Lash wrote:I think most everyone, as they reach stages in their development will ask themselves questions about their faith. Depending on how desperately they have to cling to religion--because of family or guilt or fear or lack of logical thinking or a sweet sadness that your beloved story isn't true, or just plain stubborness... whatever the reason-- some can't let go, even after it becomes apparent that it's another persistent lie our society deems appropriate--
It is my conviction that most people hold their beliefs unexamined. I believe this has been true throughout human history, the the record of successfully proselytizing religions seems to me to bear that out. Christianity was a perfervid avowal of faith and a message of
eventual salvation in a milieu (the Roman Empire) in which such fervent belief was uncommon. For Jews (and there were far more confessional Jews two thousand years ago than there were ethnic Jews--just as the Jews learned commerce from the Aramaic, the Aramaic learned relgious devotion from the Jews, and they spread it quite widely as they travelled commercial throughout the middle east and central Asia, as far as China), Christianity was at first an odd cult, and then an alarming cult. One of the early centers of Christianity was Alexandria. In Alexandria, there was a large community of Jews, within a culture which was basically Greek, due to the Greco-Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies, of which Cleopatra VII was the last reigning monarch.
The Jews and Greeks of Alexandria long did not get along well. When Claudius was emperor (41 to 54 CE), both communities wrote to him each to complain of the arrogance and impositions of the other. Because Alexandria was a commercial city, the Aramaic had spread Judaism to that city, and both ethnic and confessional Jews lived there in great numbers. Later, when Jews became alarmed at the spread of the cult of Jesus, they were confronted with the growing popularity of that cult among the Greeks of the city. Initially, despite what Christian propaganda purports, Christians were not officially persecuted. Their early persecution came at the hands of zealous Jews and in clashes such as that which existed in the Alexandrine community, and which was transferred to a confessional clash as Christianity became popular among the Greeks of the city. Thanks to Saul of Tarsus--known as St. Paul--the cult spread rapidly among Greek communities, which was likely no accident.
The message of this Joshuah, if he ever actually existed, is remarkably like that of the Essenes (i will not go into that in detail)--adherence to the Mosaic Law coupled with internal mysticism. If this Joshuah actually existed, and is not simply the symbolic embodiment of as spiritual movement, he represented a break with the main Essene movement, which was hermetic and secretive. But the message
is not one of a new, organized cult. The message, visible even in the dubious gospels, is that one seeks "the kingdom of God," that one seeks "salvation" within, and not through participation in doctrinaire practice. The "Jesus" of the gospels asserts the primacy of the law, while calling upon people to examine their own hearts. But even as early as Paul, whether or not he were the proximate cause, the primitive church was becoming hierarchical and doctrinaire.
Because none of the common cults of the Empire--which was a pluralistic and mostly tolerant society (it did not tolerate defiance of the imperial authority, and when Christians were actively, officially persecuted, it was because they were seen as opposed to or supporting opposition to imperial authority)--offered the sort of fervor and certitude of Christianity, it had available to it an appeal lacking elsewhere. This is germane to the topic of authority, because the primitive church very quickly established an orthodox creed and a hierarchy of "church fathers" which is not necessarily foreseen in the gospels. The message as it was being peddled by the end of the first century CE combined with a structured church gave new adherents both a fervent faith-based belief set and the certitude of orthodoxy and hierarchy.
The same thing can be seen with Islam. At the time of the Prophet, the most of Arabs were either "pagan" or they were confessional Jews (the Aramaic, once again). There was no belief set available to them which offered the same power and appeal to authority. After the death of the Prophet, when Ali and the companions brought bloody red war to their neighbors while spreading the new religion, they faced at first little real oppostion, either military or religious. Among the people of the corrupt and degenerate Sassanid empire, temporal authority was largely ineffective and viewed with contempt within as it was by the enemy without; "pagan" cults, Christianity and confessional Judaism offered little in the way of an organizing force to resist the new creed brought on the swords of a warlike and fervent invader. Where the Muslims encountered effective resistance, such as from the Roman Empire (now centered on Constantinople), the new creed was as effectively resisted as were the Arab armies. So the Muslims spread to the east (to Persia and central Asia) and to the west, into North Africa. To the east, no effective political organization opposed Ali and his Holy Warriors. To the west, only the degenerate and weak kingdoms of the Vandals and Visigoths, highly unpopular rulers who had imposed on the local populations, opposed the spread of Islam. From Egypt, where a new version of Shi'ism was erected in the name of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter and Ali's wife, Islam spread westward to people eager to throw off the yoke of their German masters, whose discredited Arian Christianity sat lightly on the population, if at all.
