welsh
Junkmaster
Dixie_Rebel said:
I think we had gone through this whole thing before, like earlier in the summer, no? Not sure if it was heated (emotional) or not, but this all seems familiar.
Religion
- Thread starter Ruzdur
- Start date
I think we had gone through this whole thing before, like earlier in the summer, no? Not sure if it was heated (emotional) or not, but this all seems familiar.
Ancient Oldie
Still Mildly Glowing
Even though you do bring up a couple of good points about certain inequities in our democracy, you make the mistake of implying that by dissolving the separation of church and state that our founders originally and wisely set up, these problems will be solved.
Now where is my trusty logic bat...
Again, I don't see the connection you are trying to make. What does allowing people to use religion as a factor in their decisions have to do with this country being a democracy and our government's decision to separate church and state. You are attemting to imply that just because this separation exists, people can't allow religion to be part of their decisions. This is simply fallacious and not true. The reason why we have this separation is so that we don't alienate other belief systems, creating an equal society where are our pursuit of happiness and freedom is gauranteed. I believe these were the intentions of our founding fathers.
Not all religions believe in the same God. What God are we supposed to fear then (not that I believe God is supposed to inspire fear in people, that is the job of tyrants) and by stating this you are also implying that atheists are the enemies of law and order, thereby alienating a belief group and creating an inequity.
Also, you keep stating that the basis of our government is the ten commandments. By saying this, you are clearly ignoring many other aspects that play just as an important role in the foundation of our laws, including the Roman empire, but more on that later...
The Articles of Confederation comes to mind...
The basic foundation of our government was based on the Roman model. The three differant branches: Legislative, Judicial, and Executive, the system of checks and balances, among other things, all came from the Romans. This link should enlighten you a bit:
Democracy
Is it a coincidence that Washigton D.C. architecture is of roman design? You also conveniantly left out the fact that the Roman Empire was around for over 1200 years...
Again, you leave out many other factors. Germany post WWI was a ravaged nation that had to deal with domestic reconstruction, huge debts, run-away inflation, horribly low morale, an oppressive post war treaty, and an unstable and ineffective government. There was a pretty good discussion about post WWI Germany and the rise of Hitler in the Imperialism thread...
You make it seem as if our government is a pure democracy. The founders of our nation wanted to make a representative democracy, a nation ruled by wiser men who would be chosen by the people, thereby eliminating both the mob mentality and the tyranny of a despot. Also, what makes you believe that by including the church in our government, it will supposedly prevent a dictatorship to develop. If anything, by doing that you will alienate many and lead to general unrest and instability.
First off, how does this prove that we need to make christianity an official part of our government. Are you saying that most, if not all, manners and principles are religious in nature? This will only lead to the alienation of people who don't share the same religious belief's as you do.
You just can't help but make non-connections can you? What does that quote have to do with our founding fathers being religious? Also, are you trying to imply that because of immigration, the nation will become corrupt, and will eventually turn into a despotism. will I, a second generation Cuban, be the eventual downfall of this nation. Not only was that last statement a good example of a slippery slope, but it has no facts to back it up either.
There is no proof that that last quote exists (You should check out the rest of the site, it's very informative). It was most likely made up by an intellectually dishonest author who's style and agenda is similar to yours... which leads me to question the authenticity of the other quotes...
It truly is appalling that you would skew the words of our founding fathers (who interestingly enough clearly indicated in the First Amendment that they wanted the church and government to be separated for obvious reasons) to support your agenda. Nowhere in any of those quotes is there proof that they wanted a christian government. If they did, they would have made it official from the beginning and explicitly written it in our constitution. But they didn't.
A couple of quotes (with their sources
) that I found which clearly support the case for separation of church and state:
Here is a quotation from the Encyclopedic Index of A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, published in 1917:
Religious Freedom. - The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (q.v.) requires that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Religious freedom doubtless had its greatest inspiration from James Madison while he was in the Virginia Legislature. An attempt was made to levy a tax upon the people of that state "for the support of teachers of the Christian religion." Madison wrote what he called a "Memorial and Remonstrance," in which he appealed to the people against the evil tendency of such a precedent, and which convinced people that Madison was right. A bill was passed providing "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever * * * nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and, by argument, maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The religious test to which many of the states put their office-holders were gradually abandoned, and the final separation of church and state in America came in 1833, when Massachusetts discontinued the custom of paying preachers (emphasis added).(A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. XX. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1917).
James Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance (1785)"
Ulysses S. Grant said in his seventh annual address (State of the Union address) to the Congress, December 7, 1875:
"As this will be the last annual message which I shall have the honor of transmitting to Congress before my successor is chosen, I will repeat or recapitulate the questions which I deem of vital importance which may be legislated upon and settled at this session:
First. That the States shall be required to afford the opportunity of a good common-school education to every child within their limits.
Second. No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect.
Third. Declare church and state forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres; and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation."(A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. X. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1897, p. 4310)
I highly recommend that you read them. Hopefully they can shed some light on the true intentions of our founding fathers.
Now where is my trusty logic bat...
Dixie_Rebel said:
Again, I don't see the connection you are trying to make. What does allowing people to use religion as a factor in their decisions have to do with this country being a democracy and our government's decision to separate church and state. You are attemting to imply that just because this separation exists, people can't allow religion to be part of their decisions. This is simply fallacious and not true. The reason why we have this separation is so that we don't alienate other belief systems, creating an equal society where are our pursuit of happiness and freedom is gauranteed. I believe these were the intentions of our founding fathers.
Dixie_Rebel said:
Not all religions believe in the same God. What God are we supposed to fear then (not that I believe God is supposed to inspire fear in people, that is the job of tyrants) and by stating this you are also implying that atheists are the enemies of law and order, thereby alienating a belief group and creating an inequity.
