
The problem of the educated clergy was that the:
clergy seemed unable to grasp the point that sophisticated sermons on the mysteries of the Trinity neither informed nor converted.
The People's Religion:
This often came down to the same thing it had always been - magic.
The word magic initially identified the arts and powers of the magi, the Zoroastrian priests of Persia.
The purpose of magic is the same as that of technology and science: to allow humans to control nature and events in a reality permeated with misfortune.
Magic: for good health, weather magic for crops, sex/love magic and revenge magic were the most common forms it appeared and was used.
The church over time adopted rituals/prayers that sought to replace the magical practises of the people.
Stark:
Christianity is a theological religion. It isn't satisfied with mystery and meditation, but relentlessly seeks to ground its entire system of beliefs in logic and reason.
It was the Christian's commitment to rationalism provided a model for the development of Western science.
The definition and introduction of satanism/witchcraft was developed by university professors trying to make sense of why magic seemed to work when it wasn't done in the name of the Christian faith.
Conclusion:
This is worth noting -
the frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong - it was always thus.
Martin Luther's exasperation:
Dear God... The common man, especially in the villages, knows absolutely nothing about Christian doctrine; and indeed many pastors are in effect unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet they all are called Christians, are baptised, and enjoy the holy sacraments - even though they cannot recite either the Lord's Prayer, the Creed or the commandments. The live just like animals.
Chapter 16: Faith and the scientific 'revolution'
Christopher Columbus never encountered opposition from the church over the 'flatness' of the Earth. He did receive criticism from the church over his poor calculations. He thought it would only be a journey of 2800 miles when it actual fact it was 14000 and had it not been for the unexpected arrival at the West Indies all his men would have died on board.
The story was made up by the author of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving (1783-1859). The concept was immediately embraced by historians who were so certain of the wickedness and stupidity of the medieval church that they felt no need to seek any additional confirmation.
Conflicts between science and religion are often made up and when a notorious enough writer does it, normal critical analysis doesn't seem to apply. Men such as Voltaire and Gibbon who invented the 'Dark Ages' seized any opportunity they could to promote their 'religion is anti progress' narrative.
Stark goes so far as to say:
Not only did Christianity not impede the rise of science; it was essential to it, which is why science arose only in the Christian West!
What is science?
Science is a method utilised in organised efforts to formulate explanations of nature, always subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations.
but not all statements and ideas are 'scientific'. Statements are scientific only if it is possible to deduce from them some definite predictions and prohibitions about what will be observed.
Observable theories about the world (science as we now know it) did not develop until 'a few Europeans slowly evolved the scientific method in medieval times.'
The start of the 'scientific revolution' (although Stark claims that this term is as bogus as 'dark ages') is usually attributed to Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543).
Stark gives a long list of scientific activities and discoveries that Copernicus was a part of and added to and concludes by pointing out that these scientists were not rebel secularist or even devout Christians; they were clergy - most of them bishops and even a cardinal.
On how the universities (established by Christian scholastics) arrived at an altogether differen place than non-Christian institutes of learning:
For example, the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and Chinese mostly based their 'knowledge' of human physiology on philosophy and introspection, and some dissections of animals, but they rejected and condemned any thought of cutting up humans. Christian Scholastics were the first scholars to build their anatomical knowledge on human dissection!
This is a great section here:
Science did not suddenly burst forth in the sixteenth century. It began centuries before in the Scholastic commitment to empiricism, and it was nurtured in the early universities as scholars pursued systematic efforts to innovate. Moreover, the truly remarkable aspect of the rise of science is that is happened only once. Many societies pursued alchemy, but only in Christian Europe did it lead to chemistry; many societies developed extensive systems of astrology, but only in Europe was astrology transformed into scientific astronomy.
What allowed for all this?
Simple: Only medieval Europeans believed that science was
possible and
desirable. The basis for that belief? Their image of God and his creation.
In 1925 the great philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead shocked his audience and Western Intellectuals when he declared:
'faith in the possibility of science... derivative from medieval theology' was what led to the emergence of science as we know it.
Whitehead was a coauthor of
Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell!
