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ArtCatDom -> RE: A chuckle for the Pagans & Wiccans (5/31/2006 4:57:43 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Najakcharmer
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ORIGINAL: ArtCatDom
I will certainly include them in my devotions. Leukemia is a vicious disease no one should have to suffer.
Thanks; they're decent people and I feel a lot of empathy for them right now.
You are sincerely most welcome.
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Also, I take strong issue with your protrayal of pagans as innocent victims in the whole history of its conflict with Christianity. It wasn't Christians who started with Pagans, historically, it was the other way around.
That depends largely on how you define Pagans. Historically it's not a very clearly defined term, and I'm not sure how accurate it is to refer to historical peoples by the same term modern folk use to identify themseves. Some cultures who may fall under this rather wide umbrella of definition certainly could be defined as aggressive and warlike. Others could not. But the most devastating historical record for a culture that made aggressive war on other cultures specifically for the purposes of cultural and religious assimilation definitely belongs to Christianity.
I don't know about that. This behavior is far from a solely Christian one. The Egyptians were notoriously intolerant of foreign gods (even in later "Kingdoms" assigning their own dark gods to their enemies, Set for example was later viewed as the god of the Assyrians). The Babylonians were also known for their cultural domination, in most periods of their ancient history denying full rights to anyone who didn't worship one of their pantheon. (Generally in Babylon is was only the slaves who worshipped "foreign" religions.) Islam did a fine job of purging out the pagans among them and spread across a vast empire that would have done Alexander proud. And so forth.
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There was that whole period of a some hundred years before Constantine where Christians constantly feared for their lives. It took until centuries after Constantine before Christianity could be safely practiced throughout the whole of Europe.
The Romans initially had no problems with *any* religion, and in fact had a very pragmatic policy of wholesale incorporation of all their subject peoples' deities. Statues of deities from many different pantheons stood side by side in the cities for all to venerate, and these were added to every time a new tribe came on board. The Christians objected to this practice; they did not want their deities put next to everyone else's deities. They refused to pay respect to anyone else's gods or to acknowledge the Emperor as divine. Some of them made trouble in the town square, destroying or defacing the images of other people's gods, blocking temple steps, etc, while preaching that all other gods were false and evil and their religion was the only real one. Accounts still survive today of the legal and political trouble the early Christians made which caused them to become the single and only religion that was not tolerated by the Roman Empire.
That's quite the tall tale. Historical accounts that aren't bent on demonizing Christians tend to view them as a bizarre but harmless little cult. The main problem Christians would have run into was their refusal to acknlowedge the emperor as a god and their refusal to acknowledge that through symbolic worship. But even that is far overblown, as a number of cults tolerated by Rome also refused similar acknowledgements (such as the Jews). Regardless, they were far from the only religion outlawed in Rome. Quite the number of mystery religions in particular were outlawed at various points throughout history. If you were to say they were the only religion actively persecuted by Rome, I would be inclined to agree with that. However, I think that had more to do with them being convenient scapegoats (since most of their membership was from the lower classes) than anything else. (Most other "aberrant" religions, particularly Judaism and the various mystery religions, included far too many people of learning and full Roman citizenship to persecute in such fashion.)
You also fail to account for the brutalities suffered at the hands of other pagans, such as the Gauls and Hispanics who were always difficult for Rome to deal with and were especially brutal to Christians and Christian converts.
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Did the Christians spend centuries hunting and tormenting Pagans? Absolutely. However, to pretend Pagans didn't do the same to Christians when their religions were dominant prior to Christianity's rise to power is simply dishonest. To claim Christians "started it" is also dishonest because it ignores the same historical realities.
The reason I suggest that Christians "started it" is that from its beginnings in the Old Testament, the religion was largely *about* going out and making sure that if your neighbors were not following your religious laws, you were supposed to kill, conquer or enslave them. Aggressive proselytizing has always been a fundamental principle of this religion. Eg, the "we're right and you're wrong, we have the only true religion that everyone has to live by, or else" attitude.
The Old Testament details the history of the Jewish people, not of the Christian religion. That being said, the ancient Levant was full of Baals who were all bent on conquering the others and the "filthy heretics". The Jews were nothing more than the people who came out on top of a free-for-all of tribal warfare and competing "Lord" religions. (It's ironic that their religion was probably in large part preserved by their captivity in Babylon, since the other native religions in the area were stomped out by the Babylonian occupation.) They were distinctly a product of their region (like most peoples).
Following up on that, early Christianity was a diverse, widely varied religion. It was not until the later imposition of orthodoxy that what we know today as Christianity came to be the dominant strain of the religion. Numerous early Christians widely incorporated a number of pre-existing beliefs (Gnostics were the largest and most well-known such group) and were generally tolerant of other beliefs, if disagreeing with them.
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None of the modern and very few of the historical cultures that come under the general umbrella of Pagan share the belief that proselytizing is a good thing, or that there are no other valid religions in the world. The typical non-monotheist view is more like, "We have our gods of our land, you have your gods of your land." This isn't to say that our land and your land (and our gods) might not be at war for secular reasons, but that's a whole different ball of wax from not being able to tolerate or respect any other religious beliefs because you believe that you have an absolute monopoly on The Spiritual Truth for everybody, and the automatic right to dictate to other cultures with no respect at all for their beliefs and traditions.
A large number of religions valued proselytizing and/or asserted they were the only proper way. As examples, look at the history of Buddha Dharma and the followers of Confucious, respective.
*meow*
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