Fiat Lux

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aPdP6aS8r_lA

My only comment is that these Anglicans will no longer be Catholics, the Lite version, but instead will be Catholics, the Rite version.

And upun that note I beg your leaf.

The modern Right is more puritan than the Puritans.

I doubt many modern fathers, for instance, would tolerate bundling.

So that makes the likes of the Purity Movement more Puritan than old Cotton Mather. O.o. Now that's something. O.o

Since I am a Christian, I do have posts about my religion every so often. If not to your taste, stay out, it'll avoid a nasty fight over something that'd end up just another Internet circlejerk.

One thing that I wish Evangelicals had was something as majestic as the more basic Christian prayers, especially this one, my favorite:

"Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever and ever now and unto the age of ages, Amen."

Evangelical informality is to me disrespectful of the Awe that comes with the Almighty aspect of God.

The Grace of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit be with you all, even those of you who don't believe.

The Bible is by no means really that female-friendly in a modern context. Guess what the oldest portion of the Bible in terms of its Hebrew content is? The Song of Deborah, written in Archaic Hebrew, instead of the more general Hebrew used to write most of the rest of the Tanach. That's right....the oldest document in the Abrahamic religious context was written about a Jewish Boudicca figure that was a wee bit more successful than Queen Boudicca.

Ah, history....you do throw the screwballs at us...

This one deals with religion, if you want to create a flamewar of atheist v. Christian, this is not the place to do so and any such comment threads will be frozen when they start.

Now....forward to the post:

I think one of the forgotten goods of history has been the actions of the Pope John XXIII during the Shoah. Pius XII was and is a bit controversial, but John XXIII should be one of the Righteous Among the nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII

He was one of those who saved the honor of the Church.

Others who deserve mention are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

^This man was one of the leaders of the German resistance to the Nazis.

Then there's ol' Pius XII himself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII#The_Holocaust

He hid Jews in the monasteries of the Church, saving them from Nazi evil.

And last but not least is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews where Denmark deliberately defied the Nazis and saved most of its Jewish population.

Even in the midst of darkness and evil, there was light. And the light was good.

On occasion, I like to quiz my friends who obsess on certain topics. If I go into a literary major crowd and hold the door open for everybody, I say "Enter freely and of your own will." So....keep in mind that I don't just pick on the "Bible-Reading Bible-Believing" crowd here.

I attend a SoBap Church, where many people claim to both have read the Bible and know everything in it. So....my little tripper-upper is that when they ask me what I've been doing I say "I've been going to and fro the Earth and up and down in it."

Only one person has gotten that so far, and that person doesn't even attend the Church. I've yet to spring it on the pastor, but I'm shooting for that this Sunday.

What makes it really humorous is that those who say loudest "I read the Bible every single day," almost never recognize the quote. *feral grin.*

One of my ancestors was this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_Guise. The reason I have him on this list was that he helped orchestrate the St. Bartholomew's Square Massacre. Effectively, one of my ancestors was guilty of orchestrating a crime analoguous to genocide, and that is one of my real problems with having such people like that in my family tree. I'd list my ancestors that fought in the Crusade, but none of them were generals, so....*wan smile.*

This man was responsible for the death of thousands of French Protestants for no greater a crime than their disagreement with their Catholic Brethren over who was and wasn't a proper Christian. And as God says "I YHVH am a Jealous God, avenging the sins of the fathers unto the sons unto the third and fourth generation...."

And yes, I know that three and four generations have already passed, thank you.

Related to my two saw horses of religion: Christianity and Islam, with a couple of things on Hinduism as a bonus:

In the case of Islam 1) it is not in decline. It is currently the religion practiced by 1 billion people. 2) The Middle East would be just as bad-off under majority-Christian rule as under majority-Muslim. Perhaps worse, because then the Crusades would have been intra-Christian wars of heresy. 3) Islam is egalitarian, lacks a clergy class, and is extremely rational and free of superstition.