Also, you keep stating that the basis of our government is the ten commandments. By saying this, you are clearly ignoring many other aspects that play just as an important role in the foundation of our laws, including the Roman empire, but more on that later...
Dixie_Rebel said:
The Articles of Confederation comes to mind...
Dixie_Rebel said:
The basic foundation of our government was based on the Roman model. The three differant branches: Legislative, Judicial, and Executive, the system of checks and balances, among other things, all came from the Romans. This link should enlighten you a bit:
Democracy
Is it a coincidence that Washigton D.C. architecture is of roman design? You also conveniantly left out the fact that the Roman Empire was around for over 1200 years...
Dixie_Rebel said:
Again, you leave out many other factors. Germany post WWI was a ravaged nation that had to deal with domestic reconstruction, huge debts, run-away inflation, horribly low morale, an oppressive post war treaty, and an unstable and ineffective government. There was a pretty good discussion about post WWI Germany and the rise of Hitler in the Imperialism thread...
Dixie_Rebel said:
You make it seem as if our government is a pure democracy. The founders of our nation wanted to make a representative democracy, a nation ruled by wiser men who would be chosen by the people, thereby eliminating both the mob mentality and the tyranny of a despot. Also, what makes you believe that by including the church in our government, it will supposedly prevent a dictatorship to develop. If anything, by doing that you will alienate many and lead to general unrest and instability.
Dixie_Rebel said:
First off, how does this prove that we need to make christianity an official part of our government. Are you saying that most, if not all, manners and principles are religious in nature? This will only lead to the alienation of people who don't share the same religious belief's as you do.
Dixie_Rebel said:
You just can't help but make non-connections can you? What does that quote have to do with our founding fathers being religious? Also, are you trying to imply that because of immigration, the nation will become corrupt, and will eventually turn into a despotism. will I, a second generation Cuban, be the eventual downfall of this nation. Not only was that last statement a good example of a slippery slope, but it has no facts to back it up either.
Dixie_Rebel said:
There is no proof that that last quote exists (You should check out the rest of the site, it's very informative). It was most likely made up by an intellectually dishonest author who's style and agenda is similar to yours... which leads me to question the authenticity of the other quotes...
It truly is appalling that you would skew the words of our founding fathers (who interestingly enough clearly indicated in the First Amendment that they wanted the church and government to be separated for obvious reasons) to support your agenda. Nowhere in any of those quotes is there proof that they wanted a christian government. If they did, they would have made it official from the beginning and explicitly written it in our constitution. But they didn't.
A couple of quotes (with their sources
) that I found which clearly support the case for separation of church and state:Here is a quotation from the Encyclopedic Index of A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, published in 1917:
Religious Freedom. - The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (q.v.) requires that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Religious freedom doubtless had its greatest inspiration from James Madison while he was in the Virginia Legislature. An attempt was made to levy a tax upon the people of that state "for the support of teachers of the Christian religion." Madison wrote what he called a "Memorial and Remonstrance," in which he appealed to the people against the evil tendency of such a precedent, and which convinced people that Madison was right. A bill was passed providing "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever * * * nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and, by argument, maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The religious test to which many of the states put their office-holders were gradually abandoned, and the final separation of church and state in America came in 1833, when Massachusetts discontinued the custom of paying preachers (emphasis added).(A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. XX. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1917).
James Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance (1785)"
Ulysses S. Grant said in his seventh annual address (State of the Union address) to the Congress, December 7, 1875:
"As this will be the last annual message which I shall have the honor of transmitting to Congress before my successor is chosen, I will repeat or recapitulate the questions which I deem of vital importance which may be legislated upon and settled at this session:
First. That the States shall be required to afford the opportunity of a good common-school education to every child within their limits.
Second. No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect.
Third. Declare church and state forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres; and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation."(A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. X. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1897, p. 4310)
I highly recommend that you read them. Hopefully they can shed some light on the true intentions of our founding fathers.
welsh
Junkmaster
Damn Ancient, first we find intellectual dishonesty in the gun control debates. Then we find it in the issue of church and state. This is troubling in both situations.
Let's be honest. Most folks do not check facts but trust the intellectual integrity of the author. Given that most people are too busy to look up their sources and actually test, it seems that misuse of quotes and sources, or the fabrication of quotes, is being used to convince an otherwise well-meaning if deceivable audience.
It is fair to say that the use of quotes, and the misuse of statitistics and evidence happens on both sides when positions become extreme. So I would expect that the extreme position on either gun control or on church and state could fabricate information to mislead those who are faithful to their cause.
Dixie_Rebel seems to be trying to support an argument based on his own values (which is true of most folks on either side of a spectrum) and supported with what he assumes to be good evidence. While we may
But what can be said for those who offer the bad evidence? If someone creates a statistic, or an argument that is controversial but hollow, falacious or just a bold lie, than that person is trying to steer opinion based on misinformation. Why do that? Because the logic or evidence is just plain weak? Because beneath the rhetoric there is no substance?
This is troubling. We can think of a number of leaders who misled populations of folks through propaganda. Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini... are only the first to come to mind. We can also see that in the extreme groups today- the Klan, Militia, Nazi.
There has been a growing sense of anti-intellectualism in the US for some time now, a topic discussed also on the imperialist thread actually, and there are many good reasons for that sense within society. And yet it would seem that it is intellectualism that can offer perhaps the best case for the truth.
As religion should be about the building of a relationship between the individual and God, the pursuit of intellectualism should be about the pursuit of the individual and truth. In both situations one should have a critical mind to strain the wisdom from the ideology, the fact from fiction.
