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Christianity in the Dark Ages & Modern Fundamentalism
In this article we will take a look at Christianity in the Dark Ages and modern Christian fundamentalism. We will end with a brief discussion of W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check where we attempt to untangle and clarify some modern Christian beliefs.
The Marriage of Christianity with the Monarchy: The Merovingians & Carolingians
The well-known and often despised system of European monarchs seemed to blossom forth at this time during the middle of the 5th century with the birth of the Merovingian dynasty. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gaulish Romans under their rule. This dynastic realm became the largest and most powerful of the states of Western Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The first known Merovingian king was Childeric. His son Clovis I, the second king, converted to Christianity and thus the marriage of Christianity with the European monarchy began. As Wikipedia states, “Merovingian kings and queens used the newly forming ecclesiastical power structure to their advantage. Monasteries and episcopal seats were shrewdly awarded to elites who supported the dynasty. Extensive parcels of land were donated to monasteries to exempt those lands from royal taxation and to preserve them within the family. The family maintained dominance over the monastery by appointing family members as abbots. Extra sons and daughters who could not be married off were sent to monasteries so that they would not threaten the inheritance of older Merovingian children.
This pragmatic use of monasteries ensured close ties between elites and monastic properties. Numerous Merovingians who served as bishops and abbots, or who generously funded abbeys and monasteries, were rewarded with sainthood.” Every one of these “saints” were either from the Merovingian family lineage or from the Gallo-Roman aristocracy in regions south and west of Merovingian control.
The Carolingian dynasty, a Frankish noble family, was founded in 714 by Charles Martel. As stated in Wikipedia, “the dynasty consolidated its power in the 8th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and Duke and Prince of the Franks (dux et princeps Francorum) hereditary, and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne.”
This dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of Rome in the West in over 300 years. After his death the dynasty began to crumble. It eventually split into three factions, each being ruled by one of Charlemagne’s grandsons. By 888 the Carolingian dynasty had lost most of its power, and by 1120 it had virtually disappeared.
The dissolution of this dynasty paved the way for the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.
The Kingdom of France was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Western Europe that began to gain power upon Charlemagne’s death. It grew to become an extremely powerful colonial empire with possessions around the world. From 987 to 1791 it maintained a feudal absolute monarchy until it was forced to become a “semi-feudal” constitutional monarchy. This is a large topic but it contains all the well-known French monarchies of history as well as any branches that spread to England and Scotland.
The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in Western and Central Europe that developed in the 9th century and maintained power until 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. The idea behind the Holy Roman Empire was that its rulers held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome. The office of Holy Roman Emperor was supposedly elective, although it was most-assuredly controlled by the powerful dynasties. Many of the non-French European monarchies are a part of this Empire including the House of Savoy, Ivrea, Habsburg, Hauteville, Hesse, Hesse-Kassel, Hohenstaufen, Anjou-Capetian, Barcelona, Bourbon-Parma, Bonaparte, Medici, Este, Austria-Este, Farnese, Visconti, Sfornza, Gonzaga and more. The current British monarchy, the House of Windsor, is a direct descendent from the house of Hesse.
Roman Catholicism was the single official religion of the Empire until 1555 when Protestantism and Calvinism were grudgingly accepted. The Holy Roman Emperor was always a Roman Catholic and there were quite incestuous relationships that existed between the Popes, Emperors and monarchy. For instance, the Medici’s of Florence produced four Popes: Pope Leo X, Pope Clement VII, Pope Pius IV and Pope Leo XI, and two queens of France: Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici. The Medici’s were some of the first powerful banking and merchant families in the world. William Bramley writes, “Under John XXIII, the Medicis were awarded the task of collecting taxes and tithes that were due this ‘anti-Pope’. The Medicis operated a far-flung network of collectors and sub-collectors to accomplish this undertaking. The fees earned from this operation helped make the Medici family one of the wealthiest and most influential banking houses in Europe.” The struggle between the bankers/merchants and the monarchy would rage in later years (a tale for another article). The bankers would eventually win out and end up with the coveted world power and control by the time the Modern Age began.
The topic of European monarchies and dynastic lines is a complex one, and one we will revisit in much more detail in the “History” section of articles. Many dynasties formed and they all vied for ultimate power. In order to do this they would often form alliances then break those alliances and form new alliances with others; often they would inter-marry; at other times they would go to war, create coups and counter-coups. It was a checkered and violent history of betrayal, jealousy, greed, paranoia and endless power-grabs. They did, however, fund much of the great art and architecture of the time. Of course they were able to amass such fortunes to do this only by seriously oppressing the people they ruled over and maintaining indomitable control over the financial, educational and religious systems.
