If you’re open-minded about this would you include materialistic religions such as Communism or Nazism in your definition of « religion »?? Everyone has a belief system or religion.
And if you look at history, humans are cruel. This is a Fallen World. Every day, front page headlines underscore the old doctrine of the Fall of Man...
In Australian (atheist) philosopher David Stove's book On Enlightenment (2003) Stove states (2003: 14)
« As an actual force in history, the ideal of equality has its roots in Christian, not in classic, ground. There are plenty of passages in the Bible, of course, and especially in the New Testament, which point clearly to equality, and even to communism, as Christian ideals. There are plenty of similar passages in some of the early Fathers too. In fact, Christianity has always carried communism as a kind of "spare wheel," though, like all spare wheels, it is forgotten most of the time. For example, no one seems to remember that the blessed martyr St. Thomas More's Utopia (1516) is a communist tract. Again, it is forgotten that the most successful of the nineteenth-century American communist societies, such as the Perfectionists and the Shakers, were Christian ones. And so on.
But it had always been equally easy, of course, to assemble other Biblical passages, which point, equally clearly, in the very opposite direction; in the direction of submission to authority and acceptance of inequalities. And it was on this side that the whole weight of the organized church fell for a thousand years after Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Western Christendom, even more than Eastern, was essentially hierarchical, in every secular sphere as well as in every sacred one.
As a result, the seeds of egalitarianism were extremely slow in coming to fruition, even in Christian soil: they lay virtually dormant from 300 to 1300 A.D. But there had always been - and there always is - a certain number of people of the kind who, in Australia, are called "bush lawyers." Many of these people, in reading their Bibles, had made the amazing discovery that neither kings nor dukes nor bankers, neither bishops nor tithes, are things instituted by Christ. And the number of such people increased enormously with the spread of literacy, the translation of the Bible into vulgar tongues, and the invention of printing. »
Though Stove does not openly credit the Reformation[4] as the source for the revival of the egalitarian principle in the West, in his comment below it is clear that this movement, which placed Scriptures in the hands of the masses, made a critical contribution in making the equalitarian principle commonplace (2003: 15)
Accordingly, egalitarian outbreaks began to occur as the late medieval world shaded into the modern one, and they became increasingly common and increasingly formidable. In the fourteenth century there were peasant revolts in France, Flanders, and England; in the fifteenth, there was the Taborite convulsion in Bohemia, and Jack Cade's revolt in England; sixteenth-century Germany saw the Peasants' War and the Anabaptist insurrection; and seventeenth-century England witnessed the movements of the Ranters, the Diggers, and the Levellers. These were increasingly explicit assaults on all privilege, and they all had an explicitly Biblical base. They were also, of course, all finally repressed; but only, except in Britain, with increasing difficulty and effusion of blood.
A philosopher of science not especially liked by Stove (Karl Popper) made a similar observation (Popper 1945/1962: 271)
« I do not deny that it is as justifiable to interpret history from a Christian point of view as it is to interpret it from any other point of view; and it should certainly be emphasized, for example, how much of our Western aims and ends, humanitarianism, freedom, equality, we owe to the influence of Christianity. (...) What matters to Christianity is not the historical deeds of the powerful Roman conquerors but (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard's) what a few fishermen gave the world. »
The Canadian Social Anthropologist Kenelm Burridge made a similar observation (1979: 188)
« It should be remembered that Christianity as a political force started as a democratic and egalitarian movement and found acceptance, as it does today, among slaves, outcasts, and the disfranchised over against established hierarchies. Moreover, Christianity itself is subject to the same dialectic. If, over the years, established denominations have frequently had to come to terms with and surrender to restrictive and hierarchical political forms, European and Western democratic forms, we may remind ourselves, are not derived from Athens, which depended on forms of slavery, but from the modes developed by the Church and its religions orders. Millenarian and similar movements as well as reformist movements within the Church itself have always started by emphasizing egalitarian and democratic forms. Their later corruption and betrayal is as endemic and necessary to the process as is Judas to the Last Supper. »
Burridge, Kenelm (1979) Someone, No one: An Essay on Individuality. Princeton U. Press Princeton NJ 270 p.
Popper, Karl R. (1945/1962) The Open Society and its Enemies. Routledge & Kegan Paul London vol. 2
Thank you very much. That’s a very interesting point of view and a good addition to the discussion.
However, when we talk about this egalitarian approach, I wouldn’t describe either Christianity or communism as a religion, but rather as a hard-nosed ideology of power. After all, communism is really just about exercising power, just like Christianity. The whole thing was merely veiled by the idea of equality.
To answer your question: I would much rather classify communism, Nazi ideology, and Christianity as ideologies rather than religions.
And you’re certainly right that human beings are inherently cruel. Or at least can be.