Dixie_Rebel, while you may not agree with what Ancient is saying above and you may have alternative quotes to use in response. I think in the end, considering the strong emotions here, we will end up agreeing to disagree.
But I would suggest that you turn a critical eye to the source of your information if that information is false. In could be that someone is manipulating you with false information. If so, then you owe it to yourself to question why someone would take the time to mislead.
Not all books are of the same quality. Be especially careful of the those on the bookstand that are sold to public opinion and not intellectual rigor. What is popular is not always what is true. Yet as the old saying goes, it is the truth that sets us free.
Let's be honest. Most folks do not check facts but trust the intellectual integrity of the author. Given that most people are too busy to look up their sources and actually test, it seems that misuse of quotes and sources, or the fabrication of quotes, is being used to convince an otherwise well-meaning if deceivable audience.
It is fair to say that the use of quotes, and the misuse of statitistics and evidence happens on both sides when positions become extreme. So I would expect that the extreme position on either gun control or on church and state could fabricate information to mislead those who are faithful to their cause.
Dixie_Rebel seems to be trying to support an argument based on his own values (which is true of most folks on either side of a spectrum) and supported with what he assumes to be good evidence. While we may
But what can be said for those who offer the bad evidence? If someone creates a statistic, or an argument that is controversial but hollow, falacious or just a bold lie, than that person is trying to steer opinion based on misinformation. Why do that? Because the logic or evidence is just plain weak? Because beneath the rhetoric there is no substance?
This is troubling. We can think of a number of leaders who misled populations of folks through propaganda. Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini... are only the first to come to mind. We can also see that in the extreme groups today- the Klan, Militia, Nazi.
There has been a growing sense of anti-intellectualism in the US for some time now, a topic discussed also on the imperialist thread actually, and there are many good reasons for that sense within society. And yet it would seem that it is intellectualism that can offer perhaps the best case for the truth.
As religion should be about the building of a relationship between the individual and God, the pursuit of intellectualism should be about the pursuit of the individual and truth. In both situations one should have a critical mind to strain the wisdom from the ideology, the fact from fiction.
Dixie_Rebel, while you may not agree with what Ancient is saying above and you may have alternative quotes to use in response. I think in the end, considering the strong emotions here, we will end up agreeing to disagree.
But I would suggest that you turn a critical eye to the source of your information if that information is false. In could be that someone is manipulating you with false information. If so, then you owe it to yourself to question why someone would take the time to mislead.
Not all books are of the same quality. Be especially careful of the those on the bookstand that are sold to public opinion and not intellectual rigor. What is popular is not always what is true. Yet as the old saying goes, it is the truth that sets us free.
Briosafreak
Lived Through the Heat Death
Hmmmm where did this idea came from? Democratic concepts came from ancient Greece, Rome never ever had a democracy. The Rule of Law was perfected by the British, and the Separation of Powers in the modern sense was a french invention that Montesquieu gave the form and cleared the substance (yes, i know the role of Locke) to the way we now understand the division of the executive , legislative and judicial branches .
Actually he used the terms the legislative, the executive, in respect to things dependent on the law of nations, and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law, therefore the importance of so many other authors in clearing the concepts until we`ve reached the hodiern concept.
But then again i may have understood wrongly what you said Ancient, my mind is a bit dizzy with a damn paper i`m doing...
Ancient Oldie
Still Mildly Glowing
You are correct on most points Briosfreak, however, Rome did have (correct me if I'm wrong) if not the first representative democratic system, one of the earliest. Roman citizens who had land could vote for a senator to represent them. Their government was roughly partitioned in the same way as the US government is now, and it had an early system of checks and balances. The link I provided sheds some more light on this. It can be argued that all modern democracies (I'm using that word generally here, as we don't have a pure democracy) and some political philosophers (including Locke and Montesquieu) have built upon this very early model.
Also, the founding fathers did take into consideration all the sources you provided above when crafting the constitution (including the Roman Model), wheres Dixie_Rebel was saying that the founding fathers didn't have any roman belief's in mind when creating our government. That is unless Dixie meant Roman religion, which wouldn't make any sense when looking at the context that it was presented in.
Another thing I would like to point out to Dixie, you seem to imply that laws agains murder, thievery, adultery, etc., all stem from the bible and the 10 commandments when in fact these beliefs have been around long before the time of Moses. Saying that they are therefore the basis of our government isn't true because nearly all governments (since before biblical times) have had laws that protect these basic human rights.
And some more links that provides support that our founding fathers didn't want a christian government:
The Godless Constitution of the United States
The Separation of Church and State Home Page
Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom (1779)
Also, the founding fathers did take into consideration all the sources you provided above when crafting the constitution (including the Roman Model), wheres Dixie_Rebel was saying that the founding fathers didn't have any roman belief's in mind when creating our government. That is unless Dixie meant Roman religion, which wouldn't make any sense when looking at the context that it was presented in.
Another thing I would like to point out to Dixie, you seem to imply that laws agains murder, thievery, adultery, etc., all stem from the bible and the 10 commandments when in fact these beliefs have been around long before the time of Moses. Saying that they are therefore the basis of our government isn't true because nearly all governments (since before biblical times) have had laws that protect these basic human rights.
And some more links that provides support that our founding fathers didn't want a christian government:
The Godless Constitution of the United States
The Separation of Church and State Home Page
Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom (1779)
welsh
Junkmaster
I might be speaking wrongly here, but as I recall many of the enlightenment thinkers and philosopher either influencing the US Constitutional process or alive at the time of the Constitution had recently undergone a period of antiquarianism. This period reexamined the history of ancient Rome and Greece in their efforts to discern how the best from those systems were achieved and how to avoid the worst. Giambatista Vico, an early founder of a more rigorous 'scientific' historical method, was in fact emphasized the problems of antiquarian history.
