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Culture wars

TheCatWoman

We keep being told, especially by right wing political parties that our Judeo-Christian western culture and values are under threat from various places mostly Islam, but then I think they forget that Islam has the same roots as Chrisitianity and Judaism, they see the old testament as thier foundation too.

But are we really are we really a christian country anymore? I know a couple of people who go to church, but from what I see very few people actually identify as christian, I certainly don't. I agree that many of our values such as democracy and stuff have grown up alongside christianity and often in spite of it, but I see many of those values as having thier roots in secularism.

I also think that a lot of what's put forward as culture wars are really just a bunch of people who are too lazy to think about the feelings of others, who want to hurt others and proscribe thier liberties and choices. A survey I saw some years ago reckoned that for many middle aged white men 20% representation of groups other than thier's was anough for them to feel some sort of existential threat. In other words, they no longer have the privilages that they believe and have been brought up to believe belong to them.

One of the questions that keeps coming back to me is, what are these western judeo-christian values supposed to be? As an historian, when I look at the conversion periods of several countries I see a removal of rights, proscription of behaviours beliefs and parctices and enforcement of others often at sword point or other threats of violence. I'm thinking particulalry of the fate of one of the worlds greatest mathmaticians, Hypatia of Alexandria, set upon and flayed publically with pot sherds for daring to be an intelligent woman, or Iceland and Lituania who were told to convert to christianity or face invasion, this was all before the Crusades of which we are encouraged to revel in.

As I say I think modern western values have happened despite christianity not because of it and various church groups have co-opted them so as they can attempt to stay relevant when people get sick of the hypocracy.

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  • TheCatWoman said:
    We keep being told, especially by right wing political parties that our Judeo-Christian western culture and values are under threat from various places

    John Cleese has a sketch that explains it perfectly:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCkxlqFd90

    Essentially it give your culture a convenient enemy to blame everything bad in the world on and thus make you feel good about yourself.

  • in reply to Iain

    I'm for once, glad to be here.

    That John Cleese bit of video was the wisest things I've seen for a LONG time.

    Thank you Iain, for finding that and bringing it to us. 

    May I point out that Christianity in it's most pure form involves simply the study of the life of Jesus Christ and making an honest effort to emulate his lifestyle, and learn from his teachings.

    At no point did Jesus ever exhort us to beat female mathematicians to death with crockery, or dunk witches in ponds, or set fire to women. How people can conflate that sort of behaviour with the basic christian knowledge is a complete and unpleasant mystery to me. Same with the Crusades. It's like people call themselves Christian without ever actually reading a gospel!!

    The russians ATM are blithely murdering people wholesale in the name of "Orthodox Christianity" . It beggars the mind how an entire buch of people can so MISS the POINT about the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.

    I think I need to go and take a rest.. ;c( 

  • in reply to I Sperg

    Its one of the things I don't understant either, I used to wonder if I'd been taught a childrens version of the bible, when confronted by all the power everything stuff. I was not brought up to be religious my first real contact with any religion was school, where we had to do christian stuff in assembly and to me it was just another of those weird things school made you do, like calling dinner, lunch.

    I'd really love for someone to explain to me what the believe western values to be and where they came from and what the link is with christianity?

    Hypatia of Alexandria wasn't beaten to death with pottery, she was skinned alive, by a mob, when I read about it apart from the shock and horror of it, it reminded me of the Taliban or Daesh.

    Reading about the period I do I've come across lots of different version of christianity, in it's first 3 or 4 centuries as an official religion of the Roman world, it was riven with strife and infighting, two of the most interesting ones to me are Pelagianism and Arianism. Pelagianism was probably one of the big reasons why Britain was seen as in need of christianisation, because people believed in the wrong sort of christianity

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  • in reply to I Sperg

    Its one of the things I don't understant either, I used to wonder if I'd been taught a childrens version of the bible, when confronted by all the power everything stuff. I was not brought up to be religious my first real contact with any religion was school, where we had to do christian stuff in assembly and to me it was just another of those weird things school made you do, like calling dinner, lunch.

    I'd really love for someone to explain to me what the believe western values to be and where they came from and what the link is with christianity?

    Hypatia of Alexandria wasn't beaten to death with pottery, she was skinned alive, by a mob, when I read about it apart from the shock and horror of it, it reminded me of the Taliban or Daesh.

    Reading about the period I do I've come across lots of different version of christianity, in it's first 3 or 4 centuries as an official religion of the Roman world, it was riven with strife and infighting, two of the most interesting ones to me are Pelagianism and Arianism. Pelagianism was probably one of the big reasons why Britain was seen as in need of christianisation, because people believed in the wrong sort of christianity

Children
  • in reply to Iain

    Pelagius was a British born churchman 354-415CE, who believed that people were born good and there was no such thing as original sin and that people achieved heaven through good works, charity etc and chose to do well and live good life. His biggest spat was with Augustine of Hippo who was what we would describe as orthodox catholic, Augustine ended up getting the Pope onside and Pelagius was eventually accused of heracy. He also had spats with St Jerome. Many places held Pelagian beliefs and various bishops were sent over to stamp it out, but it never really went away, Britain and Ireland were strong holds of Pelagianism, which is one of the reasons why the late Roman and early "dark age" English church is only mentioned in passing in many histories of te period.

    Peter, please don't tell me what I'm talking about, I'm not talking about a race war and having lived through the times when political correctness came along I have adult memories of it happening and took part in many debates and discussions about it.

    With free speach comes respsonibility, the responsibility to not be ignorant or bigotted, not to deliberately be hurtful in your language, to be aware of others and respectful of them. Words have consequenses as well as actions do.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    TheCatWoman said:
    people believed in the wrong sort of christianity

    An interesting statement.

    can I ask on what logic you conider it wrong please? I'm not supporting it (as I don't know enough about the differences in these spliter groups) but who made the judgement call on what is right or wrong and what believe systems drove their values at the time?

    TheCatWoman said:
    I've come across lots of different version of christianity

    It is funny that so many people still consider Christianity to be a single, immutable religion when it comes from such a tattered and bloody past. Even today there is the catholic / protestant conflic right on our doorstep (whatever happened to IrishInManchester, he was always so vocal about this) and the desire for some to have a totalitarian military / church state to eliminate all other religions..

    Then you have the church in the US supporting the Orange Jesus as he breaks all the commandments and terrible acts of cruelty and all they do is wave their little flags and shout "make America great again".

    I'm not sure if religion attracts stupid people or if it makes them stupid sometimes. There are too few escaping the gravitational pull of the corruption to convince me one way or another.