The point here, though, is to show the basic origin (without getting into too many esoteric details which will be saved for other articles) of these great power structures in history and to show their relationship to the power structure of the growing Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole. The important point is that the Orthodox Church pushed the dogma of the “One True Church” and “One True Bishop” onto the people in order to pave the way for their acceptance of the “Divine Right of Kings.”
Adomnan of Iona (624-704) was one of the earliest Christian proponents of this concept of the divine right of kings. The Carolingian dynasty and the Holy Roman Empire were the heaviest influencers of this concept in the West.
In short, as Wikipedia states, “Catholic thought justified submission to the monarchy by reference to the following:
- The Old Testament, in which God chose kings to rule over Israel, beginning with Saul who was then rejected by God in favor of David, whose dynasty continued (at least in the southern kingdom) until the Babylonian captivity.
- The New Testament, in which the first pope, St. Peter, commands that all Christians shall honor the Roman Emperor (1 Peter 2:13–20), even though, at that time, he was still a pagan emperor. St. Paul agreed with St. Peter that subjects should be obedient to the powers that be because they are appointed by God, as he wrote in his Epistle to the Romans 13:1–7. Likewise, Jesus Christ proclaims in the Gospel of Matthew that one should “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”; that is at first, literally, the payment of taxes as binding those who use the imperial currency (See Matthew 22:15–22). Jesus told Pontius Pilate that his authority as Roman governor of Judaea came from heaven according to John 19:10–11.
- The endorsement by the popes and the church of the line of emperors beginning with the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, later the Eastern Roman emperors, and finally the Western Roman emperor, Charlemagne and his successors, the Catholic Holy Roman Emperors.
The “Divine Right of Kings”
In brief, as Wikipedia states, the divine right of kings “stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which the king (or queen) is pre-selected as an heir prior to his birth; by pre-selecting the king’s physical manifestation, the governed populace actively (rather than merely passively) hands the metaphysical selection of the king’s soul – which will inhabit the body and thereby rule them – over to God. In this way, the “divine right” originates as a metaphysical act of humility or submission towards the Godhead. Consequentially, it asserts that a monarch (e.g. a king) is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from a divine authority.”
Furthermore, “The monarch is thus not subject to the will of his people, of the aristocracy, or of any other estate of the realm. It implies that only divine authority can judge an unjust monarch and that any attempt to depose, dethrone or restrict their powers runs contrary to God’s will and may constitute a sacrilegious act.”
These elitist ideologies created extreme injustices for millions of people throughout many millennia that we are still attempting to recover from today (as I write this in 2020).
Christianity in the Dark Ages
The advent of Christianity encouraged European colonization and the attempted establishment of a Fascistic theocratic based world order. Robert Lawlor writes, “Several centuries prior to the Christian endeavor for the worldwide theocratic unification, a rival middle eastern source religion, Islam, ventured towards a similar goal and these competitive religion based power centers threaten to bring about the biblically prophesized world ending apocalypse.”
The Crusades & the Rise of Islam
The Crusades were a series of religious wars from the 11th to 17th centuries to gain control of the Holy Land. Since the time of Constantine (325 AD) and more precisely Theodosius (379-392) Christianity gained military backing and government support. Over time this escalated into a very fierce military power structure that appeared to be intent to take over the world. The Crusades were firmly supported and often directed by the Catholic Church.
The First Crusade began in 1095 at the urging of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont. He encouraged an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem and military support against the Seljuk Turks who were Sunni Muslims.
The Islamic religion had formed at the beginning of the 7th century when Mohammad received revelations from God and began to write the Qur’an. William Bramley writes, “[Mohammad] was born during Justinian’s reign at a time when the Plague was still raging. Proclaimed in adulthood as the new ‘savior’ Mohammad became the leader of anew monotheistic apocalyptic religion: Islam. Like Moses and Jesus before him, Mohammad appears to have been a a sincere man, but his new religion nevertheless became a faction which created new religious ‘issues’ for people to endlessly fight over.”
By the end of the 11th century Islam had become a fierce religious power to contend with – and so the stage was set for war after war that continues to this day.
It is interesting to note that the Christian Europeans responded enthusiastically to the idea of the Crusades. As Wikipedia states, “Volunteers became crusaders by taking a public vow for various reasons: mass ascension into Heaven at Jerusalem, satisfying feudal obligations, the opportunity for glory and honor, or for economic and political gain.”
The Christians did capture Jerusalem in 1099 and though they believed themselves to be virtuous beings following the teachings of Christ, this did not prevent savage butchery. Bramley states, “When the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they murdered many of the non-Christian survivors in a slaughter that claimed the lives of more than 10,000 victims…not only were the Crusaders killing Muslims, they were also killing Jews…Obliterating the Jews became an important element of the Crusades, and the massacres continued even after the Crusades to Jerusalem had ended.”