And while we might be too quick to give the early days of Christianity and the early days of the communist ideology the benefit of the doubt—assuming their intentions were good—unfortunately, these systems have a dark side. It’s certainly also down to people that these systems immediately devolve into brutal oppression as soon as they’re put into practice.
You observed: " I would much rather classify Communism, Nazi ideology, and Christianity as ideologies rather than religions." This is incomplete as typically this line of argument adds “Communism and Nazism as POLITICAL ideologies”. If that was what you were thinking then you can’t hide there. While Islam is well recognized as a religion, yet based on Mohamed’s teachings and actions, Islam has always been deeply preoccupied with political power, just as much as Nazism or communism. No wonder Hitler admired Islam. Regarding Islam, the British anthropologist Raymond Firth remarked
“But from the central postulate of God as the supreme, ultimate, blinding reality come propositions about man as the servant of God, about nature as symbols reflecting the divine reality, and about the law (Shari'a) as expressing the will of God and covering all aspects of human life. It is a neat and logical faith. For Muslims, there is no ultimate distinction between divine law, and human law. So every act, including every political act, has a religious dimension and should have a demonstrable religious sanction.” (p. 589)
Firth , Raymond (1981) Spiritual Aroma : Religion and Politics. pp. 582-601 American Anthropologist Vol. 83 n°3 Sept.
In actual fact most ancient religions came embedded with political implications. No separation of Church and State there. Remember that title the late pagan Roman emperors added to their résumés: “Pontifex Maximus? High Priest.
While Medieval Christianity with few exceptions remained under the influence of the ancient State/Religion fusion model, the Reformation began eroding this, but it took the Anabaptists to break the bond and reject the concept that the State should dictate religious conviction. And for their troubles, they were persecuted both by Catholics and Reformed churches. Many Anabaptists gave their lives for true religious freedom (John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress went to prison over such issues). But once religious freedom had been bought, freedom of expression became a thing and political parties then became possible. So separation of Church and State is entirely a Christian concept, entirely derived from Christ’s statement: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Of course it took over a thousand years of history for this to become reality.
It is much the same with slavery. This too is a completely UNIQUE feat that only the Christian West ever thought to do, that is to abolish the slave trade. No other civilisation thought to do so. Ever seen the movie Amazing Grace relating the life of William WIlberforce? It will make you realize what a near thing it was. In WIlberforce’s lifetime, slavery was Big Business. The motivation for outlawing this business was simply that slaves are made in the image of God too. But had Wilberforce not pulled off this feat, then just 50 years later (as the influence of Christianity was waning in the West) it is very unlikely Wilberforce could have succeeded. Had that been the case, then today when you leave your house in the morning, the guy driving the garbage truck in your neighbourhood would be a slave, the lady at the local daycare would be a slave and the bus driver who driving down your street would also be a slave as well as the lady at the grocery store checkout. And certainly Amazon would be in the business of selling slaves... Why not? If there’s a dollar to be made...
And then, there is good reason to admit that Christianity supplied critical presuppositions making the scientific method possible. Check it out:
The Judeo-Christian Cosmology and the Origins of Science.
Labelling Christianity an “ideology” is just odd, an attempt to confuse things? Seems pointless.
But the basic reason why Enlightenment devotees (and postmoderns...) refuse the “religion” label for Communism or Nazism as this allows them to maintain the illusion that they do not need “religion” or have a “religion”. But Social Anthropologists have long pointed out that no one and no civilisation can avoid referring to a belief system that give meaning to life and provides a basis for some form of morality. But typically Enlightenment devotees keep such thoughts swept under the rug, outside their conscience reflections. All of which reminds me of a quote by the Australian-British psychologist Dorothy Rowe
“Tony saw himself as a thinker and he wanted to share his thoughts with me, but even he found it difficult to reveal to me, and sometimes to himself, his basic beliefs, the structure which supported and surrounded him. We do not display our set of basic beliefs any more than we display our skeleton. Yet, just as our skeleton determines whether we spread our fine bones in the shape of a hand or a wing, whether we stand upright or pad along on all fours, so our beliefs determine whether we shall act upon the world with mastery, or soar freely and confidently through life, or stand upright against life's buffeting, or plod through life's weary ways. We do not state some of our beliefs, or even bring them to mind, since we regard them as totally obvious and axiomatic. We hide our beliefs from others to prevent them from laughing at our childish faiths, or belittling our deepest fears, or chiding our foolish optimism. Or simply not understanding what was being told.” (Rowe 1982: 15)
Rowe, Dorothy (1982) The Construction of Life and Death. John Wiley & Sons Chichester (UK) 218p.
The thing is of course that should an Enlightenment devotee become self-aware of his belief system, then this would invite embarrassing comparisons. All of which are better kept swept under the rub...
If you look at history, you also have to acknowledge the cruelty of religion.