When Christians faced "pagans" such as the Saxons or the Russians, the "old Gods" hadn't the power to provide the organizing force for resistance. Any failure of the self-constituted monarchical authority lead to conquest and the imposition of Christianity. Where rulers embraced Christianity, the local population had no belief set of the same passion, nor one purporting to have all the anwers, with which to oppose the new creed. In Iberia, the Andalus of the Muslims, two perfervid creeds opposed one another, the Christians and the Muslims. The failure of Vandal authority in "Spain" did not lead to the abadonment of Christianity, still a relatively new and powerful cult. The history of Iberia from the arrival of the Muslim Berbers and Moors to the successful
reconquista in 1492 is one of constant struggle between two communities who lived uneasily side by side when not actually at war. The lack of effective centralized rule among either Christians or Muslims left the situation in constant flux. The rise of the combined power of Castile and Arragon under Isabella and Ferdinand spelled the doom of Islam in Spain, more because of the lack of an effective authority to opposed them than any putative inferiority in the Muslim creed.
I beleive that most people hold their beliefs unexamined. But we live in a world in which that is changing. The fundamentalist Christian is nothing new. The first significant revivalist movement in the North American colonies arose in the 1730s, and derived from evangelicalism in England (where the restoration of the monarchy and the suppression of the Puritans did not quench the thirst for fervor and certitude among a population for most of whom the established church represented a remote and oligarchic organization with little relevance for their own lives). A later evangelic movement showed that the established church had learned nothing, and John Wesley preached with a zeal that attracted followers in their millions, resulting in the rise of Methodism.
In North America, the established church went the way of all English institutions in what is now the United States, and the founders undertook to assure the pluralistic population that the government would favor no particular creed. In Canada, the established church, in the reactionary settlement imposed after the successful American revolution, was given two sevenths of all public land, assuring their wealth and a political influence out of all proportion to the number of adherents. Evangelism waxed and waned in the United States, reaching a new popularity in the years before the Civil War, especially after the alarm the comfortable, traditional churchs experience at the sudden rise of the Mormons. The Civil War itself lead to a spread of the tent meeting of evangelical believers in the South, when two "Saints" in the Southern military and religious pantheon, "Stonewall" Jackson and JEB Stuart, actively worked to spread "the good news" among the Confederate soldiers. Jackson was a Presbyterian and Stuart was an Anglican, and so their institution of a chaplains' service and tent revival meetings in the army was non-sectarian. The tradition of non-sectarian evangelism grew and prospered in the South, and soon after the war, spread to the North. At the same time, fervent Protestantism became a mainstay of the communities of emancipated slaves, and the power of the local church in the black community remains strong to this day.
In the age in which we now live, fundamentalists have decided that a secular, pluralistic society which tolerates those things which they are not willing to tolerate--homosexuality, abortion, an a-religious public life--has lead them into what i consider foolishness, which is the attempt to impose on society in general. This has slowly but more and more surely raised up an opposition to them and their agenda, which leads to public discussions of faith and the implications of belief and creed which are unprecedented in our history. In the late nineteenth century, the "Lily White" movement arose in the South, and was not necessarily unpopular in the north. It was resolutely racist, anti-Catholic and anti-Jew. In that most Americans identified with a particular Protestant creed, it did not inspire the sort of alarm with which we might view such a development. The modern Ku Klux Klan, resurrected in Georgia before the Great War spread rapidly throughout the South and into the North. It's founder, William J. Simmons, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South (to their credit, the church suspended him for "inefficiency"). The trial and lynching of a Jew, Leo Frank, on an accusation of murder, served to galvanize the movement and to successfully spread it's message of religious particularism and racial hatred. The modern Klan still adversises itself as: "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!"--at its web site (sure, come on, you knew they would have one, didn't you?)
I believe that most people hold their beliefs unexamined--but it is getting harder to do so. I disagree with Lash in that i don't believe that people necessarily reach a stage in their lives at which they examine their faith--people are not necessarily always contemplative, and as she has noted, people will react violently to the questioning of their beliefs. Throughout most of history, it has been possible to go from cradle to grave without questioning one's beliefs or having them challenged. The unique current situation with fundamentalists entering the political arena with an agenda and a vengeance is changing all of that.
Quote:Please do yourself and everyone here a favor. Don't paste a bunch of scripture. Just talk.
Don't hold your breath--it's much easier to parrot chapter and verse than it is to actually think about these things.