Therefore Ancient and Briosafreak are both right on this. Yes, there is a historical lineage with the classic world, but that more comtemporary scholars (of the time) were in the process of reevaluating that period for the betterment of a more just society and governance.
Therefore Ancient and Briosafreak are both right on this. Yes, there is a historical lineage with the classic world, but that more comtemporary scholars (of the time) were in the process of reevaluating that period for the betterment of a more just society and governance.
welsh
Junkmaster
This topic might merit some review at this time of year.
Recently Ihad been reading how the early christians were really the fringe element of the Jewish faith, kind of unofficial members who attended service but weren't really welcome because they were not really Jewish. However Christianity grew from this population as the early christian proclaimers said that one need not be Jewish to be saved.
Anyway, I also saw this.
I will trim it because it's a bit long, but not much. CC, your response?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2281976
A Mary for all
Dec 18th 2003
New evidence on links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam
IMAGINE what you would think if you had grown up with little knowledge of Christianity, and you arrived in mid-winter in a country whose culture and spirituality had been shaped by that faith in one of its more traditional varieties. In other words, if you found yourself observing the celebration of Christ's Nativity in a country dominated by Roman Catholics, or by the Greek or Russian Orthodox church, or in an ancient outpost of Christendom like Ethiopia or Armenia.
You might have questions about the sex of the worshippers, and of the divinity being worshipped. As you walked into church, you would notice some impressively robed people singing, speaking and gesturing at the far end, either in view of the congregation or else in a partially enclosed space from which they periodically emerged. Both these robed celebrants and, almost certainly, their assistants would all be male; and no female would be allowed to enter the semi-enclosed space. Yet most of the worshippers might well be female.
Then you might begin to wonder about who or what was being addressed in the ceremonies you were watching, and your confusion would be even greater. As you studied both the seasonal decorations—the greetings-cards, the cribs and Nativity scenes, and also more permanent fixtures like statues, icons and mosaics, you might well conclude that the main person being celebrated and adored was not a new-born boy, but his mother.
The impression of a maternally-oriented religion would be especially powerful if you entered one of the many eastern Christian churches where a fresco or mosaic of a giant figure of Mary, with a relatively small figure of Christ superimposed, filled the concave space above the altar, seeming to tower over the worshippers. The sense of a religion dedicated to womanhood, with or without the attribute of maternity, would be stronger still in bastions of Roman Catholic piety such as Mexico, where simple believers often pour out their hopes and fears to an image or statue of Mary alone, without her child.
And your curiosity about the divine force being invoked might grow even greater if you could follow the words being prayed and chanted all around you. Some of these words would be celebrations of a new-born boy, destined to save mankind, but much of the language would be about his mother: the miraculous circumstances of her pregnancy, and the great tragedy that awaited her as her son was to meet a cruel death.
Whatever you made of this story, you would find yourself appreciating one of the great cultural achievements of the Christian era: thousands of lines of subtle and expressive religious poetry addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Some of this was composed for the mid-winter celebration of Christ's birth. Equally beautiful language was inspired by the four other feasts that the early church dedicated to Mary, each with its complex liturgical forms. From the relative handful of direct references to Mary in the Christian gospels, a vast web of ritual and praise has been woven.
Of course, if you then asked a well-instructed Roman Catholic or eastern Christian believer about the meaning of these rituals, you would be told rather firmly about the limits of Mary's veneration. Mary is not a goddess, you would be informed, but a human being with a unique relationship to God, and therefore a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race. She is not worshipped, but rather venerated.
A Roman Catholic might tell you that Mary was the co-redeemer, with Christ, of the human race—though this is not dogma—and that she was conceived without the “original sin” that every other human being inherits. An eastern Christian would not use quite that language. But he would acknowledge a special sort of intimacy with the mother of God, and in particular with icons of Mary with her son, which no other manifestation of the divine can inspire.
Islam's most honoured woman
All this would be rather puzzling if your background was entirely secular, but it would be very familiar indeed if you adhered to another monotheistic world religion, Islam. In some respects, Muslim beliefs about Mary—the most honoured woman in Islam, and the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran—seem to be quite close to those of the Roman Catholics. The Islamic tradition holds that Jesus and his mother are the only two human souls who were not touched by Satan at birth.
In other respects, the Muslim understanding of Mary seems close to that of the eastern Christians. Both cherish the story of Mary's childhood in a place of supreme holiness that had hitherto been a bastion of male priests. Both name Mary's guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya. In Islam the story is told of Zakariya bringing food to the child Mary and finding that she had already been given nourishment by God; this is cited as a sign of her extreme receptivity to God. In Orthodox Christianity it is stressed that Mary was born an ordinary human, burdened like others with the capacity to sin.
So much for the theology, you might say. But, as an outsider, you would still wonder at the power and intensity of the metaphors that early Christian hymnographers ascribed to Mary. Among the dozens of heart-stopping turns of phrase, she is described as the dawning of a mystical day, a bridal chamber bathed in light, a lily whose perfumes scent the faithful, the vessel of God's wisdom, who showed up the unwisdom of the philosophers and reduced the scholars to speechlessness.
In the eastern church, some of the finest language is prescribed for a feast in late November or early December that is based not on the New Testament, but on a lesser-known Christian text called the Gospel of James. This feast celebrates the presentation of Mary, as a three-year-old child, to the Temple in Jerusalem, where she is described as entering the most holy place—which was normally reserved for male priests—and spending the remainder of her childhood absorbing the Temple's sanctity and scholarship.
