ohmygodnotagain

The first reports of the Ukrainian “Harvest of sorrow” came from Hitler and Goebbels who estimated the deaths at, 6,000,000. Hitler had cast a covetous eye on the Ukraine in his book Mein Kampf, where he advocated Germany’s occupation of the Ukraine, along with enslaving the ethnically impure.

The vast majority of deaths in the Ukraine have been attributed to famine and disease. 20,000,000 people died in the U.S. and Europe after the First World War because of endemic flu, 50,000,000 died world wide.

Robert Conquest is a very interesting individual, in his book “Harvest of Sorrow” he upped the death toll from the 6,000,000 alleged by the Nazis, to 15,000,000. He was paid $80,000 by Ukrainian former Nazi collaborators after the book was published. Robert Conquest was a former communist, who eventually worked for the British Secret Service, and the I.R.D., which was a British Government disseminator of anti-communist propaganda. He has been, and continues to be, along with Solzhenitsyn, the authoritative historians cited by the Right. Many of his writings have been published by Praeger Press, normally associated with the publication of literature originating from CIA sources.

Robert Conquest is a renowned historian and professor at Stanford University, as is Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice. She is also one of the select few in George W. Bush’s administration who attended the National Security Meeting that agreed on authorizing torture as a matter of policy for the U.S.

There have been many evil men in the history of the world; the evil of some has been greatly magnified by the West, while the evil of others has been effectively diminished by the West.

Pious XII seems to have been greatly conflicted by the Second World War; his primary concern seems to have been the preservation of the Church. He has been praised or condemned by both Catholic and Jewish authors and historians. In particular one Catholic historian has cynically claimed that the numbers of Jews saved by Pious the XII has been exaggerated, and that Jewish praise for Pious XII was motivated by a desire to have the Catholic Church recognize the State of Israel. That seems very cynical indeed, but the fact remains that Pious XII has been evaluated differently by a variety of sources.

“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

It should be recognized that the Nazis arose from within a Western European Christian Culture. The above quotation comes from an authentic Christian, Martin Neimoller, who suffered from the affects of a Christian culture that became perverse.

Again this discussion has gone far afield. Your initial contention was that the (Judeo) Christian culture has been beneficial and has created prosperity, which has improved the quality of the human condition. While I have maintained that there is more to be considered in terms of human welfare than superficial prosperity.

garth - since you brought it up, we continue to
torture - as defined by any and all human-rights
groups.

Gitmo prisoners are still trying to starve themselves
to death - who wouldn’t given that, due to the death
of habeas corpus, they are faced with the rest of
their lives being spent confined in Gitmo.

We’ve decided that suicide is forbidden so we’re
force-feeding the recalcitrants - and this is
torture.  Hard to argue that it isn’t torture when
one prisoner, after being subjected to force-feeding
for months, tried to kill himself by chewing the
flesh off his arm to get to an artery so he’d bleed
to death.  (What do we want to bet that 99% of the
jailers at Gitmo are Christians.)

Democratic Values, Islam and the Judeo-Christian Tradition Fallacy

Jeremy Scahill read a revealing passage from a letter written by a Deputy Attorney General in the Eric Holder Justice Department.  The letter was meant to get Donald Rumsfeld, General Meyers and 22 others off the hook for the deaths of 2 prisoners at Guantanamo.

It said that, “.. Genocide, torture, dislocation, and ... are part of the official duties” of these accused.

Now they defined torture as a treatment that leads to ‘death or organ failure’, so there is no mincing words here.  They committed torture.  Two prisoners died as a result of their treatment.

So the excuse is: We were only doing our job.  That’s what we do.

A copy editor could save them with something like the following ad:

Genocide, Torture, Dislocation

We are the United States

Scahill also pointed out that WikiLeaks revealed that our invasion in Afghanistan has two fronts. 

I say it has three fronts.  The third front being the propaganda war that is being waged on the American people.

They have become very good at that front over the years.  Today, only 53% of Americans are against the war.  Most of Congress and the media thus far are for it.

But our business is Genocide, Torture and Dislocation.

————————————————————————

For democratic values I predict that the land in W. Virginia where mountain top removal has become the norm will be bought up by Wall Street investment banks and it’ll be used for carbon sequester—burying the carbon captured in deep holes.  It’s something like a grand scale Yucca mountain.

