Posted on 12/11/2007 11:16:54 AM PST by squireofgothos
Without the clergy guiding them, and with religion still a very important factor in the average person's life, their fate rested in their own hands, Simpson said.
The rise of fundamentalist interpretations during the English Reformation can be used to understand the global political situation today and the growth of Islamic extremism, Simpson said as an example.
"Very definitely, we see the same phenomenon: newly literate people claiming that the sacred text speaks for itself, and legitimates violence and repression," Simpson said, "and the same is also true of Christian fundamentalists."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Okay okay... ;-)
LOL
So, I guess the Apostles were not the dreaded “fundamentalists” and the idea that the words of God might be literal and true was a later idea.
jw
Obviously they were early fans of group sects.....
I don’t have a problem with you disagreeing. You’re wrong, but what the heck. It’s your right to be wrong.
As for the cost, I’m sure that may have been true, but the fact still remains that the church did not allow scripture to be held by the common man.
Read from the article, “Without the clergy guiding them, and with religion still a very important factor in the average person’s life, their fate rested in their own hands, Simpson said.”
The clergy claimed the scriptures would be dangerous in the hands of the general populace.
My letter to the “author” of the article:
Dear Ms. Whipps,
Once again, you and your ilk write an editorial in the form of a news piece. I wish I had more time, but suffice to say you are not a biblical scholar and your selective choice of scholars, plus your editor’s wacky template produced yet another useless and misleading piece. You should be ashamed of yourself.
In no way did “fundamentalism” as you attempt to characterize start when you suggest it did. It’s just dead wrong. If anything, with the passage of a couple thousand years, there has been an overall slide from literalism (your version of fundamentalism) to interpretation. During that time, you can find both conservative and liberal forms of each. Underlying this is a rich history of debate about God and creation, and morality, etc. that makes up philosophy and theology that predates Aristotle and Plato. Anyway, that is just the beginning of the discussion and I have to move on.
A piece such as yours is a classic example of confusing the menu with the meal.
Disgusted,
Bioqubit
Heather Whipps....?
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Well, what?
“Obviously they were early fans of group sects.....”
Ha! Cromwell’s wife and daughters wore bright fashions which exhibited decolletage but as far as we know they were indeed into the monogamy thing.
Interesting peek into the liberal elite mind. They intentionally destroy the school system.
Another sad attempt to draw a moral equivalence between Christianity and radical Islamic terrorists.
I think getting the Bible into the hands of the common man was the best thing to ever happen to the West, as the Reformation and the Renaissance went hand-in-hand to bring civilization out of the Dark Ages and into modern life.
LOL.
There are actually people on FR who believe that.
It was more the Spanish goverment than the Church that bears culpability for the Spanish Inquisition was it not?
Weren’t they pretty much one and the same back then?
The Mayflower Pilgrims had Bibles to read, and they knew how to write; note Gov. Bradford’s book, which was written in the 1600s.
I have a Bible in my possession which belonged to a member of the Bradford family, and which was published in 1840, so someone was reading!
Yes and most of the better educated in those times could read Latin and/or Greek too.
Moving further from the Puritans, I’ve often argued that the Black sharecropper’s son of 1910 with a sixth grade education could write a better paragraph than most middle class High School students do today. Yet it is today’s generation that is taught how primitive earlier times were because of the lack of Ipods, etc.
I have said for some time that there is an attempt to show an equivalence between islamic extremists and evangelical Christianity. This allows the “liberal” thinker to have his disdain for Bush and feel justified about it.
I would say that they bear equal blame, but the dynamic of the situation was that the Spanish Crown was aggressive in pursuing the use of inquisitorial courts, while the Church's role was mostly one of complicity.
The fact remains that one was more likely to obtain due process and win acquittal in an inquisitorial court than in a royal court and far less likely to be tortured in an inquisitorial court than a royal court.
Moreover, inquisitorial courts were often used by royalist clergy against the Papacy - to wit the inquisitorial investigation of St. Teresa Of Avila - who as a leader of the Discalced Carmelites and a strong booster of the Papacy was investigated at the behest of the Old Carmelites who were partial to the crown and resented the Papacy's move to reform their corrupt order.
There are far more angles to the story than many Catholics and Protestants.
I would also add that the RCC--and the secular rulers of kingdoms-- discouraged and/or forbade the Bible in the vernacular that quickly became obvious in the early years of the 16th century - the sudden and widespread appearence of "strawberry preachers" ,as they were called in Britain. Suddenly every man became a Doctor of Divinity and Biblical authority. Fully certain that his interpretation of Scripture was the only way, even to the extent to questioning not only the validity of popes, but kings (and private property, monogamy, etc.) as well.
The Bible is/can be a complicated work. Reluctance to have this work printed in the language of "the People" was driven not by pettiness -- a convenient myth -- but to give order to religious credo, and explanation to its contents.
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If we could get the Bible into the hands of the common Muslim it would be the best thing ever to happen to the Middle East.
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