He put it all down to the medieval belief in the 'rationality of God'.
Descartes justified his search for the 'laws' of nature on ground that such laws must exist because God is perfect and therefore 'acts in a manner as constant and immutable as possible.'
Images of God & creation found elsewhere in the world are too irrational and impersonal to have sustained science.
Johanne Kepler on science:
The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony imposed on it by God and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.
Perhaps most remarkable in the rise of science is that the early scientists not only searched for natural laws, confident that they existed, but they
found them!
It could thus be said that the proposition that the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again.
Wow! Praise God!
Stark has elsewhere drawn up a list of the 52 major scientific stars in the era of science's birth: 1543-1680 and found that 32 of them (66%) were very religious men. Newton, for example, devoted far more effort to theology than to physics (even predicting the date of the Second Coming -
1948!). Of the remaining 20, 19 were quite religious and only one (Edmund Halley) could be called a skeptic. So let's put all this nonsense about science and religion being in conflict to bed shall we!
Divine Accommodation:
This premise holds that God's revelations are always limited to the current capacity of humans to comprehend - that in order to communicate with humans God is forced to accommodate their incomprehension by resorting to the equivalent of 'baby talk'.
Origen wrote about this:
we teach about God both what is true and what the multitude can understand... hence the written revelation in inspired scripture is a veil that must be penetrated. It is an accommodation to our present capacities... that will one day be superseded.
Thomas Aquinas agreed:
The things of God should be revealed to mankind only in proportion to their capacity; otherwise they might despise what was beyond their grasp... It was therefore better for the divine mysteries to be conveyed to an uncultured people as it were veiled.
The principle of divine accommodation provides a truly remarkable key for completely reappraising the dispute over scripture and science. Calvin said straight out that Genesis is not a satisfactory account of the creation because it was directed to the unlearned and primitive, even though, when they received it, the ancient Jews were far from being truly primitive.
Part V: Christianity Divided
Chapter 17: Two 'churches' and the challenge of heresy
When Constantine showered kindness on Christian clergy he inadvertently created a stampede into the priesthood. Soon Christian offices and especially the higher positions were dominated by the sons of aristocracy - some of them gaining bishoprics even before being baptised. As a result
many immoral, insincere and indolent men were ordained, far too many of whom gained very important positions in the church.
As a result of this and the genuine heartfelt believers in the church there essentially came into existence two churches, the church of power and the church of piety.
The church of power:
- The main body of the church as it evolved in response to the immense status and wealth bestowed on the clergy by constantine.
- Very soon even the papacy was handed down hereditary lines.
Tragic (but amusing) quote from St Jerome (347-420). He attacked many clerics of his era for having entered the church mainly in order 'to have access to beautiful women.'
Consequently by the start of the 11th century European Christianity lay in political and moral ruin.
During the 'century' from 872 and 1012 a third of all popes died violent deaths as the 'throne' of the papacy was played for, some popes went from layman to pope in a single day never being ordained as a priest. All this helps explain why the moral condition of the papacy in this era became 'squalid'.
John XII hit a particular 'low':
He assembled a harem of young women, consecrated a ten-year-old boy as bishop, had a cardinal castrated and loudly invoked pagan gods when he gambled. He died age 28 in bed with a married women. He was probably killed by her irate husband.
The church of piety:
Made up of monks and nuns, in many ways this was created in reaction to the church of power. It argued for virtue over worldliness. At the same time that the sons of nobility stampeded for office in church, monasticism grew as well.
By the middle of the forth century there were tens of thousands of monks and nuns nearly all of them living in organised communities.
reforms from within
Emperor Henry III (1017-1056) was serious about reforming the church of power. He managed to get his cousin Bruno seated as Pope Leo IX. Leo was a force for reform within the church. He declared that any clergy who had gained their office with money declare it, he enforced a stricter celibacy on the clergyman and he operated as a sort of itinerant evangelist travelling the countryside and preaching to commoners in the open air; a marvel in a day when very few people would even seen a cardinal let alone a pope.
Leo was succeeded by several other reform minded heartfelt popes.