Where do all these images come from? A psychotherapist in the school of Carl Jung might say that motherhood, as a force that feeds and protects all humans, is the most important of all the “archetypes” that lurk in humanity's collective unconscious; so any religious practice that fails to answer this need will fail to satisfy its followers. For feminist critics of traditional Christianity, the attention paid to Christ's mother is a feeble counterpoint to the male domination of every other aspect of the faith. Secular historians would link the veneration of Mary to the pre-Christian cult of female divinities, such as the Egyptians' Isis—who was conceived by her followers as a Madonna figure nursing a holy child—or the Romans' Diana.
A somewhat different answer is offered by Margaret Barker, a Hebrew scholar and prolific writer on religious history. Her latest book, “The Great High Priest”, is a collection of densely woven arguments about the continuity between Judaism and early Christian practices. It touches on at least two interlocking themes: the sex of divinity, and the locus of holiness.
From Judaism to Christianity
As she (and many others) have observed, much of the poetry dedicated to Mary comes from what is called the “wisdom tradition” of the Jewish religion. This takes the form of passages in which wisdom is perceived as a form of feminine divinity. One of the most explicit references to wisdom as a sort of female agency or power is in the Book of Proverbs: “Wisdom hath builded her house...She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine and furnished her table.” Mrs Barker believes that there are scores of other places in the Jewish scriptures where “wisdom language” is lurking just below the surface. Some of this language was transferred, in Christianity, to Christ or the Holy Spirit, but most of it was applied to Mary.
“The all-golden vessel, the most delectable sweetener of our souls...the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty”
Mrs Barker believes the worship of a deity in feminine form was more explicit before the catastrophe of 586BC when the first Temple, built by Solomon, was destroyed and the Jews went into exile in Babylon. As evidence, she cites a passage in the book of Jeremiah where Jewish exiles in Egypt are scolded for continuing to offer cakes, libations and incense to the “queen of heaven”.
They reply defiantly that everything had been going well in Jerusalem's Temple, and among the Jews generally, so long as the heavenly monarch was given her due. Only when that practice ceased had disaster befallen. Other scholars have noticed references in the Old Testament to “groves” and “high places” where forbidden religious rites were going on, and have assumed, perhaps reasonably, that these too were rites associated with a feminine deity.
To back her interpretation of this passage, Mrs Barker draws on a version of the Book of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls—manuscripts whose discovery 50 years ago transformed Christian and Jewish scholarship. This document asserts even more clearly that the cult of a female force called wisdom had been a feature of the first Temple, but was then abandoned, disastrously.
As an exercise in textual analysis, Mrs Barker's case is almost unanswerable, albeit not entirely original. The idea of wisdom as a female agency or person also existed among the Greeks, for whom Athene was the goddess of wisdom, just as Minerva was for the Romans. More recently, in the 1930s, the idea caused furious disputes in the White Russian diaspora in Paris, with bitter allegations of heresy being traded.
No wonder. As Jamie Moran, a lecturer on religion and psychology, puts it, “The Christian church does have an understanding of wisdom as a feminine gift of God, but it is so subtle that almost any statement you make about it becomes heretical.” The best way to understand the Judeo-Christian wisdom tradition, in Mr Moran's view, is to think of wisdom as a creature who is not part of God but has a unique role in mixing God and creation together. If so, it is easy to see how “wisdom language” was transferred to Mary.
But whatever the insights offered by comparing texts and metaphors, it can be hard for 21st-century observers to understand the sheer passion of the language that was addressed to Christ's mother in late antiquity. “The all-golden vessel, the most delectable sweetener of our souls, she who bears the Manna which is Christ: land uncultivated, field unploughed, vine streaming with fecundity, vessel most delightful, spring that gushes forth, the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty.” Those are the words of an eighth-century Byzantine sermon, describing Mary's entry into the Temple.
The holy of holies
To understand the preacher's passion, it helps to look at the other part of Mrs Barker's argument which has to do with the locus of holiness on earth. Like several other religions, the Jewish tradition was torn between its emphasis on the unbridgeable gap between God and human beings and its belief that, in certain circumstances, it is possible for man and the divine to come face to face.
For the Jews, the unique place of encounter between man and God was the temple. Before that, it was the Tabernacle, or tent, constructed by Moses. Mrs Barker's point is that only in the light of the temple or tabernacle tradition can many features of early Christianity be understood. She also believes that the reverse applies: in the light of early Christian practices and ritual, it becomes easier to reenter the world of the Jewish temple. As an example of this, she takes the central Christian rite of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are offered to God, consecrated and then consumed by worshippers who believe the sanctified gifts enable them, in some mysterious but primordially important sense, to take part in the divine life of Christ.
As many a religious historian has noted, there are two temple practices that foreshadow the Eucharist. One was the weekly ceremony in which 12 loaves of bread were brought into the temple, consecrated and then consumed by the high priests. The other was the annual rite that marks the high-point of the Jewish calendar: the Day of Atonement, the only time when the priest entered the holy of holies, the most sacred part of the temple.
Before doing so, the priest would select two almost identical goats. One would be slaughtered, and its blood was taken into the holy of holies before being sprinkled in various parts of the temple. The other was sent out into the desert, a “scapegoat” bearing the sins of the people.
As one standard translation puts it, the priest would sacrifice one goat for the Lord, the other to a demonic force called Azazel. But Mrs Barker, drawing in part on Christian sources, argues for a different reading of the Hebrew: one goat was sacrificed as, rather than for, Azazel, whereas the other was sacrificed asthe Lord. If she is right, then the paradoxical Christian teaching that God the Son, being crucified, is both “victim and priest” in an act of supreme sacrifice becomes easier to understand. And it is clear that the links between the Eucharist and the Atonement rite are closer than previously realised.
Mrs Barker's broader case is that posterity has underestimated the importance of temple worship in the spiritual universe, not only of the Jews, but also of the early Christians, some of whom were temple priests. .....
