From: smayo@wang.com (Scott Mayo)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: I waste my time (was: Hitler as Occultist (was: Numbers))
Date: 12 Aug 92 16:30:53 GMT
Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA

grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer) writes:

>On the other hand -- Scott, we've all heard the "well, X wasn't really
>a Christian" line before.  Sorry, that dog won't hunt.  Even beyond the
>fact that the definition of "Christian" you're using is a modern
>Protestant construct that would have been meaningless or blasphemous
>to most of the Christians between Christ's time and the present, you're
>dodging the point -- which is that Christianity has a history of
>oppression, bloodshed and murder unmatched by any other religion in
>history.

Ooooh. Now you've done it. Flame on.

First of all, the definition of Christian I used appears in the New
Testament. It is at least 1800 years old. Sorry, I did use a modern
idiom, common enough in Protestant (and Catholic) churches today, to
express it. But go read the books of John and Acts, or Romans... hmm,
I can't think of many New Testament books that *don't* carry this
particular message. It is also echoed by any number of later writers,
from Augustine up through Schaeffer. Meaningless? Hardly. It was not
meaningless then, it is not meaningless now.

A few points here. I admit, without reservation, that some horrendous
things have been done in the name of Christianity. I'm more horrified
by some parts of history than any non-Christian is likely to be, in fact,
because of my own, obviously strong, identification with Christianity.
I'm not of the camp that holds that Christianity is a lilly white flower
of perfection and virtue; I don't know anyone that does. I've known some
modern day Christians who have done some fairly horrendous things. (I
include myself). I don't have any reason to think the past was significantly
better. 

On the other hand, comparisons of Christian history with other world religions
is a game two can play. No one else in this thread tried to make the "point"
that Christianity has a history of "opressions, bloodshed and murder
unmatched by any other religion in history." I don't think that was Janis's
original point. You, John, brought this one up. I'll answer.

Anyone who is tired of my occasional defense of Christian history can tune
out now. *I'm* tired of it, but a stubborn insistance that some sort of
balanced account be presented keeps me at it. I don't know why I waste
my time; most folk here have biases at *least* as wide as mine. :-)

Let's do some thinking. Ask anyone about the black side of Christianity
and you get the canonical middle ages examples. Some horrendous deeds
were done back then; a lot of them by the church and by Christians. Right?

Right. For a sufficiently wide definition of Christian. Because of the
political and cultural structure of the day, *everyone* was a Christian -
or they were dogmeat, courtesy of the untrammeled power of the church and
state in those days. 

As a result, if an evil act was done in Europe, it was done by a Christian.
Because *everyone* called themselves Christians. After all, if you murdered
someone you got killed. If you were apostate, you could get tortured. Of course
people called themselves Christian in that era, even while holding almost as
much reverence for Jesus as I hold for Baal. That's convenient for all the
later historians, who gleefully note that so-and-so, noted persecutor of
Arabs or Jews, was a Christian. He said so, didn't he?

Of course, merely *breathe* a word that such folk might not, in fact,
have been Christian, and immediately the folk of alt.pagan will descend
with hisses and boos. "Who gave you the authority to judge?" and "Who are
you to say your definition of Christian is better than ours?" And in
fact, one of the points worth keeping in mind is that Christians are more
or less forbidden to judge other Christians - leaving me in the awkward
position if saying that if so-and-so calls himself a Christian, I'm in
no position to disagree without *real* good reason. 

It is an argument no Christian is going to win. Some folk in alt.pagan,
who have a *serious* bias against Christianity and whose minds are as
open as any fundamentalist's, will gleefully point to atrocities done
in the name of Jesus as evidence that the spirit of Jesus is one of chaos
and destruction - while howling down any suggestion that perhaps choosing
the sample from that 400 year period in Europe is perhaps *slightly* improper
from a statistical point of view. Of course things were horrid. The church
was completely out of line, and the only way to political power was
through the church - you had every creep and power-monger in the society
flocking into the church to get a slice of the pie. In my opinion, the
Reformation came several centuries too late, and the Renaissence - the
cracking of the church's stranglehold on power - was God's gift to man.
If you want proof that human implementations of Jesus's teachings have
failed, you got it. As was pointed out, however, "Christianity has not been
tried and found wanting - it has been found difficult and not tried." I
think there is something to that. (The quote is Chesterton's).