The Second Crusade began in 1146 after the Atabeg of Mosul expanding his control to Aleppo and conquered Edessa. This campaign, of which King Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany supported, did not succeed. This led to increased hostility towards the Byzantines and the Islamic religion in general.
The Third Crusade, which began in 1189, was more or less a response to the rise of Saladin. Saladin was a Kurdish general who first took control of Egypt and then later took control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine. The Christians, once again, did not succeed. A truce was called to allow Frankish access to Jerusalem which remained under the control of Saladin’s brother Al-Adil.
The Fourth Crusade began in 1198 and was ordered by Pope Innocent III. This resulted in the sack of Constantinople which involved three violent days of pillaging churches and killing many Greek Orthodox Christians.
The Fifth and Sixth Crusades took place in 1217 and 1227. It was at this time that the Mongols provided a new threat to both the Christians and Muslims. Pope Innocent IV wrote to the Mongols to inquire if they would become allies since some of them were Nestorian Christians. They demanded full submission of the Pope as their requirement. The Pope declined. The Mongols then displaced the Khwarazmian, a central Asian Turkish people. The Khwarazmian then savagely captured Jerusalem. An Egyptian-Khwarazmia army then annihilated the Frankish army…and history marched on.
The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Crusades occurred from 1249 to 1289. The Christians were not successful. This was for many reasons. As Wikipedia states, “The causes of the decline in crusading and the failure of the Crusader states are multi-faceted. The nature of crusades was unsuited to the defense of the Holy Land. Crusaders were on a personal pilgrimage and usually returned when it was completed. Although the ideology of crusading changed over time, crusades continued to be conducted without centralized leadership by short-lived armies led by independently minded potentates, but the Crusader states needed large standing armies. Religious fervor was difficult to direct and control even if it enabled significant feats of military endeavor. Political and religious conflict in Europe combined with failed harvests reduced Europe’s interest in Jerusalem. Ultimately, the huge distances made the mounting of crusades and the maintenance of communications insurmountably difficult. It enabled the Islamic world, under the charismatic leadership of Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin, the ruthless Baibars and others, to use the logistical advantages of proximity to victorious effect.”
The history of the Crusades is heavily tied into the history of the Knights Hospitaler and the Knights Templar and their search for holy relics and ancient treasures, but we will save that large and complex topic for another article. Suffice it to say, as Bramley writes, “The Templars became enormously wealthy and were able to transform themselves into an international banking house during the 12th and 13th centuries. the Templars loaned large sums of money to European kings, princes, merchants, and to at least one Muslim ruler. Most of the Templar’s riches were stored in strongrooms in their Paris and London temples, causing those cities to become leading financial centers.”
Catharism & the Albigensian Crusade & Massacre
Catharism was a neo-Gnostic religion that was dualistic in Nature. The Cathars were disgusted with the luxurious and often scandalous lifestyles of the Catholic clergy in Southern France and called for a return to perfection, poverty and preaching. They viewed God as a principle of pure spirit and the God of love, order and peace. This was in contrast to the demiurge, the earthly creator, who was a force of materialism and evil. They also opposed killing animals and consuming meat and they rejected the Catholic priesthood, calling them unworthy and corrupt.
In previous articles we saw how intent the Orthodox Church was on eradicating Gnosticism. The Catholic Church was even more intent on eradicating Catharism in the 1200’s and they were not afraid to use any means necessary including torture, violence and genocide. Where the Christians failed at conquering the Muslims, they succeeded at conquering the Cathars.
The Christians massacred the entire town of Beziers in 1209 – Catholics, Cathars, men, women and children alike. There were 70,000 victims including Catholics refusing to turn over their neighbors and friends. Next the Crusaders captured Carcassonne. Thousands were slain and many others were forced to leave town naked in order to humiliate them further. Other towns were sieged and in 1211 several hundred Cathars were burned in Lastours. Yet more towns were sieged until the Fourth Council of the Lateran solidified Crusader control of the area in 1215.
Mark Gregory Pegg writes of the massacres, “The Albigensian Crusade ushered genocide into the West by linking divine salvation to mass murder, by making slaughter as loving an act as His sacrifice on the cross.”
Another horrific result of the Albigensian Crusade and subsequent massacres was the establishment of the Inquisition in 1234 by Pope Gregory IX.
The Inquisition – 1184-1834
Prior to the formal establishment of the Inquisition the Catholic Church had already been suppressing what they regarded as heresy. The punishment for this, however, was usually imprisonment or religious/ritual penance, not torture.
The Inquisition was a direct result of the powerful spread of the Gnostic revivalist religion Catharism. Pope Gregory IX intended to uproot all heretical movements and destroy all Cathars. Unfortunately he succeeded in crushing Catharism and forced its remaining adherents underground. By 1350 all known remnants of the movement had been extinguished. This was the first Inquisition that took place in 1184 in Languedoc, the south of France and was ordered by Pope Lucius III.