If you’re open-minded about this would you include materialistic religions such as Communism or Nazism in your definition of « religion »?? Everyone has a belief system or religion.
And if you look at history, humans are cruel. This is a Fallen World. Every day, front page headlines underscore the old doctrine of the Fall of Man...
In Australian (atheist) philosopher David Stove's book On Enlightenment (2003) Stove states (2003: 14)
« As an actual force in history, the ideal of equality has its roots in Christian, not in classic, ground. There are plenty of passages in the Bible, of course, and especially in the New Testament, which point clearly to equality, and even to communism, as Christian ideals. There are plenty of similar passages in some of the early Fathers too. In fact, Christianity has always carried communism as a kind of "spare wheel," though, like all spare wheels, it is forgotten most of the time. For example, no one seems to remember that the blessed martyr St. Thomas More's Utopia (1516) is a communist tract. Again, it is forgotten that the most successful of the nineteenth-century American communist societies, such as the Perfectionists and the Shakers, were Christian ones. And so on.
But it had always been equally easy, of course, to assemble other Biblical passages, which point, equally clearly, in the very opposite direction; in the direction of submission to authority and acceptance of inequalities. And it was on this side that the whole weight of the organized church fell for a thousand years after Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Western Christendom, even more than Eastern, was essentially hierarchical, in every secular sphere as well as in every sacred one.
As a result, the seeds of egalitarianism were extremely slow in coming to fruition, even in Christian soil: they lay virtually dormant from 300 to 1300 A.D. But there had always been - and there always is - a certain number of people of the kind who, in Australia, are called "bush lawyers." Many of these people, in reading their Bibles, had made the amazing discovery that neither kings nor dukes nor bankers, neither bishops nor tithes, are things instituted by Christ. And the number of such people increased enormously with the spread of literacy, the translation of the Bible into vulgar tongues, and the invention of printing. »
Though Stove does not openly credit the Reformation[4] as the source for the revival of the egalitarian principle in the West, in his comment below it is clear that this movement, which placed Scriptures in the hands of the masses, made a critical contribution in making the equalitarian principle commonplace (2003: 15)
Accordingly, egalitarian outbreaks began to occur as the late medieval world shaded into the modern one, and they became increasingly common and increasingly formidable. In the fourteenth century there were peasant revolts in France, Flanders, and England; in the fifteenth, there was the Taborite convulsion in Bohemia, and Jack Cade's revolt in England; sixteenth-century Germany saw the Peasants' War and the Anabaptist insurrection; and seventeenth-century England witnessed the movements of the Ranters, the Diggers, and the Levellers. These were increasingly explicit assaults on all privilege, and they all had an explicitly Biblical base. They were also, of course, all finally repressed; but only, except in Britain, with increasing difficulty and effusion of blood.
A philosopher of science not especially liked by Stove (Karl Popper) made a similar observation (Popper 1945/1962: 271)
« I do not deny that it is as justifiable to interpret history from a Christian point of view as it is to interpret it from any other point of view; and it should certainly be emphasized, for example, how much of our Western aims and ends, humanitarianism, freedom, equality, we owe to the influence of Christianity. (...) What matters to Christianity is not the historical deeds of the powerful Roman conquerors but (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard's) what a few fishermen gave the world. »
The Canadian Social Anthropologist Kenelm Burridge made a similar observation (1979: 188)
« It should be remembered that Christianity as a political force started as a democratic and egalitarian movement and found acceptance, as it does today, among slaves, outcasts, and the disfranchised over against established hierarchies. Moreover, Christianity itself is subject to the same dialectic. If, over the years, established denominations have frequently had to come to terms with and surrender to restrictive and hierarchical political forms, European and Western democratic forms, we may remind ourselves, are not derived from Athens, which depended on forms of slavery, but from the modes developed by the Church and its religions orders. Millenarian and similar movements as well as reformist movements within the Church itself have always started by emphasizing egalitarian and democratic forms. Their later corruption and betrayal is as endemic and necessary to the process as is Judas to the Last Supper. »
Burridge, Kenelm (1979) Someone, No one: An Essay on Individuality. Princeton U. Press Princeton NJ 270 p.
Popper, Karl R. (1945/1962) The Open Society and its Enemies. Routledge & Kegan Paul London vol. 2
Thank you very much. That’s a very interesting point of view and a good addition to the discussion.
However, when we talk about this egalitarian approach, I wouldn’t describe either Christianity or communism as a religion, but rather as a hard-nosed ideology of power. After all, communism is really just about exercising power, just like Christianity. The whole thing was merely veiled by the idea of equality.
To answer your question: I would much rather classify communism, Nazi ideology, and Christianity as ideologies rather than religions.
And you’re certainly right that human beings are inherently cruel. Or at least can be.