Transcending sex
As evidence that Christians self-consciously followed the Jerusalem design, he cites a papal adviser of the 13th century, William Durandus, who said, “Our physical church has taken its form from...two buildings, the Temple and the Tabernacle.” But most of the time, the “temple proportions” of church design, Mr Wilkinson believes, were part of a secret body of orally transmitted knowledge, influenced by the Greek belief that numbers had mystical properties.
Whatever the channels through which the temple influenced Christians, the essential point, for both Mrs Barker and Mr Wilkinson, is that Christianity inherited and built on the Jewish belief that it is possible for the human being to have a direct encounter with God, and in some sense to become part of divine reality.
For the Jews, the temple, specifically the holy of holies, was the unique locus for that encounter. For Christians, the equivalent place was the sacred space around the altar of their church, where bread and wine were consecrated, and believers were enabled to take part in Christ's life.
So how does that argument tie in with Mrs Barker's earlier observations about the worship of the feminine in early Jewish religion, and the transfer of this tradition—or at least its language and metaphors—to Mary? Very closely, she would argue.
First, the Christian (and Muslim) story of the young Mary going into the heart of the Temple indicates, in Mrs Barker's view, that sex is transcended in the divine reality that Jewish high priests entered when they made their annual procession into the holy of holies. There is thus, she argues, a sense in which the priest entering the holy of holies ceases to be male. Mrs Barker, a Methodist preacher herself, concludes that this journey to a “place beyond gender” can be made by a person of either sex, and there is no reason why women cannot be Christian priests. Conservatives may regard this as feminist claptrap but, whatever they believe about that thorny topic, many Christians may be sympathetic to the stress that Mrs Barker lays on the traditional story of Mary's early life among the temple priests, in a place of pure holiness where nobody except an elite caste of males had ever been.
Muslims, like eastern Christians, believe that Mary's mother was expecting a child who would perform unique services to God, and was therefore surprised when her baby turned out to be a girl. Christians and Muslims will never agree on the nature of Mary's child: was he God incarnate, who experienced death and rose again, or a uniquely inspired prophet who did not die but ascended to heaven? Yet Christians and Muslims alike can see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to the holiness, or proximity to God, that any human, whether male or female, can attain. Surely that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history's foremost Jewish mother.
Recently Ihad been reading how the early christians were really the fringe element of the Jewish faith, kind of unofficial members who attended service but weren't really welcome because they were not really Jewish. However Christianity grew from this population as the early christian proclaimers said that one need not be Jewish to be saved.
Anyway, I also saw this.
I will trim it because it's a bit long, but not much. CC, your response?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2281976
A Mary for all
Dec 18th 2003
New evidence on links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam
IMAGINE what you would think if you had grown up with little knowledge of Christianity, and you arrived in mid-winter in a country whose culture and spirituality had been shaped by that faith in one of its more traditional varieties. In other words, if you found yourself observing the celebration of Christ's Nativity in a country dominated by Roman Catholics, or by the Greek or Russian Orthodox church, or in an ancient outpost of Christendom like Ethiopia or Armenia.
You might have questions about the sex of the worshippers, and of the divinity being worshipped. As you walked into church, you would notice some impressively robed people singing, speaking and gesturing at the far end, either in view of the congregation or else in a partially enclosed space from which they periodically emerged. Both these robed celebrants and, almost certainly, their assistants would all be male; and no female would be allowed to enter the semi-enclosed space. Yet most of the worshippers might well be female.
Then you might begin to wonder about who or what was being addressed in the ceremonies you were watching, and your confusion would be even greater. As you studied both the seasonal decorations—the greetings-cards, the cribs and Nativity scenes, and also more permanent fixtures like statues, icons and mosaics, you might well conclude that the main person being celebrated and adored was not a new-born boy, but his mother.
The impression of a maternally-oriented religion would be especially powerful if you entered one of the many eastern Christian churches where a fresco or mosaic of a giant figure of Mary, with a relatively small figure of Christ superimposed, filled the concave space above the altar, seeming to tower over the worshippers. The sense of a religion dedicated to womanhood, with or without the attribute of maternity, would be stronger still in bastions of Roman Catholic piety such as Mexico, where simple believers often pour out their hopes and fears to an image or statue of Mary alone, without her child.
And your curiosity about the divine force being invoked might grow even greater if you could follow the words being prayed and chanted all around you. Some of these words would be celebrations of a new-born boy, destined to save mankind, but much of the language would be about his mother: the miraculous circumstances of her pregnancy, and the great tragedy that awaited her as her son was to meet a cruel death.
Whatever you made of this story, you would find yourself appreciating one of the great cultural achievements of the Christian era: thousands of lines of subtle and expressive religious poetry addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Some of this was composed for the mid-winter celebration of Christ's birth. Equally beautiful language was inspired by the four other feasts that the early church dedicated to Mary, each with its complex liturgical forms. From the relative handful of direct references to Mary in the Christian gospels, a vast web of ritual and praise has been woven.
Of course, if you then asked a well-instructed Roman Catholic or eastern Christian believer about the meaning of these rituals, you would be told rather firmly about the limits of Mary's veneration. Mary is not a goddess, you would be informed, but a human being with a unique relationship to God, and therefore a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race. She is not worshipped, but rather venerated.
A Roman Catholic might tell you that Mary was the co-redeemer, with Christ, of the human race—though this is not dogma—and that she was conceived without the “original sin” that every other human being inherits. An eastern Christian would not use quite that language. But he would acknowledge a special sort of intimacy with the mother of God, and in particular with icons of Mary with her son, which no other manifestation of the divine can inspire.