Stark shows how the monatries were able to contain many would-be sectarian reformers of the church but before long many such groups started coming out of the church. Some out and out heretics teaching contrary things to Christianity, some labelled 'heretics' by a corrupt church unable to control them. Many such groups continued to emerge. And then came Luther.
Chapter 18: Luther's reformation
Pope Leo X had in mind to burn him alive as he did with Jan Hus. Luther survived because he attracted political and military support.
Luther was the son of a well-to-do German family. His father came form peasant origins but soon owned copper mines and smelters and served for many years on the council of the city of Mansfield in Saxony.
In 1510 one of the pivotal events in Luther's life took place when he was selected to go as one of two German Augustinians to Rome to present an appeal concerning their order.
The other defining pivot moment in Luther's life was in 1517 when Johannes Tetzel came to Wittenberg selling indulgences.
Luther's 95 These was put on the Castle 'noticeboard' door as an invitation to debate the practise of selling indulgences. By December printing presses in three different cities had produced German translations and in the next few months translations were published in France, England and Italy.
Pope Leo X demanded Luther in Rome. Had he have gone he probably would have become another heretic killed by the church. However the German Elector (ruler) Frederick also objected to the indulgences of Rome sold in Germany, so he arranged for Luther to appear before a Cardinal in Augsburg instead of going to Rome.
In January 1521 Luther was ordered to appear before the Imperial Diet meeting in Worms. Luther's friends urged him not to go, fearing for his life. But Luther refused to be deterred - it was the most important decision of his life and changed the course of Western history.
Perhaps one of the main causes, aside from the theological need for it as Luther saw, of the reformation was the growing anti-Rome feeling from many Germans. The wealth of the church had increased in recent years and 'it is estimated that in 1522 the church owned half of the wealth in Germany, perhaps a fifth in France and about a third in Italy.'
Here's an amazing statement about the privileged position the church and clergy held in society:
The church usually paid no local taxes on any of its properties. In addition, the church enjoyed a huge cash flow by imposing tithes on everyone from peasants to kings in much of Europe. In contrast, the clergy and members of religious orders were exempted from all local taxes (including sales taxes on liquor) and could not be tried in local, secular courts, even for murder. Instead, they could only be tried in church courts which were notorious for imposing very lenient sentences.
Most of Luther's influential support came from the urban bourgeoise.
In 1500 it is estimated that only 3-4% of Germans could read.
Stark's hypothese of what caused Lutheranism to set in has to do with the church's authority and power in different European countries.
In Spain and France, the crown held he wealth and power and the church very little. It reamined Catholic. In Denmark and Sweden, the church exacted tithes from the state and held considerable power. These countries turned to Luther. Consider what Henry VIII had to gain as well. Not only could he divorce his wife but the church's wealth became his too if he sided with the Reformers, of which there was quite a lot!
Consider that from the shrine dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket along, Henry's agents confiscated 4,994 ounces of gold, 4425 ounces of silver gilt, 5286 ounces of silver and twenty-six cartloads of other treasure - and this was regarded as a trivial portion of the wealth confiscated from the church.
Chapter 19: the shocking truth about the Spanish Inquisition
Reginaldus Montanus wrote the work:
A Discovery and Plaine Declarationof Sundry Subtill Practises of the Holy Inquisition of Spain which became the basis for appreciating the depth of the horrors of the Inquisition.
Initially set up by Ferdinand and Isabella the Spanish monarchs in 1478, the Inquisition was meant to rid Spain of heretics, especially Jews and Muslims who were pretending to be Christians. Bht the Inquisition also set its sights on all Protestants, witches, homosexuals, scientists and other doctrinal moral offenders. Under the fanatical Dominican monk Tomas de Torquemada, who was appointed in 1483, the Inquisition turned brutal and put to death tens of thousands of innocent people.
The 'shocking truth' about the Inquisition, according to Stark, was that so much of what people think about it is either an exaggeration or an outright lie.
Stark:
The standard account of the SI was invented and spread by English and Dutch propagandists in the 16th C during the wars with Spain.
It was then also carried on by malicious or misled historians eager to sustain 'an image of Spain as a nation of fanatical bigots.' This image of Spain is now referred to by fair-minded historians as the 'Black Legend.'