In 1252 Pope Innocent IV issued a papal decree called the Ad extirpanda which authorized and defined appropriate circumstances for the use of torture. In 1256 Inquisitors were given absolution if they used instruments of torture. Though the Inquisitors often used threats and imprisonment to force a person to repent, when these didn’t work they resulted to torture, and in some cases the most horrific methods of torture known to humankind.
The Spanish Inquisition was established November 1478. They particularly targeted Jews, but also Protestants, Muslims, “witches”, homosexuals, bigamists and other ‘heretics’. There is wide-ranging debate concerning how many people were executed and how severe the torture was. Tomas de Torquemada was the first Grand Inquisitor and was known for his corruption and brutality. The Spanish Inquisition was finally disbanded July 15, 1834.
The “Doctrine of Discovery” & Slavery
The Inquisition also existed in Portugal, Rome, Mexico, the Philippine Islands, Guatemala, Peru, New Granada and the Canary Islands. These heavily targeted the indigenous population, dehumanized Indigenous peoples and paved the way for the widespread acceptance and use of indigenous people for slavery that Portugal initiated in the 1400s. Most of these Inquisitions were not dissolved until the late 18th century.
The Roman Catholic “Doctrine of Discovery” is a law that granted land rights to whichever European Christian nation that settled territory in the New World. It considered terra nullis (“Nobody’s land”) any territory occupied by “heathens, pagans, and infidels” – in other words, the original inhabitants of the Americas, Africa, Australia, Asia and South America. It also called for the killing of these original inhabitants unless they agreed to convert to Catholicism. The Doctrine of Discovery basically allowed the papal sanctioning of Christian enslavement and power over non-Christians.
The horrific, unjust and assuredly anti-Christian institution of slavery continued from the 1400s until the 1800s when it was finally abolished in Brazil. Major countries involved include: Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, The Dutch Republic, Britain and the United States. Countries that were colonies of these countries, like Brazil, the Philippines, Mexico, Central American countries and Caribbean Islands, were also involved. Though these countries and their rulers professed to be Christians and were either Catholics or Protestants, they were hypocrites of the highest order and only cared about personal gain and earthly power, not spiritual growth or peace and salvation through Christ. Again, slavery is a huge topic which will be covered in greater detail in other articles. While the slave trade was raging, witch hysteria and witch burnings were also on the rise.
Witch Burnings – Europe 1450-1700
The well-known phenomenon of witch burnings arose as Orthodox Christianity went through its anxieties resulting from Martin Luther’s Reformation and the emerging scientific paradigm.
Pope Innocent VIII issued the Papal decree Summis Desiderantes in 1484. This stimulated another wave of torture and executions. This Papal dissertation was anti-feminine and explicitly condemned witches.
The peak of European witch burnings appeared to take place between 1560 and 1630 in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, England, Scotland and Sweden. The witch trials later spread to New England, particularly in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The number of executions for witchcraft range from 40,000 to 60,000 and included women and some men. Part of the problem was the widespread occurrences of the Black Death, famines, wars, economic collapse and the cooling of the Earth (the Little Ice Age) during these times. Clearly the people were submerged in fear and confusion, and so often blamed these things on witches, witchcraft and black magic.
The Council of Lyons – 1274
The Council of Lyons stated that after death the soul goes promptly either to heaven or to hell. On the Day of Judgment, all will stand before the tribunal of Christ with their bodies to render account of what they have done.
The Council of Florence – 1439
The Council of Florence uses almost the same wording as the Council of Lyons in 1274 to describe the swift passage of the soul either to heaven or to hell. Implicit in both of these councils is the assumption that the soul does not again venture into physical bodies. The belief in reincarnation is strictly forbidden.
David Wilcock writes, “The concept of an eternal hellfire is very useful for a government seeking to establish a religion it could use to crush any and all resistance. Merging church and state is also the best way to ensure that people pay high taxes. The more harm people feel they have done to others, the more money they will likely decide to pay to ensure they spend the rest of eternity in a heavenly paradise. The fear of the alternative – an eternal torture of unimaginable suffering – would be a very effective way to keep the people under control.”
Much later, in 1972, Pope Paul VI declared before several thousand people that the devil is a distinct, actual being further adding to the fear-based power control structure of the Catholic Church.
Medieval Christianity Societies
In medieval Christian societies the males ruled both religion and government. In fact, they still do. Religious leaders tried to manipulate religion’s substructure in the same ways that government leaders inhibit and use emotions to control the people.