Islam's most honoured woman
All this would be rather puzzling if your background was entirely secular, but it would be very familiar indeed if you adhered to another monotheistic world religion, Islam. In some respects, Muslim beliefs about Mary—the most honoured woman in Islam, and the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran—seem to be quite close to those of the Roman Catholics. The Islamic tradition holds that Jesus and his mother are the only two human souls who were not touched by Satan at birth.
In other respects, the Muslim understanding of Mary seems close to that of the eastern Christians. Both cherish the story of Mary's childhood in a place of supreme holiness that had hitherto been a bastion of male priests. Both name Mary's guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya. In Islam the story is told of Zakariya bringing food to the child Mary and finding that she had already been given nourishment by God; this is cited as a sign of her extreme receptivity to God. In Orthodox Christianity it is stressed that Mary was born an ordinary human, burdened like others with the capacity to sin.
So much for the theology, you might say. But, as an outsider, you would still wonder at the power and intensity of the metaphors that early Christian hymnographers ascribed to Mary. Among the dozens of heart-stopping turns of phrase, she is described as the dawning of a mystical day, a bridal chamber bathed in light, a lily whose perfumes scent the faithful, the vessel of God's wisdom, who showed up the unwisdom of the philosophers and reduced the scholars to speechlessness.
In the eastern church, some of the finest language is prescribed for a feast in late November or early December that is based not on the New Testament, but on a lesser-known Christian text called the Gospel of James. This feast celebrates the presentation of Mary, as a three-year-old child, to the Temple in Jerusalem, where she is described as entering the most holy place—which was normally reserved for male priests—and spending the remainder of her childhood absorbing the Temple's sanctity and scholarship.
Where do all these images come from? A psychotherapist in the school of Carl Jung might say that motherhood, as a force that feeds and protects all humans, is the most important of all the “archetypes” that lurk in humanity's collective unconscious; so any religious practice that fails to answer this need will fail to satisfy its followers. For feminist critics of traditional Christianity, the attention paid to Christ's mother is a feeble counterpoint to the male domination of every other aspect of the faith. Secular historians would link the veneration of Mary to the pre-Christian cult of female divinities, such as the Egyptians' Isis—who was conceived by her followers as a Madonna figure nursing a holy child—or the Romans' Diana.
A somewhat different answer is offered by Margaret Barker, a Hebrew scholar and prolific writer on religious history. Her latest book, “The Great High Priest”, is a collection of densely woven arguments about the continuity between Judaism and early Christian practices. It touches on at least two interlocking themes: the sex of divinity, and the locus of holiness.
From Judaism to Christianity
As she (and many others) have observed, much of the poetry dedicated to Mary comes from what is called the “wisdom tradition” of the Jewish religion. This takes the form of passages in which wisdom is perceived as a form of feminine divinity. One of the most explicit references to wisdom as a sort of female agency or power is in the Book of Proverbs: “Wisdom hath builded her house...She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine and furnished her table.” Mrs Barker believes that there are scores of other places in the Jewish scriptures where “wisdom language” is lurking just below the surface. Some of this language was transferred, in Christianity, to Christ or the Holy Spirit, but most of it was applied to Mary.
“The all-golden vessel, the most delectable sweetener of our souls...the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty”
Mrs Barker believes the worship of a deity in feminine form was more explicit before the catastrophe of 586BC when the first Temple, built by Solomon, was destroyed and the Jews went into exile in Babylon. As evidence, she cites a passage in the book of Jeremiah where Jewish exiles in Egypt are scolded for continuing to offer cakes, libations and incense to the “queen of heaven”.
They reply defiantly that everything had been going well in Jerusalem's Temple, and among the Jews generally, so long as the heavenly monarch was given her due. Only when that practice ceased had disaster befallen. Other scholars have noticed references in the Old Testament to “groves” and “high places” where forbidden religious rites were going on, and have assumed, perhaps reasonably, that these too were rites associated with a feminine deity.
To back her interpretation of this passage, Mrs Barker draws on a version of the Book of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls—manuscripts whose discovery 50 years ago transformed Christian and Jewish scholarship. This document asserts even more clearly that the cult of a female force called wisdom had been a feature of the first Temple, but was then abandoned, disastrously.
As an exercise in textual analysis, Mrs Barker's case is almost unanswerable, albeit not entirely original. The idea of wisdom as a female agency or person also existed among the Greeks, for whom Athene was the goddess of wisdom, just as Minerva was for the Romans. More recently, in the 1930s, the idea caused furious disputes in the White Russian diaspora in Paris, with bitter allegations of heresy being traded.
No wonder. As Jamie Moran, a lecturer on religion and psychology, puts it, “The Christian church does have an understanding of wisdom as a feminine gift of God, but it is so subtle that almost any statement you make about it becomes heretical.” The best way to understand the Judeo-Christian wisdom tradition, in Mr Moran's view, is to think of wisdom as a creature who is not part of God but has a unique role in mixing God and creation together. If so, it is easy to see how “wisdom language” was transferred to Mary.
But whatever the insights offered by comparing texts and metaphors, it can be hard for 21st-century observers to understand the sheer passion of the language that was addressed to Christ's mother in late antiquity. “The all-golden vessel, the most delectable sweetener of our souls, she who bears the Manna which is Christ: land uncultivated, field unploughed, vine streaming with fecundity, vessel most delightful, spring that gushes forth, the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty.” Those are the words of an eighth-century Byzantine sermon, describing Mary's entry into the Temple.
The holy of holies
To understand the preacher's passion, it helps to look at the other part of Mrs Barker's argument which has to do with the locus of holiness on earth. Like several other religions, the Jewish tradition was torn between its emphasis on the unbridgeable gap between God and human beings and its belief that, in certain circumstances, it is possible for man and the divine to come face to face.