It is possible, but by no means as easy, to find examples against Christianity
in other periods of history. They exist, of course. But in general they
have more clear political connections and ramifications, and even popular
writers shy away from attributing, for example, England's KKK to 
Christianity, or American slave trade to southern preachers. Who here *really*
thinks the tensions between Ireland and England are religious in nature?
The folk who have been throwing the bombs couldn't, to quote another
author, "give the differences between Hooker's doctrines and Thomas 
Aquinas in a form that would hold water for ten minutes." Ministers and priests
on both sides have been trying to quell those problems for years - and I
think have finally made progress.

If I want to rail about paganism, I can find sources to turn the stomaches
of anyone - baby baking done by Baal worshippers, executions of innocents
done in the name of Kali. ("Hold it!" you cry. "The Thuggies were a political
fringe group, and not really representative of Kali's worshippers!" Yeah,
and I suppose you believe that the Inquisition didn't have a similiar
setting?) I don't typically use such history to discredit modern paganism.
I recognise that most of those atrocities were done for reasons not
*entirely* religious. A similiar admission from alt.paganers about the events
of the middle ages *might* establish some common ground.

If I said "the atrocities done in the name of Astoreth can fairly be
imputed to modern day Wiccas" I'd be laughed at. But they are both
pagans! I could (foolishly) exclaim. I'd be right - they are both
pagans. I'd be wrong - the acts of one do not reflect on the other.
I hold the same distance between some acts done in the name of Jesus,
and Jesus himself. I worship Jesus, not Christian history.

>Instead of being so quick to toss the less palatable parts of your
>religious heritage out into the darkness, then, you might want to put
>some time into thinking about just why it is that these things tend to
>crop up so repetitively in your faith.

Bad things happen in Christianity for the same reason they happen outside
of it: because many people do evil things. Christianity, in fact, has
a considerable philosophy developed which talks about why folk hasten to
do evil. There is *no* bambi-ism in Christianity. I do not toss the less
palatable parts of Christian history
out. I *do* object what some raving paganer tries to assign Hitler to the
Christian camp, though, merely because it was fairly obvious to the most
casual observer than he was not, by *anyone's* definition. I don't 
automatically claim that all the Dominicans running the Inquisition were
non-Christian. I think some of them must have been, however badly deceived
they may have been. I don't like it, but there it is. Hitler, however,
clearly was not. As I said, let's keep the attacks on my faith to
justifiable targets. They exist in plenty. With a 2,000 year
history embracing, at least in name, millions of people, it is unlikely
that they would not. And when the neo-pagan movement gets as big as
Christianity has, if it does, I'll check in and compare levels of bloodshed.
OK?

European history is a study in blood - both before, during, and after the
time of the church's power. If you are the kind of person who takes joy
in the fact that the church killed people, because it makes Christianity
look bad and you happen to hate Christianity, I pity you. If you think
you hate the religion because of events happening a thousand years ago,
you are kidding yourselves, unless you also happen to hate a great number
of religions: I don't know *one* with over 500 years of history that
doesn't have blood on it's hands, including Buddism. Blood is very natural
to human history. So is intolerance, racism, and cruelty. If you've read
the New Testament, you know it is one of the documents that comes out
against such things. Not all religions have; some of the modern New
Age flavors deny there's a problem at all.

Flame off.

I'll finish up with a scriptual quote, albeit one of unclear authorage:

James and John said, "Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven
and consume them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and said "You do not
know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to 
destroy men's lives but to save them."

--
The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of
limits.			GKChesterton
smayo@wang.com
Newsgroups: alt.pagan