The religious structure provided a context accepted by large portions of the known world in which experience could be judged against very definite rules of religious dogma. There was always an overemphasis on dogma. Rules and ritualization had to be colorful and rich because it would be the one outlet allowed in which creativity could be handled without threatening the religious power structure.
Within this system of medieval religious dogma the immortality of the soul went largely unquestioned; it was accepted as fact. The rituals involved not only provided ways of redemption to “sinners”; it also set rules and ceremonies for almost all kinds of social encounters and religious experiences, from birth and death and all stages in between. The Church was the ultimate authority and individuals lived out their life automatically, structuring personal experience to fit within the expected norm.
Individuals had far less choices and freedoms than they do today. The sons automatically followed in their fathers’ footsteps and marriages were made largely for economic reasons. Bloody wars were fought and private persecutions happened when those who did not agree with one or another’s religious dogmas were quite simply killed ‘for the good of their souls’. Today, people are still slandered, ignored and belittled for these same purposes, though usually not murdered. Simply put, ungodly slaughter results from too rigid dogmas – and this applies to medieval times and modern times alike.
In contrast to today, however, there was no question that life had meaning; they knew it did whether that ‘meaning’ was agreed upon or not. Today, as Jane Roberts states, “the individual must make his or her own way through a barrage of different value systems, making decisions that were largely unthought of before. Now, you have far more decisions to make, and in a world of conflicting beliefs, brought into your living room through newspapers and television, you must try to find the meaning of your life, or the meaning of life.”
What we see, then, is one sparkling positive aspect of religion in the middle ages amidst a sea of harmful and dangerous dogmas. This one sparkling positive aspect is the clear knowledge that life has meaning; all human beings are meaningful creatures and life choices matter. Today, in 2020, it is quite fashionable to believe that life has no meaning and nothing matters. This nihilistic viewpoint is the poison of materialism and it leads to the very diseases that are so prevalent today: depression, anxiety, loneliness, feelings of powerlessness, meaninglessness and unworthiness, alienation, confusion, despair, abuse and addictions.
Women in Medieval Christianity
Ever since the birth of Christianity female elements were considered suspect, heretical and subversive. Medieval dogmas took the suppression of feminine elements to new levels. Not only were there the well-known witch burnings, but all women were kept in subservient positions, including nuns. Many nuns, however, passed as monks, living solitary lives for years. Jane Roberts reminds us, “No works bear their feminine names, for they used male ones.”
Roberts continues, “The Church did not restrain the sexuality of its priests or the expression of sexuality in previous centuries as much as it tried to divorce the expression of love and devotion from sexuality.” Many illegitimate children of priests resulted. These children were “considered products of the weak and lustful flesh” yet they were understandable lapses considering man’s fallen state and were overlooked as long as “a priest’s love and devotion still belonged to the Church and were not ‘squandered’ upon the mother or such offspring.” Many an infant baby body has been found buried in the walls or basements of old monasteries and convents.
“The Church believed that sexual experience belonged to the so-called lower or animal instincts, and so did usual human love,” Roberts tell us. “On the other hand, spiritual love and devotion could not be muddied by sexual expression, and so any normal strong relationship became a threat to the expression of piety.”
In the end “The church never really found a suitable method of dealing with its women, or with the intuitive elements of its own beliefs. Its fear of a goddess emerging was renewed each time another apparition of the Virgin appeared in one corner or another of the world.”
These topics will be discussed further in other articles.
Martin Luther & the Protestant Reformation
Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German professor of theology, composer, priest and monk who nailed 96 theses to the All Saints Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517 sparking the Protestant Reformation. He disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money and taught salvation and eternal life is not earned by good deeds but by a gift of God’s grace and faith in Jesus Christ.
Luther challenged the Catholic Church’s authority and taught the Bible, not priests or bishops, is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from God. In this way he opposed sacerdotalism – the doctrine which ascribes sacrificial functions and spiritual or supernatural powers to ordained priests and instead he considered all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.
He translated the Bible into the German vernacular to make it more accessible to the masses and his hymns developed singing in churches that is so common today. He also set a model for clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry. This was a very positive change from Catholic dogma of priestly celibacy that has done so much damage up to this day including the sexual abuse of many innocent children by hypocritical clergy.
William Bramley explains the belief system of Luther thusly: “Although Luther voiced many legitimate criticisms of the Catholic church and claimed that he was trying to re-establish the primitive christian Church of Jesus, Luther was, to an extent, a man driven by the demons of unconfessed wrongs. As a result, he helped create a new form of Christianity that only further departed from the true teachings of Jesus.