For the Jews, the unique place of encounter between man and God was the temple. Before that, it was the Tabernacle, or tent, constructed by Moses. Mrs Barker's point is that only in the light of the temple or tabernacle tradition can many features of early Christianity be understood. She also believes that the reverse applies: in the light of early Christian practices and ritual, it becomes easier to reenter the world of the Jewish temple. As an example of this, she takes the central Christian rite of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are offered to God, consecrated and then consumed by worshippers who believe the sanctified gifts enable them, in some mysterious but primordially important sense, to take part in the divine life of Christ.
As many a religious historian has noted, there are two temple practices that foreshadow the Eucharist. One was the weekly ceremony in which 12 loaves of bread were brought into the temple, consecrated and then consumed by the high priests. The other was the annual rite that marks the high-point of the Jewish calendar: the Day of Atonement, the only time when the priest entered the holy of holies, the most sacred part of the temple.
Before doing so, the priest would select two almost identical goats. One would be slaughtered, and its blood was taken into the holy of holies before being sprinkled in various parts of the temple. The other was sent out into the desert, a “scapegoat” bearing the sins of the people.
As one standard translation puts it, the priest would sacrifice one goat for the Lord, the other to a demonic force called Azazel. But Mrs Barker, drawing in part on Christian sources, argues for a different reading of the Hebrew: one goat was sacrificed as, rather than for, Azazel, whereas the other was sacrificed asthe Lord. If she is right, then the paradoxical Christian teaching that God the Son, being crucified, is both “victim and priest” in an act of supreme sacrifice becomes easier to understand. And it is clear that the links between the Eucharist and the Atonement rite are closer than previously realised.
Mrs Barker's broader case is that posterity has underestimated the importance of temple worship in the spiritual universe, not only of the Jews, but also of the early Christians, some of whom were temple priests. .....
Transcending sex
As evidence that Christians self-consciously followed the Jerusalem design, he cites a papal adviser of the 13th century, William Durandus, who said, “Our physical church has taken its form from...two buildings, the Temple and the Tabernacle.” But most of the time, the “temple proportions” of church design, Mr Wilkinson believes, were part of a secret body of orally transmitted knowledge, influenced by the Greek belief that numbers had mystical properties.
Whatever the channels through which the temple influenced Christians, the essential point, for both Mrs Barker and Mr Wilkinson, is that Christianity inherited and built on the Jewish belief that it is possible for the human being to have a direct encounter with God, and in some sense to become part of divine reality.
For the Jews, the temple, specifically the holy of holies, was the unique locus for that encounter. For Christians, the equivalent place was the sacred space around the altar of their church, where bread and wine were consecrated, and believers were enabled to take part in Christ's life.
So how does that argument tie in with Mrs Barker's earlier observations about the worship of the feminine in early Jewish religion, and the transfer of this tradition—or at least its language and metaphors—to Mary? Very closely, she would argue.
First, the Christian (and Muslim) story of the young Mary going into the heart of the Temple indicates, in Mrs Barker's view, that sex is transcended in the divine reality that Jewish high priests entered when they made their annual procession into the holy of holies. There is thus, she argues, a sense in which the priest entering the holy of holies ceases to be male. Mrs Barker, a Methodist preacher herself, concludes that this journey to a “place beyond gender” can be made by a person of either sex, and there is no reason why women cannot be Christian priests. Conservatives may regard this as feminist claptrap but, whatever they believe about that thorny topic, many Christians may be sympathetic to the stress that Mrs Barker lays on the traditional story of Mary's early life among the temple priests, in a place of pure holiness where nobody except an elite caste of males had ever been.
Muslims, like eastern Christians, believe that Mary's mother was expecting a child who would perform unique services to God, and was therefore surprised when her baby turned out to be a girl. Christians and Muslims will never agree on the nature of Mary's child: was he God incarnate, who experienced death and rose again, or a uniquely inspired prophet who did not die but ascended to heaven? Yet Christians and Muslims alike can see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to the holiness, or proximity to God, that any human, whether male or female, can attain. Surely that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history's foremost Jewish mother.
John Uskglass
Venerable Relic of the Wastes
Should have known that.
Cannot say I am surprised though. Islam, particularly traditional (Sunni) Islam is essentially a militant brand of some of the more Jewish Christian groups-groups that did, more often then not kept kosher (hence the muslim laws agains pork), Jewish traditions against icons (hence Islam's staunch iconoclasm), and the Jewish rabbinical structure (as opposed to the relative centralization of pre-Rabbinical Judaisim and Christanity). It has alot in common with a two particularly interesting Christian groups- one, famous in the 4th century for being terrorists, of Nubians who belived that blood atonement was something along the lines of other-people's-blood atonement, one in central Anatolia that was essentially half-Jewish.
Islam, is, in my view, as Christian as the Manichean movement; actually more so. Many parts of the Koran are taken directly from Eastern Christian (particularly Monophysite) texts. I, frankly, think that in the far future it is not improbible to see alot more interaction between the two religions.
Untrue. Christanity, before Islam, was extraordinarily diverse, particularly in Arabia. I would not be surprised at all if Mohammed was influenced by a group that belived that Mary was such, as I am sure there must have been several.
O God, more liberal shit.
WOMEN HAVE NOT VERY MANY RIGHTS IN ANY RELIGION THAT IS ACTUALLY A RELIGION. FACE IT.
Besides, there are some *really* good arguments for liberalization in the Eastern Church- abortion and homosexuality where both legal before the 8th Century, for instance. Surely it would be a good thing to go back to the traditions of time of Constantine?
Women, as a matter of the age, should have every right to both voice thier opinon and stay in a Church regardless of thier actions. However, it is obvious according to scripture that women should not hold the priesthood or any higher ordinance. And until they find the Book of X, Ill stand by that.