Posted on 12/20/2011 8:45:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“By far the most important event in the entire rise of Christianity was the meeting in Jerusalem in around the year 50, when Paul was granted the authority to convert Gentiles without them also becoming observant Jews.”
So wrote Rodney Stark, the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. His most recent book is “The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion” (HarperCollins).
For Christians in particular, I recommend it if only because so many have a tenuous grasp of Christianity’s real history, as opposed the versions that too often are casually accepted as truth.
The truth is that the rise of Christianity is one of the most extraordinary stories of the past two millennia. Stark not only has the knowledge of his vast subject, but he writes with such felicity that it is hard to put the 500-page book aside for both its revelations and its devotion to the facts.
Despite the fact we live in a society that has at most only 4% who self-describe themselves as atheists, the more active among them have the audacity to demand that Christmas be banished to the privacy of homes or the pews and pulpits of churches. They rebuke religion in general as the source of conflict and wars, but ignore the spiritual support and ethical lessons that Christianity provides along with its promise of salvation.
While Judaism was the bedrock of morality and faith that gave it birth, Christianity made it more accessible and significantly includes the Torah as part of its liturgy.
To ignore the rise of Christianity is to be ignorant of an essential element of Western history. Likewise, to ignore the threat of Islam whose beginning is usually dated around 622 CE and which exploded following Mohammad’s death in 632 CE is to ignore the greatest threat to civilization, past and present. Less a religion than a battle plan for world conquest, Islam preaches death to all “unbelievers.” Take heed!
Stark provides a summation to his book and, even so, I shall select only parts of it in the interest of brevity.
“The first generation of the Jesus Movement consisted of a tiny and fearful minority” of a religion, Judaism, that had already been around for a thousand years or more before the assertion was made that the messiah had come and was a crucified Galilean rabbi who mainly and briefly preached in that area of Israel.
“The mission to the Jews was quite successful: large numbers of Jews in the Diasporan communities outside of Palestine did convert to Christianity.” The Diaspora were the Jewish communities in the Middle East and throughout the Mediterranean nations, including Rome, living in places where pagan faiths were dominant.
“Christianity was not a religion based on the slaves and lowest classes of Romans, but was particularly attractive to the privileged.” Moreover, in its earliest years, women often played important roles. Contrary to popular belief, however, “Paganism was not quickly stamped out, but disappeared very slowly.” Paganism involved the worship of multiple gods as well as a belief in magic.
Despite impressive cathedrals, in medieval times church worship among Christians was largely ignored and, as often as not, the clergy were ill-informed about the faith and sometimes not even baptized.
Despite what is said of the Crusades, they were a campaign to reclaim the holy land from Muslims who had conquered it and they were led by men who knowingly bankrupted themselves and often died in this cause. Though Christianity had been widely observed in the East, the armies of Islam destroyed all but remnants, thus shifting its survival to Europe in the West.
“Science arose only in the West because efforts to formulate and discover laws of nature only made sense if one believed in a rational creator.” Even the misnamed “Dark Ages” were actually times of technological development. Likewise historians have determined that the Spanish Inquisition was “a quite temperate body that was responsible for very few deaths and saved a great many lives by opposing the witch hunts that swept through the rest of Europe.”
Perhaps the greatest surprise was the damage done by Constantine who, having made it the religion of his empire, gave rise to an indolent and hypocritical Church hierarchy initially composed of Roman aristocracy. It fostered a clergy who were ignorant of the faith and indifferent to its mission. Not until the Reformation was competition introduced, forcing the Church to return to piety, as various Protestant sects emerged, and energized Christianity in the process.
Stark concludes that “The claim that religion must soon disappear as the world becomes more modern is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of academic atheists. Religion is thriving, perhaps as never before. More than forty percent of the people on Earth today are Christians and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith.”
And that, as they say, is the good news.
Unless you believe in collective salvation the “church” is simply a collection of individuals who have been saved.
Faulty premise, faulty conclusion. Not the Church we see in Acts and the Epistles. And, "just a collection of individuals"? Geez! You could say the same about the Elks Club and even they are more than that.
Never once have you seen in any of my posts a belief in OSOS [sic?].
Sorry, I inferred OSAS from your post. I didn't think you believed people go in and out of the Church based on salvation moment to moment.
Honestly, I don't see any Church in your view. Nothing different that a collection of individuals. 1+1=2. I think the answer is 2+++
You're still all individual all the time.
thanks for your courteous reply.
I realize that Catholics put the church between themselves and Christ and that’s a shame. Christ saves individuals, not churches. The RCC has become no more than a cult.
Church between Christ? No, we see it more like Church as hospital, Christ as the master physician/healer, the sickness is sin. And the “patients” help each other as well, as we seen in the Church in Holy Scripture. Another analogy is a family.
It’s quite a different concept than a collection of individuals by category. One that really results in a Church.
I’m curious how your view works. If the Church is “simply a collection of individuals who have been saved”, then:
- How is that different than, say, a category of left handed males between the age of 55 and 60? I mean this is a category, a defined collection, but there’s no relationship here. Is there no relationship between those in your view of ‘church’?
- Do they know each other and meet together? If so, are only those who are saved allowed in order to meet the collection requirements? How is this determined, does each self-selects themselves as “saved”? Can you object to their selection?
- In practice do you regularly attend this church or know anyone who does? I’m not trying to get personal, but wondering if you actually meet with a group from this collection of individuals you describe as ‘church’ or with something else.
Of course you’re not.
>> but wondering if you actually meet with a group from this collection of individuals you describe as ‘church’ or with something else.<<
Now what difference would that make to you? I’ve told you before that you need to do whatever it is that you want to do. If you want to put me in some neat little box I’ll just let you do it from your imagination.
Like most scripture, one can go on quite a ways on what it means. I gave one or two in my previous replies. I'm not sure you read them if you still don't know. Suffice it to repeat here: Self love is not a teaching of Christ; self sacrifice is.
Another, more literal and simple meaning is as the golden rule: 'what is hateful to you, don't do to others' (cf: Hillel) or 'don't bite and devour each other' as Paul says.
But we most certainly aren't the 'reference point.' All we know of good and love is from God. This can explain why our Savior said the second commandment is like the first.
Also, the great commandments are far, far from the only teaching of Christ on this.
Jesus did not say “love others as God has loved you”.
He didn't? Hmm. I believe it's clear that this is precisely what He said, here:
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy."But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
"And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
It's part of the other questions in the same group. Not personal. It doesn't matter to me on this thread except as it is pertinent to the discussion.
We are discussing what is 'church' and we have quite differing views. I'm asking here for how does your view work in practice, what does this view of 'church' look like? Does it exist as something concrete as opposed to only in the abstract as a category?
I realize that Catholics put the church between themselves and Christ and that’s a shame. Christ saves individuals, not churches. The RCC has become no more than a cult.Really? Is it JUST those cultist Catholic types or do other denominations do that as well? The Orthodox? The Lutheran? The Baptist? Hmmmm?
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