Fact: Catholic students were denied access to Oxford and Cambridge until 1871.
Consider: Reginaldus Montanus was the pen name of a renegade Spanish monk who became Lutheran and fled to the Netherlands. (
He had good reason to renounce the SI).
Against popular understanding and thoughts around the SI: new historians of the Inquisition have revealed that, in contrast with the secular courts all across Europe, the Spanish Inquisition was a consistent force for justice, restraint, due process and enlightenment. Stark then lists 9 modern historians who concur.
This chapter is a summary of some of the major discoveries of those modern historians.
Deaths
Auto-de-fe meant 'act of faith'. The Inquisitors were more concerned with confession and repentance than with execution and the executions when they did happen were always done by civil authorities.
The first decades were its bloodiest and of the 44701 cases tried, only 876 people were executed (1.8%). Together this adds up to a total of about 2300 deaths spread over more than two centuries.
Fewer people were killed in the Inquisition over more than two centuries than the 3000 French Calvinists who were killed in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Or compare this with the thousands of English Lutherans, Lollards and Catholics that Henry VIII is credited with having boiled, burned, beheaded or hanged.
Torture
Every court in Europe used torture, but the Inquisition did so
far less than other courts. There were church laws put in place to protect victims as well.
Stark now turns to the 'crimes' people were accused of during the Inquisition:
Witchcraft
The burning of witches was rampant and reached its height during the 'Enlightenment'. 'All magic works, some of the time' Stark says. Therefore sometimes when people visited priests they got well and sometimes when they visited local 'wise ones' they got well. The problem the authorities/clergy had was around the reason nonchurch magic worked. The conclusion they drew was that since church 'magic' worked because they involved God, nonchurch magic must work because they invoked satan and his demons. This then led, in an age where medical knowledge was low and superstition and magical solutions were rife, to people turning to magic wherever they could find it and in the case of nonchurch magical practitioners it led to them being condemned (often by mobs) as witches.
What is interesting to note is that very few (nearly none) people were burned by the Inquisition as witches and in Spain the mobs didn't run a mock as they did elsewhere in Europe, since in Spain they had the Inquisition.
The reason for this was based on the fact that the Inquisitors often turned a sympathetic ear to the 'accused' and learnt that they often had no intention of invoking Satan. Rather they would perform the same rituals and incantations that the clergy would, just as unauthorised people. Often the course for such people was public confession and repentance.
Heresy
The SI was founded to resolve a crisis that had developed concerning Jews and Muslims who had become Christians. The standard story distorts the truth. In reality the Inquisition sought to suppress and replace the chronic outbreaks of mob violence against Jews and Muslims by adequately investigating all charges.
Most Jews or Muslims who converted to Christianity were sincere in their conversion it seems.
The inability of the SI to resolve the conflict between Jews who didn't convert and Jews who did tragically resulted in the edict of 1492 that stated that all Jews must either convert to Christianity or leave.
Lutherans/Calvinists were also charged. 2,284 people were brought before the Inquisition which resulted in 122 executions.
In its historical context it's worth saying that during this time all European nations persecuted religious minorities and dissenters. The English hunted for Lollards and Lutherans, for undercover Catholic priests and executed them when they found them. The French martyred thousands of Huguenots and the Dutch Calvinists also hanged priests.
Sexuality
It wasn't only homosexuals who were tried by the SI but those with multiple wives, priests who solicited and husbands who sexually mistreated their wives. In 1509 the Suprema order that 'no action be taken against homosexuals except when heresy was involved.' Which meant action was only to be taken when those involved claimed that sodomy wasn't a sin.
Book burning
It is true that some books were burned but every few 'if any' were scientific books. Not even Galileo's works were put on the banned list by the Spanish. Most of the books burned were pornographic.
Conclusion
'Great historical myths die hard' Stark concludes. The reason he says is because many writers are convinced that religion and especially Christianity is a dreadful curse upon humanity that needs to be shown in a bad light. The myth of SI serves this end.
Part VI: New Worlds & Christian Growth
Chapter 20: Pluralism & American Piety
Christianity was renewed and transformed by crossing the Atlantic. In North America Christianity encountered invigorating new conditions.