Despite the East Roman corruption of Jesus’s teachings and the brutal methods of the Inquisition, Catholicism during the Luther’s time still retained several important elements of Jesus’s maverick lessons. For example, the Catholic church continued to preach that salvation was up to the individual to achieve. It taught further the importance of doing good works, the need to confess sin when sin had been committed, and the importance of rectifying wrongs or compensating for them. The Catholic church emphasized that man had the free will to either accept or reject salvation, that salvation could not be imposed upon anyone against his or her will and that all people were endowed with the right to seek salvation. While Catholic teachings still had many serious flaws and lacked a true science of the spirit, these idea reflected some of the truth and decency which were at the heart of Jesus’s message.
Luther’s key to reform would have been to reinforce the good tenets still alive in Catholicism while eliminating the blatant commercialization and the Est Roman change to christian doctrine. That was not the road Luther chose to take. He taught instead the false idea that a person has no personalcontrol over his spiritual salvation. Luther convinced people that salvation is dependent entirely upon the grace of a monotheistic god. There was only one action an individual could take to obtain God’s grace, said Luther, and that was to believe in Jesus as Savior and to accept Christ’s agony and crucifixion as penance for one’s own sins.
Luther therefore developed the idea that god would allow Jesus’s pain and suffering on the cross to become the ‘boomerang’ for everybody. In other words, by ‘believing in’ Jesus, you will not spiritually suffer for the bad things you have done in the past because Jesus has already suffered for you. This is a wonderfully magical notion, but it is hardly a philosophy of responsibility, nor is it fair to Jess that he should be expected to take the brunt for everyone else’s wrongs. More importantly, Luther’s solution simply does not work. Many people do feel and act better after ‘proclaiming Christ’ because they have acknowledged their spiritual existence in a way they had not done before and they often begin more ethical behavior as a result., but their act of belief has not caused them to overcome the many other barriers which stand in the way of complete spiritual recovery… Luther’s method amounted to ‘quickie salvation’: a simple act of belief.”
Of course the Protestant Reformation was not without its violence. It actually led to a series of religious wars culminating in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) which killed 25-40% of Germany’s population. In the city of Magdeburg Germany the Catholics slaughtered roughly 30,000 Protestants.
In the Thirty Years War the Roman Catholic Habsburg house which ruled over Spain, Austria, Crown of Bohemia, Hungary, Slovene Lands, Spanish Netherlands, much of Germany and Italy, fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, sometimes supported by Denmark, Sweden and France.
The Reformation ended when Roman Catholic France allied itself with Protestant states against the Habsburg dynasty yet many, many atrocities continued to result from the Catholic/Protestant duality.
- Prior to the Thirty Years War, from 1150-1560 Roman Catholic troops slaughtered at least 250,000 Dutch Protestants via torture, hanging and burning.
- From 1553 to 1558 the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England attempted to bring England back under control of the Catholic power structure. During this reign of “Bloody Mary” over 280 Christian men and women were burned at the stake.
- In 1572 Roman Catholic soldiers killed at least 10,000 Protestants in three days in August in Paris. At least 8,000 more were killed as the slaughter spread to the countryside. This was known as St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
- Between 1641 and 1649 Jesuit-instigated Catholic butchery took the lives of 100,000 Irish Protestants in Ireland.
- In 1685 French Roman Catholic soldiers slaughtered nearly 500,000 French Protestant Huguenots.
Leading the Catholic Counter-Reformation was a new militant organization: The Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. This order was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola. “Jesuits were encouraged to adopt a soldierly spirit of loyalty to their ‘captain’ Jesus. the story of the Jesuits is long and complex and will be covered in other articles.
The point is that even today hypocritical condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church by Protestants continues unabated. As W.L. Graham writes, “Since the Protestant Reformation, many false doctrines and an authoritative church hierarchy system propagated by the first Roman councils of Bishops have been approved of, replicated, and widely observed by Protestants. Even Dominion Theology (a modern movement popularized by Christian evangelical fundamentalists) which seeks to force Christian religious principles onto secular society through political control of governments, mirrors the historic ambition of the Roman Church-State.”
As Bramley writes, “Although it is true that the Reformation led the human race further away from spiritual understanding, it did have one very beneficial effect: it helped break the back of the Catholic Inquisition…There was an eventual price to be paid for this benefit, however, and that was the price of an ever-deepening materialism. Philosophies of ‘humanism’, ‘rationalism’, and similar ideologies with a materialistic bent took on renewed vigor in the Reformation climate.”
“Christianity ever since has been more inclined to crusade against evil manifestations than to develop a philosophy for understanding their causes…” writes John Michell, “From the Gnostic sages we learn that energy is morally neutral and that the form of it that entered the world two thousand years ago had two different effects. As the spirit of Christ, it stimulated minds and brought a renewal of prophecy and culture; but it also gave life to an antichrist, intolerant and power-engrossing, who persecuted the saints from his seat in the imperial city.”
