The prohecies of Daniel - part 6

Now, back to church history.

When we last left our believing forefathers they were mixing Greco-Roman paganism in with their Judeo-Christianity. As they spread throughout Europe they came into contact with another pervasive religious system -- that of the Celts. We think of 'Celt' as something Irish... or is it Scottish... you know, one of those. In reality, "Celtic" religion was a hodge-podge of nature religions that dominated all Europe at the time that Rome was becoming Christianized. We think of it as Irish because some pockets of it survived their long after it was largely gone from the European mainland, and because there was a 'going back to our cultural roots' movement that started in the British Isles a couple centuries ago.

These nature religions had their sky-god legends, just like Greco-Roman paganism. In some of these traditions the sky-god had already been shrunk down the same way as Zeus, but in others the sky-god was still viewed as a big G god, and Christian missionaries could easily have used this as a point of contact, the same way that modern missionaries often do, the same way that Paul did in Athens when he used the "unknown God" legend to introduce Jesus.

The Christians could have let adapted most of the Celtic traditions to Christian teaching. They could have let them dance around the May pole all they wanted, could have kept the natural medicine, the general love of the land. All they had to do -- literally, ALL they had to do -- was refute the Celtic teaching of "Dualism": the belief that good and evil are evenly matched and either one could defeat the other in the end.

So what did they do? They fought May poles and nature medicine with a passion... and absorbed dualism.

Do you know why you say "bless you" when someone sneezes? It's goes back to the medieval church belief that when you sneezed a demon could fly up into the open nasal passages. Saying "bless you" was supposed to prevent possession. The blessing at the meal? Yes, the Jews had a thankfulness tradition with their meals, but our tradition comes from the notion that demons could live on food, and that everything had to be blessed before it could be eaten lest a demon get into your stomach.

When Christianity took on dualist qualities it became a monster. The abomination of shrinking God down into a being that was no more potent than a fallen angel had the effect of turning individual Christians into agents of this weakened god. A battle was being waged, and it was up to Christians to help their god to win it. Desolation was the result.

Witch hunts = In the Mosaic law mediums were not allowed within Israel's border under pain of death. The Medieval/Renaissance witch hunts were a totally different animal, done for a totally different reason. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people were executed because the general populace was terrified that a squadron of witches were flying over their towns at night, poisoning the water, and generally causing every unpleasant circumstance in their lives.

The Inquisition = Not technically a church institution, but that's quibbling. The Inquisition was run by churchmen with church sanctioning, the fact that it was technically under the jurisdiction of the states in which it resided gave it authority to execute wrongdoers. A neurotic, pedantic organization that deserves every bit of mockery that Monte Python can heap on it. The inquisition wrote the book on informants, torture, and censorship. A book that would get dusted off by the 20th century totalitarian regimes.

The Hundred Years War = it's time to depopulate the world again.

The period of time from 1000 AD to about 1500 AD is usually thought of a time of revival in the church. The "reforms" in question were a series of pushbacks against the facets of Greco-Roman paganism that were wholly incompatible with Christian teaching. One of these was the basic form of worship; in 1000 AD when a Christian went into a church, they would sing songs in Latin, hear scriptures read out in Latin, have a prayer given in Latin and leave. The problem being: almost no one besides the priests actually understood Latin. The average Christian knew virtually nothing about the Bible's contents in medieval times, and much of what they thought they knew came from these cultural baggage trains that we've already discussed.

When vernacular Bibles began to proliferate the results were explosive. It was like Christianity was being introduced for the first time which, in a way, it was. This brought reform within the church... to a point. But eventually two factions became distinct from one another, those who held largely to the statis quo (the Roman Catholics), and those who felt it was time to separate (the protesters, or "Protestants"). Many historian will say that The Hundred Years war was more about politics than religion. I personally think the distinction is a tad silly since both politics and religion owe their existence to a common source -- people's belief systems. Whatever the case, from the middle of the 1500's to the late 1600's those calling themselves Catholics and those calling themselves something else (Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicians, Baptists, Anabaptists, etc.) went to war.

Oh, and around 1600 the plague came back... in force.

In the next post I'll wrap this up with a summary.