In the case of Christianity: Going by denomination: Orthodox: 1) They are not a poor man's Catholicism, they are a separate sect with much to salve the disaffection of the current West, and unlike the Neopagans actually have had the benefit of governing a few societies. 2) The Orthodox Church is very much a beacon of Traditional Thought, and missionizing places like Russia and Greece is disturbing on so many levels.

Catholic: 1) Having to rebuild civilization because the secular, economic, and political authorities disentegrated under their own rotten weight is a difficult thing to do. 2) Having to do this when pagan Magyars and Germans and Huns and Muslim Arabs are invading you every time you start to get on your feet is somewhat harder. 3) In a religion of Creed that is the state, theology is politics and politics is theology.

Protestants: 1) It's an ad hoc term that describes distinct sects with no real natural unity. 2) Have as long a history of persecution and intolerance as they've been around. 3) Protestant societies are less gay-tolerant than Catholic and Muslim societies. Don't look at me like that, it's true. 4) Just because a doctrine is wealthy does not make it correct.

Non-Abrahamic/Hinduism: 1) This is modern-day paganism. If it's Zeus you want to worship, Indra beckons you. If Aphrodite, Shakti. Paganism isn't dead, it developed its own unique monotheism and theology. 2) This has Fundies, too, folks, and its own version of fascism, to boot. And 3) Hindus are everywhere. They aren't just in India.

Thank you, and good night.

Defenders of Sola Scriptura defend the Scriptures as unalterable. Yet Martin Luther attempts to tear the Epistle of St. James out of the Bible entirely, and the Deuterocanonicals were retained in the King James Version until the 19th Century. Does Sola Scriptura mean "I decide what's Sola and what's Not-So-Scriptura?"

Discuss.

As I said on a Christianity community, whoever had the bright idea to spread the Gospel to this particular Asian should be shot in both knees, strung up, and disemboweled before being strung up, and a sign hung around his neck that says "The Road To Hell Is Paved In Good Intentions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan

^The man in that link was witnessed to by a missionary inspired by a Presbyterian. He had been having visions of a figure that told him to slay "evil devils." Upon learning of the concept of God the Son, he considered himself God's Chinese Son. He received most of his Christian information from our Bio-Denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (Liang Fa only spurred his interest). Having learned of the Christian religion, he proceeded to start a millenarian war that murdered 25 million Chinese. This is Mao Zedong under Christian ideals, and Mao even admitted as much.

That's right. Missionary talks to one dude, who promptly proceeds to spark a civil war at the same time as our own and kills 25 million people for Jesus. Much as I believe in spreading the Gospel, there are some for whom it is not intended. This guy was one of them. And the nightmarish part I could see is if he attempted to Maoize China a century earlier, he would have been acclaimed a hero of the Faith by the Christian powers of the era for having brought true religion in place of paganism.

Since Hitler and the Nazis and Tojo Hideki and Imperial Japan came along and succeeded him. he's been forgotten. And yes, this is the second Chinese person in a row. The next individual's going to come from somewhere different.

If the Earth were created 6,000 years ago: humans would be hardly even to the outer reaches of Europe yet, let alone Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. The human groups steadily expanding would be various small principalities pursuing a Hellenistic form of imperialism. Most languages would be derived from the language categories of the Hebrew tribes: namely, Hittites and other non-Semitic peoples would be Hamite-speaking, Japhethite would still be spoken, and Semite would be spoken in other parts of the world. The human race would also be able to make by means of prayer clear demonstration that a specific people's God is the only entity and this would be obvious to all so that none are without excuse. A person would be able to pray to wet wood to set it on fire and on fire would it be set.

Earth as a whole: multiple ecosystems co-exist, and the megafauna are spreading throughout the world, also. Much of the planet is empty except for plant life and insects needed to sustain it. Animals are spreading around and monsters in the sea will prohibit spreading onto even Mediterranean islands due to their sheer horrific size and power.

Universe and Solar System: The system would revolve around the Earth and the sky would be supported by pillars. It would also be a much smaller and dimmer sky with living stars, not big-ass balls of gas stars.

Is that our world?