Calvinism & Puritanism
To make a brief comment on Calvinism and Puritanism I will quote William Bramley once more, “Luther said that spiritual salvation was not something that a human being could achieve through his or her own labors. Instead, salvation required an act of belief. The same idea was promulgated by Calvin but with a harsher twist. According to Calvin’s doctrine, not even an act of faith or belief would ensure a person’s spiritual survival. Calvin proclaimed instead that a person’s spiritual salvation, or lack of it, was already predetermined before birth by God. Not only had God decided in advance who would achieve spiritual salvation and who would not, but there was absolutely nothing a person could do about God’s decision…Calvin’s predestination teachings offered people little comfort because they stressed that most human beings were spiritually condemned. Those humans favored by God before birth were known as the ‘Elect’. The Elect were few in number and could do nothing to share their good fortune with others. The Elect had only one real duty on Earth, proclaimed Calvin, and that was to suppress the sins of others as service to ‘God’.
Calvinism was more than a Sunday religion. It was a way of life. Calvinism was clearly a philosophy of feudalism of the modern age…On religious grounds, Calvin forbade drunkenness, gambling, dancing and singing flippant tunes. To no one’s surprise, Calvinists quickly developed a reputation for being dour and colorless. They also grew violent.”
Bramley continues, “In Great Britain Calvinism was the basis of the Puritan religion. Like their Calvinist brethren in Holland, some English Puritans decided to assert their gloomy beliefs and material self-interests through violent revolution…English Puritans believed strongly in the concept of Armageddon, i.e. the Final Battle. Calvinist cosmology did much to shape Puritan ideas about war. Engaging in war was glorified. The Puritans believed that tension and struggle were permanent elements of the cosmic scheme because of the eternal struggle between God and Satan…It is vital to understand this Puritan idea because it exalts war as a necessary step to spiritual salvation. It was also one of the seeds which gave us the Marxist philosophy of ‘dialectical materialism’. [In the end] Puritan austerity and glorification of war helped make European wars bloodier. Puritan armies operated on the idea that wars were meant to e fought effectively, not colorfully. With that in mind, Puritans eliminated military glitter and developed efficient fighting units through rigorous drilling. This pragmatic way of fighting quickly spread when other nations discovered that a beautifully embroidered banner could not win against an effectively pointed cannon.”
Modern Christian Fundamentalism
Modern Christian fundamentalism began in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in Britain and the United States as a counter-measure against liberal Christianity and the theories of evolution. In a Darwinian world there is essentially no meaning to life, no laws and no standards of right or wrong. This left many people feeling rootless – with a need for more strict control over their lives in which a mighty yet judgmental father-figure guided them to their salvation and at the same time kept them on a ‘higher plane’ than the non-believing heathens surrounding them.
Then and now Christian fundamentalists have the need to return to an authoritarian religion in which the slightest act must be regulated. These groups are rebelling against scientific intellectualism on the one hand. On the other hand they truly believe in humanity’s inherent sinful nature and therefore see the world in black and white terms in which good and evil are clearly delineated. They accept literal interpretations of both the Bible and subjective intuitive realities in a way that further narrows the channels through which their creative abilities can flow.
Christian fundamentalism is not a rich framework; it is a fanatical Puritan framework – American in character, restrictive and not expansive. Emotions are limited in most areas of life and only given expression through sudden releases from the dams of repression.
There is danger in such an oppressive system. When institutions become more repressive, violence often emerges as a result. This has been seen throughout time in all authoritarian and fundamentalist religions as well as all totalitarian states.
Fundamentalists are not happy with God or God’s creation, yet this true dissatisfaction with the reality they are faced with is hidden beneath layers and layers of dogma. Essentially, fundamentalists are convinced of humanity’s basic unworthiness, and so their own. Many of these fanatics cry out for God’s vengeance and speak about the world’s end in brimstone and ashes. They would like to see humanity destroyed in order for their beliefs to be vindicated – for the “true believers” such as themselves would not be destroyed; only the non-believing heathens would be. This makes them happy. Fundamentalists simply do not have compassion for humanity as a whole. They concentrate on negative events, storing them up, causing personal experience to reinforce those beliefs – and so as each day passes they see only more sin, only more evil. This makes them wish for the end of the world all the more.
And as a side note, as David Wilcock explains, “Conservatives who are angry about gay marriage are secretly feeling abandoned by God. They feel that if the God they know and believe to be true were really in charge, no one would want to be homosexual. If God were in charge, no one would want to have an abortion. If God were in charge, everyone would want to be a Christian.”
W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check
In this last section we will take a brief look at W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check as analyzed by researcher David Wilcock. Much more fascinating information can be found at the website provided in the link. As Wilcock states, “Graham has revealed many key differences between the beliefs of most Christians and what modern linguistic and scholarly research has actually found in the scriptures.”