And while we might be too quick to give the early days of Christianity and the early days of the communist ideology the benefit of the doubt—assuming their intentions were good—unfortunately, these systems have a dark side. It’s certainly also down to people that these systems immediately devolve into brutal oppression as soon as they’re put into practice.
You observed: " I would much rather classify Communism, Nazi ideology, and Christianity as ideologies rather than religions." This is incomplete as typically this line of argument adds “Communism and Nazism as POLITICAL ideologies”. If that was what you were thinking then you can’t hide there. While Islam is well recognized as a religion, yet based on Mohamed’s teachings and actions, Islam has always been deeply preoccupied with political power, just as much as Nazism or communism. No wonder Hitler admired Islam. Regarding Islam, the British anthropologist Raymond Firth remarked
“But from the central postulate of God as the supreme, ultimate, blinding reality come propositions about man as the servant of God, about nature as symbols reflecting the divine reality, and about the law (Shari'a) as expressing the will of God and covering all aspects of human life. It is a neat and logical faith. For Muslims, there is no ultimate distinction between divine law, and human law. So every act, including every political act, has a religious dimension and should have a demonstrable religious sanction.” (p. 589)
Firth , Raymond (1981) Spiritual Aroma : Religion and Politics. pp. 582-601 American Anthropologist Vol. 83 n°3 Sept.
In actual fact most ancient religions came embedded with political implications. No separation of Church and State there. Remember that title the late pagan Roman emperors added to their résumés: “Pontifex Maximus? High Priest.
While Medieval Christianity with few exceptions remained under the influence of the ancient State/Religion fusion model, the Reformation began eroding this, but it took the Anabaptists to break the bond and reject the concept that the State should dictate religious conviction. And for their troubles, they were persecuted both by Catholics and Reformed churches. Many Anabaptists gave their lives for true religious freedom (John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress went to prison over such issues). But once religious freedom had been bought, freedom of expression became a thing and political parties then became possible. So separation of Church and State is entirely a Christian concept, entirely derived from Christ’s statement: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Of course it took over a thousand years of history for this to become reality.
It is much the same with slavery. This too is a completely UNIQUE feat that only the Christian West ever thought to do, that is to abolish the slave trade. No other civilisation thought to do so. Ever seen the movie Amazing Grace relating the life of William WIlberforce? It will make you realize what a near thing it was. In WIlberforce’s lifetime, slavery was Big Business. The motivation for outlawing this business was simply that slaves are made in the image of God too. But had Wilberforce not pulled off this feat, then just 50 years later (as the influence of Christianity was waning in the West) it is very unlikely Wilberforce could have succeeded. Had that been the case, then today when you leave your house in the morning, the guy driving the garbage truck in your neighbourhood would be a slave, the lady at the local daycare would be a slave and the bus driver who driving down your street would also be a slave as well as the lady at the grocery store checkout. And certainly Amazon would be in the business of selling slaves... Why not? If there’s a dollar to be made...
And then, there is good reason to admit that Christianity supplied critical presuppositions making the scientific method possible. Check it out:
The Judeo-Christian Cosmology and the Origins of Science.
https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/sc_soc/cosmoeng.html
Labelling Christianity an “ideology” is just odd, an attempt to confuse things? Seems pointless.
But the basic reason why Enlightenment devotees (and postmoderns...) refuse the “religion” label for Communism or Nazism as this allows them to maintain the illusion that they do not need “religion” or have a “religion”. But Social Anthropologists have long pointed out that no one and no civilisation can avoid referring to a belief system that give meaning to life and provides a basis for some form of morality. But typically Enlightenment devotees keep such thoughts swept under the rug, outside their conscience reflections. All of which reminds me of a quote by the Australian-British psychologist Dorothy Rowe
“Tony saw himself as a thinker and he wanted to share his thoughts with me, but even he found it difficult to reveal to me, and sometimes to himself, his basic beliefs, the structure which supported and surrounded him. We do not display our set of basic beliefs any more than we display our skeleton. Yet, just as our skeleton determines whether we spread our fine bones in the shape of a hand or a wing, whether we stand upright or pad along on all fours, so our beliefs determine whether we shall act upon the world with mastery, or soar freely and confidently through life, or stand upright against life's buffeting, or plod through life's weary ways. We do not state some of our beliefs, or even bring them to mind, since we regard them as totally obvious and axiomatic. We hide our beliefs from others to prevent them from laughing at our childish faiths, or belittling our deepest fears, or chiding our foolish optimism. Or simply not understanding what was being told.” (Rowe 1982: 15)
Rowe, Dorothy (1982) The Construction of Life and Death. John Wiley & Sons Chichester (UK) 218p.
The thing is of course that should an Enlightenment devotee become self-aware of his belief system, then this would invite embarrassing comparisons. All of which are better kept swept under the rub...