America was always observed to be more religious than Europe but why did that happen? Puritans did not even make up the majority of persons aboard the Mayflower.
'Throughout the 19th C there widespread awareness that it was competitive pluralism that accounted for the increasingly great differences in the piety of Americans and Europeans.'
It was pluralism therefore that created a more devoutly Christian America.
It was after the revolutionary war that the government favoured no christian tradition, thus forcing all the traditions to 'compete' for congregations and thus shaking off the laziness brought on by religious monopoly in Europe that led to the spiritual temperature in the States being so vastly different from that in Europe.
Peter Berger the sociologist proposed that
pluralism would lead to less active religious commitment since, he said, that
a nation or people need a unifying religious canopy. The presence of lots of ideas only showed, in his view, that we invented the gods and reduces confidence in church and God. This was proved to be a false hypothesis as it was noted that people weren't after canopies but 'umbrellas' and that as long as people belong to a social grouping that agrees with them and reinforces their ideas, that they will continue to be committed to an idea.
Stark shows a fascinating table that correlates 'cheapening' commitment and doctrine over and against conservative denominations and church attendance trends. The results show that competition in the religious market doesn't reward 'cheap' religion.
Pluralism is good for religious groups and good for society. It encourages competition for the former and it encourages civility in the latter.
Chapter 22: Secularisation
In 1710 Thomas Woolston expressed his confidence that religion would vanish by 1900. Voltaire thought it’d be sooner and similar predictions have continued ever since.
‘secularisation’ originally defined as the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ and the ‘emancipation’ of the modern mind from supernaturalism.
Alexis de Tocqueville noted during the 1830s vis-a-vis the secularisation theorists: ‘unfortunately, the facts by no means accord with their theory.’
Atheism hasn’t changed in 60 years.
In 1944 the Gallup poll found that only 4% of Americans call themselves atheists and in 2007, the figure was the same. Fewer people may call themselves Christians but just as many people believe in the supernatural as have done in previous generations. Of the increase of ‘nones’ Stark says many of these people are not atheists, they just don’t like church and are turned off to organised religion. They still believe in the supernatural.
In 1997 Peter Berger was interviewed by
Christian Century and answering a question about secularisation he answered:
I think that what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s was a mistake… most of the world today is certainly not secular. It’s very religious.
Globally: 53% of the world say that they attend a worship or religious service weekly, 76% of the globe say that religion is important to their daily life.
In very few countries in the world does atheism exceed 4%. France is the most atheistic country (14%) and, strikingly, in Russia atheism has fallen to 4%.
‘the massive survival of religion in Russia has stunned many sociologists.’
In 1979 Stark wrote a paper (during which time the Kremlin still seemed fully in control): ‘Secular states cannot root out religion… Lenin’s body may be displayed under glass, but no one supposes that he has ascended to sit on the right hand, or even the left hand, of Marx… Dams along the Volga do not light up the meaning of the universe… In making faith more costly, repressive states also make it more necessary and valuable. Perhaps religion is never so rubs as when it is an underground church.’
‘There may or may not be any atheists in fox holes, but there are precious few in Russia today despite generations of anti religious education.’
[my own insert here: Augustine’s ‘restless until we find our rest in you.’]
Christianisation?:
Europe has never been a Christian place. Andrew Greeley once wrote:
‘there could be no de-Christianisation of Europe… because there never was any Christianisation in the first place. Christian Europe never existed.’
Post Constantine: Christianity left most of the rest of Europe only nominally converted, at best, being a lazy monopoly church that sought to extend itself not by missionising the masses, but by baptising kings.
In much of Europe citizens pay a religion tax which keep the churches influential. In England there is no tax or government support but the CofE it is able to sustain itself from huge endowments built up during prior centuries of mandatory tithing. It is this ‘monopoly’ that leads to lazy churches who aren’t as driven to convert the populous (the money comes in whether people attend or not). The free churches in the States are therefore more motivated than the monopoly churches in Europe. This is one of the reasons that America is more religious than much of Europe.