In Christianity, YHVH is described as defeating Leviathan and Rahab, the dragon-figures of the Bible. By contrast, the old tribal god of my ancestors Thunor was supposed to face Jormundgand at the Ragnarok and fail. An interesting contrast, if I do say so myself. And I wonder what provoked that fatalistic attitude in the Germanic peoples.....

Compare these two religions:

Both Judaism and Islam have Semitic languages as their liturgical languages (Hebrew and Arabic.) Both encompass radically different cultures (the Lemba, Sephardim, and Ashkenazim in the case of Judaism, and groups everywhere from the Javanese to the Bedouin to the Somalis for Islam). Both have a religious basis around right-action, or Orthopraxy, and both have an attitude of libertarianism in regards to the religious worlds they inhabit. Both Islam and Judaism have a religious law, the Halacha in the case of Judaism, and the Shariah in the case of Islam. And both have commentaries on their respective texts, the Talmud and Mishnah in the case of Judaism, and the Sunnah and Ahadith in the case of Islam. In terms of the respective ways and means of life, the 1 billion, 13 million souls that practice Islam and Judaism are far closer than any other group of related religions. And Christianity is the statistical outlier to both of these religions.

Curious, eh?
 

And yet I have some things I think should be mentioned when this topic arises:

1) The nature and kind of separation required to be fair across the board is drastically different depending on the religion involved. Different procedures are required to ensure that top-down religions like the Apostolic wing of Christianity and Brahmanistic Hinduism get treated equally fairly as religions like Islam or most of Protestantism where any damn fool can do what he pleases.

2) Religion and science should be kept separately. Evolution is not a tool of the devil, nor is religion itself a spawn of evil designed to keep the human race down.

3) Religious fundamentalism is harmful to liberal democracy. Period. Dictatorships have great freedom to deal with it, just compare the number of terrorists in Iraq before 2003 to after it. Or compare the repeated domestic terror incidents from both the Right and the Left in the USA to the pittance that happened in the USSR.

4) The Quran has it right "Let there be no compulsion in religion," and lest I hesitate to add, the irreligious are not fair game to convert just because they happen to disregard gods or a god. If you want to convert, fine. If not, that's fine, too. The desire or its lack does not give atheists the right to create Gulags and Tuol Slengs, or believers the right to create Inquisitions.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He has trampled down the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has unleashed the fateful lighting of His terrible swift sword, His Truth is marching on...

Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah,
His Truth is mar-ching on..

In the beauty of the lillies Christ was born across the sea,
He had in His bosom a glory that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy let us live to make men free, Our God is marching on...

Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah,
Our God is mar-ching on..

____________________________________

Whatever happened to the Church of God since the 1860s in this country?

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This dude, ladies and gents, is the last Roman Emperor.

His name was Constantine XI Paleologos. At a time when the Byzantine Empire was reduced to one collection of mud huts behind a powerful series of walls, he reigned. When the Ottomans took over, he did what a true Roman should do and was last seen trading physical punches.

Now  that's being a bad-ass.

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The United States of America was founded on the ideas of Republicanism, and of granting different religions the right to worship as they pleased. Admittedly, it never quite ended up that way, but then those things never do. The Soviet Union turned "Let's Share StuffTM" into "Starve the people for the Vohzd."  The United States turned "All men are created equal," into "Keep the Blacks enslaved and kill the Indians, we need their land." Even so, the ideals of the American Republic are in direct contrast to the Augustinite view of humanity, and Western Christian theology in general. Western Christianity sees mankind as irreedemably depraved, and only submission to God can cure it, and by the nature of religion, submission to the priest who makes God's will known. The Founders, by contrast, set up checks on human evil, not from the Church, but from man. The latter is incompatible with the Western Christian ideals, even taking Augustine's idea of the Twin Cities into account, Augustine's vision of them was as one entity, Church and State merged, and wielding both the Sword Temporal and the Sword Spiritual. Obviously, in a nation like the US, even making allowances for the tyrannical treatment of blacks, Indians, and for a long time, women, you aren't going to have a pure Augustinite vision of government. So, Christian conservatives, you have two choices: True Christianity...or the United States.

Me? I choose the United States.

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