A Case Against Hell
The article A Case Against Hell reveals that the entire concept of Hell is built from very flimsy evidence and is absent from the Old Testament altogether. In Hebrew the word translated as “Hell” is sheol which means grave. Sheol appears 31 times in the Old Testament and refers to the grave, the place everyone must go, regardless of how they’ve lived their lives. None shall escape death.
Wilcock states, “God does not warn Adam and Eve about there being a Hell if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – only that this action would cause death. Cain is not warned about Hell. Nor are the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses does not warn of there being a Hell in the Ten Commandments – or in more than six hundred warnings, laws, and ordinances in the Mosaic Law…
Some of the most noted Bible scholars, including William Barclay, John A.T. Robinson, F.W. Farrar, and Marvin Vincent, agree that the modern concept of Hell does not appear in any Hebrew or Greek text from these same time periods.”
Gehenna
Jesus occasionally used the word Gehenna to describe what will happen if we engage in negative, self-serving behaviors. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:22, 5:29-30), as Wilcock writes, Jesus “clearly warns us that we are in danger of Gehenna for something as simple as calling someone else a fool. Modern Christians would never believe that such a mundane insult to another human being would sentence you to burn in Hell for all eternity, but it’s right there in the book of Matthew, since Gehenna is now being translated as ‘Hell’.”
Gehenna is not translated as “Hell” in the Old Testament; but rather as ga ben Hinnom – the valley of the son of Hinnom. Wilcock writes, “This valley was admittedly a horrible place; it started out as a location where children were sacrificed to the owl-god Moloch. Over time, the ritual murders stopped and Gehenna became the main garbage dump for the entire city. Dead bodies and all types of filth were routinely burned there. Gehenna was therefore a necessary place for cleansing and purifying the land through fire. This appears to be the deeper meaning of the metaphor Jehoshua was using…
When Jehoshua said that calling someone a fool will bring you through Gehenna, he meant that causing pain and torment to others would cause similar pain and torment in your own life as a form of purification. Many people still refer to karma as something you have to ‘burn off’, and this appears to be a direct continuation of the symbolism used by Jehoshua.”
To Be “Saved”
New Testament Greek words for saved are sozo and soteria. These words include the concepts of being rescued, delivered, healed, and saved from danger. Wilcock explains, “Spiritual teachings such as Jehoshua gave, therefore, can rescue and deliver us from the danger of Gehenna – from the fires of karma that burn out our impurities – by revealing what life on earth is here to teach us.”
“Eternity”
The Old Testament word for eternity is olam. The Greek equivalent is aion meaning age or cycle of time. There are actually many places in the Bible where it refers to lengths of time shorter than eternity. As Wilcock writes, “This includes the length of a king’s life, the amount of time Jonah spent in the belly of the whale, the duration of man’s earthly existence, the amount of time a child was supposed to spend in the temple, the amount of time a servant was expected to spend working for his master, and the amount of time David was intended to be kind of Israel. Each of these examples indicates a particular cycle of time.”
“Sin”
The word sin translates as a transgression of divine law – particularly a deliberate violation of moral or religious principle. In essence, a sin could be anything that violates the free will of others.
“Jehoshua’s original message,” writes Wilcock “was that if you violate others’ free will, you will have to go through a cycle of purification – or Gehenna – for a given cycle, or aion, of time. This is much different than the modern, mistranslated idea that you will “burn in Hell for all eternity.” Once you understand what is happening to you – and the love that is ultimately fueling these karmic events – you can be saved (sozo) from having to repeat these cycles (aionios) of misery, suffering, and pain (Gehenna). The key to stopping the wheel of karma is forgiveness.”
The most important teaching of Jesus is how to learn to forgive; and full forgiveness is not possible without forgiveness of the self and forgiveness of all others. A hard lesson indeed.
Now that we have reached the end of this article it is easy to see how people can become cynical and bitter about religion. It is easy to store up all the negative aspects of Christianity – to catalogue them and use them as weapons against any and all religious or spiritual feelings. However, the most important point to take away from this discussion of Christianity is that religion as a whole, and Christianity specifically, has given us the most important aspect to human life and spiritual evolution – and that is the option of the two paths and the power to choose between them.
The one path is the positive path – the path that genuinely follows the teachings of Christ (or Buddha, or Krishna). This is the path of acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, understanding, unity and peace. The other path is the negative path – the path of the powerful control structures of the great religions. This is the path of manipulation, control, violence, separation and elitism. People on both sides of the spectrum have used Christianity as a means to further their goals – whether those goals be domination and enslavement of humanity, or freedom and salvation of humanity. You don’t have to follow a religion, but you do have to choose a path. So choose wisely, know where you are going, be aware of the consequences of your choices and take control of your own mind and your own life. The universe eagerly awaits your decision.
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