Church tax:
Germany: Protestant and R Catholic churches are supported by taxes
Switzerland: some cantons give to RC others to EReformed
Austria: RC receives tax support (+£6b p/year)
Italy: people choose who their church tax goes to
Another effect that government support of church is that people start to think of church as another type of ‘public utility. Individuals need do nothing to preserve the church; the government will see to it.’
The existence of government favoured churches also encourages government hindrance and harassment of other churches:
Christian 'cults' in France:
The French government has officially designated 173 religious groups as dangerous cults, imposing heavy tax burdens upon them and subjecting their members to official discrimination in such things as employment. (Most of the 173 are evangelical Protestant, including Baptists).
Belgium has outdone France in this regard.
They identify 189 dangerous cults: Including the Quakers, the YWCA, Hasidic Jews, Aof God, Amish, Buddhists and 7th Day Adventists.
Enlightened Churches.
In some parts of Europe established churches are offering a very low form of religious belief in an attempt to appeal to modern sensibilities.
In Denmark a priest (Thokild Grosboll) denounced his faith and went on record as saying that ‘God belongs in the past.’ and ‘I am thoroughly fed up with empty words about miracles and eternal life.’ He was removed from his post a year later but then later reinstated as a priest without needing to recant any of his former statements or beliefs; since he was eligible for retirement(!).
This was far from a freak event.
The Church of Sweden published in 1981 a retranslation of the NT that contains ‘sweeping transformations of accepted interpretations… in important ways, it must of necessity run against the grain of Bible traditions.’ Stark: this demystified translation is now the official Church of Sweden version.
Believing Nonbelongers
The British sociologist Grace Davie coined the term (in 1994) ‘believing non-belongers’ to describe most Europeans today.
Referring to European societies Stark says:
It is absurd to call these ‘secularised’ societies when what they really are is unchurched.
Leftist Politics
there has tended to be a correlation between atheism and left wing politics.
Conclusion
The pronouncements of secularisation aren’t true. We are still just as religious as we once were and in fact there is evidence that suggests that we are becoming more religious and not less.
In 2010 it was shown (but received little attention) that in a Europe who's native population is declining because of fertility rates dropping below replacement levels:
Europeans who go to church are continuing to have children to such an extent that this factor alone could result in a far more religious Europe.
Chapter 23: Globalisation
The Age of Exploration was a new beginning of Christian world missions. In 1492 when Columbus said there were few Christians outside of Europe. During the 1850s it was the consensus among European scholars that Buddhism was the largest religion in the world.
Around the world (except for China) 41% (2.2b) of people give their religion as Christian, 27% (1.4b) say Muslim, 19% (1b) are Hindues, 5% (289m) Buddhists, Jews 0.1% (12m) and ‘other’ 2% (119m). Secularists (including atheists, agnostics and ‘none’) is 5% (240m).
Christians by region of the world:
Christianity is by far the most regionally diversely spread religion.
Top 5 parts of the world to be a Christian (by nominal census filling terms):
1- Europe (28%)
2- Latin America (25%)
3- Sub-Saharan Africa (23%)
4- North America (13%)
5- South Central Asia (5%)
But when the results are limited to those who attended church in the past week it looks like this:
1- Sub Saharan Africa (30%)
2- North America (24%)
3- Latin America (22%)
4- Europe (13%)
5- South Central Asia (6%)
When treated as a whole, Africa as a continent, has a Muslim majority but this is misleading since Christians make up 66% of Sub-Saharan Africans, compared to 29% who are Muslims.
It was long thought that once the European colonialists left Africa that it would return to its more ‘authentically’ African religions. This is not true. There are more actively-Christian Christians in Africa than anywhere else on Earth (leaving China out of the picture).
In Latin America protestant make up 20% or more of the population in eight of the eighteen nations in a survey of Latin America.
In response to protestant missionaries the Catholic church did a couple of things to prevent a mass turning away from Catholicism. One of those things was the emergence of CCR (Catholic Charismatic Renewal) movement. CCR originated at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in 1967.
CCR is making Catholics a lot less nominal and a lot more engaged with church life.
China
In 1949 when Mao Zedong came to power western intellectuals ridiculed the million converts to Christianity by missionaries as ‘rice Christians’. They claimed that these Chinese converts only did so to get a job and predicted that upon Mao’s ascension to power that China would become the model of a fully secularised post religious society.
‘It turns out that the Chinese Christians in 1949 were so ‘insinscere’ that they endured decades of bloody repression during which their numbers grew!’
‘since official repression slacked off, Christianity… has been growing at an astonishing rate in China.’
Accurate information on Christianity in China is hard to get. People aren’t inclined to answer honestly when asked about their religion since there is still a lot of risk attached to it.
Stark observes that:
- more of the people who are Christians are in the upper to middle income sections of society than the lower income parts.
- more women are Christians than men
- age doesn’t seem to be a factor in Christian faith
- geography (urban or rural) doesn’t appear to be a factor either
- education doesn’t appear to be a factor
Why Christianity Grows
Jesus told us to make converts, that’s all the motivation we have ever needed.
Why does Christianity appeal? Stark suggests four major reasons: message, scripture, pluralism, modernity
Message
Christianity can be understood and appreciated by children and adults alike: children sing ‘Jesus loves me’ whereas adults describe ‘receiving Jesus into their hearts’.
The promise of forgiveness offers the immense reward of eternal life, but many profound blessings here and now as well.
But also Christianity’s appeal lies in its experiential nature:
Through the centuries countless Christians have reported direct encounters with Jesus, Mary, and other sacred beings. This is but one form of the many experiential confirmations of faith that abound in Christianity, from a quiet sense of the closeness of God to ecstatic episodes and speaking in tongues. Other world religions seem unable to produce these mystical manifestations in a general population, or do so only among a cloistered few. This is not to minimise Christianity’s intellectual side. Every year thousands of serious books on Christian history and theology are published, read and discussed.
Scripture
The scriptures are not mystical conundrums (there is nothing about the sound of one hand clapping). For the most part the Bible consists of clearly expressed narratives about people and events.
Pluralism
It was observed in missions that mission organisation that had an exclusive geographical territory were no where as effective as those that had to ‘compete’ with two or three missions organisations in the same area.
Modernity
One of China’s leading economists put it like this: in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.
Conclusion Chapter
In conclusion Stark says that aside from the crucifixion story three events stand out as being far more crucial than all the rest to the historical trajectory of the faith:
- Council of Jerusalem : this made it possible to convert gentiles to Christ without requiring that they become Jewish/keep the Jewish law. Without this it would have been very unlikely that Christianity would have been able to appeal to the masses as it would have been so intrinsically linked to Jewish ethnicity
- The Conversion of Constantine : His inability to allow for diversity within Christianity led to a lazy monopoly church which slowed the influence and strength of an otherwise energetic and mobilised faith.
- The Reformations : In the long run undid the intolerance for diversity Constantine had created and allowed the emergence of many denominations of Christianity, many who work so hard to preach the gospel to every creature.
Summing Up
- The first generation of the Jesus Movement consisted of a tiny and fearful minority existing amid a murderously intolerant Jewish Palestine.
- It is likely that many Jews among the Diaspora were converted to Christ.
- Christianity wasn’t a religion for the poor but was particularly attractive to the privileged.
- Christian mercy and compassion had such profound worldly consequences that Christians even outlived their pagan neighbours.
- In a Roman world short on women, the churches had more women than men. Partly because Christians valued women and didn’t ‘discard’ their babies and also because women were more likely to convert.
- Paganism wasn’t stamped out by an intolerant and brutal Christianity. It lingers on today in the New Age circles.
- For centuries there were probably more Christians in the Middle East and North Africa than in Europe. Islamic persecution drove them out.
- The Dark Ages were not dim but were among the most inventive times in Western history.
- Most Europeans during medieval Europe weren’t Christian or even regulars at church, despite the popular misconception.
- Science emerged in the west because of the belief in a rational creator.
- The Spanish Inquisition was a quite temperate body that was responsible for only a few deaths.
- Religious competition actually increases the level of religiousness in a society.
- The claim that religion will soon disappear is just wishful thinking.
- More than 40% of the people on Earth today are Christians.