JD Mystic
As far as Stalin goes, you can read Robert Conquest (now of Stanford) “Harvest of Sorrow that documents the 5 million Ukrainians starved to death, killed or taken to gulags as well as “The Great terror” no argument about the 30 million he killed this had nothing to do with war this was planned genocide. The Black Book Of Communism Harvard press, by 4 French left wing intellectuals in detail (including copies of directives) that Lenin intended and planned the mass murder of kulaks, that Stalin continued. Solzhenitzn’s work, especially 200 Years Together has been endorsed by Professor Service of Oxford University the west’s leading authority on modern Russian history. In 200 Years together Solzhenitzn in part two lists the names of the Russian Jews, with footnotes of where to find them in the Soviet Archive. The upper levels of the Checka until Stalin turned on them were run by and large by Russian Jews. It is easy to understand why, he did not trust Orthodox Christian Russians. The English language publishing industry will not have it translated to English because if it became widely available support for Israel would dry up. You can read it in Russian and German. Here is an article from the liberal Guardian newspaper in the UK http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books

As for Hitler his religion was German supremacy. Nearly one half of the Polish clergy were murdered by the Nazis, the entire hierarchy of the Dutch church. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem, Rome, and Budapest, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish community, and numerous others praised Pius for his relief efforts and public denunciation of racial persecution. In Rome’s Central Synagogue today there is a bronze memorial plaque mounted near the entrance from Israeli Premier Golda Meir thanking the Vatican for saving Jews from Nazi persecution. According to Israeli Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, Pius XII was repsonsible for saving over 700,000 Jews, and perhaps as many as 860,000.
You can check all this on the Internet.

The reason for the pressure and the controversy in the 1990s about “Hitlers Pope” was that the Holy See did not recognize Israel (as some Orthodox Jewish sects don’t). That was because they feared a backlash against Christians in Arab countries. They do now recognize Israel and we don’t hear much about Pius.
You have to understand that a lot of these controversies are designed for a purposes. The scandals with child abuse is one, there is a Department of Education study by Charol Shakeshaft that shows abuse in public schools is 100 times worse than those in Catholic Church scandal.  “According to a 2006 National Review Online opinion column republished by CBS News, Shakeshaft said that “... the physical sexual abuse of students in [public] schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by [Catholic] priests.”[3] She estimated that about 290,000 students were victimized between 1991 and 2000.”[4]Reference here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charol_Shakeshaft
You can down the report from the Department of Education.
So why no outcry against public schools, because this was payback for the last pope condemning the War in Iraq. In fact the Pope refused to see Condeleeza Rice http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7002988.stm

The scandal is a threat so the Pope does not speak out against the proposed attack on Iran… thats how it works. I know I worked in media for 30 years.

ohmygodnotagain

 
  “Only after Hitler was dead and out of power did his Roman Catholic Church disown him and many other Catholic Nazi mass-murderers.”

  “Hitler was never excommunicated by the Catholic Church and several Catholic bishops in Germany or Austria are recorded as encouraging prayers of support for ‘The Führer.’”

“Aug 04, 2010 • ... obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. It asserted the church’s ... The current Pope was a member of Hitler Youth.”

“... the support for Hitler by the Protestant and Catholic Churches ... Hitler did not practice separation of Church & State. Although Hitler had problems with the Catholic…”

“Hitler was also ready to discuss with the Bishop his views on the Jewish question: “As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic church has ...”

“Yes, the Catholic Church legitimized the Nazi movement and supported their war effort. http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm At the start of the war, the Catholic church did ...”

“The Education Forum: Adolf Hitler was a Roman Catholic - The Education Forum ... Leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches remained silent throughout this period”

“According to Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer, Hitler remained a formal member of the Catholic Church until his death, although it was Speer’s opinion that “he had no real ...”

“Many Sri Lankans are unaware of the connections the Catholic Church had with Hitler. Practically all precepts of the Roman Catholic religion contradict the Bi…”

“If you assumed that the Catholic church excommunicated former alter boy and genocidal mass murderer Adolf Hitler, you would be wrong. Hitler’s mother was a Roman Catholic and ...”

“Some people say Adolf Hitler was an atheist. They blame atheism for Hitler’s philosophy and actions. But the historical record shows that Hitler believed in God and was convinced he was carrying out God’s will.”
“Hitler was raised in a Catholic family. He went to Catholic schools and served as an altar boy in the Catholic Church. Growing up in this environment, he surely learned something of the centuries of discrimination and persecution the Church had supported against Jews in Europe.”

“Former Jesuit theologian Peter de Rosa describes the groundwork Catholic theology laid for Hitler and the Nazis: “[Catholicism’s] disastrous theology had prepared the way for Hitler and his ‘final solution.’ [The Church published] over a hundred anti-Semitic documents. Not one conciliar decree, not one papal encyclical, bull, or pastoral directive suggest that Jesus’ command, ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ applied to Jews.”

ohmygodnotagain (Cont.)

Sorry for being redundant, I’m well aware that through all the cruelties and barbarities perpetrated by religion over the centuries there were voices within those religions that spoke out against those cruelties and barbarities, and that Hitler’s religious beliefs could in no way be considered legitimate. It’s the sanctioning of Hitler’s actions by religions that is disturbing. I’m also aware that religions were most often corrupted, and that achieving power within a particular religion became a matter of upward mobility and not a matter of religious piety.

In terms of the Catholic Church, the Barbarities included Genocide on a scale hard to fathom. The destruction of indigenous peoples, who had religions of their own; this kind of proseltyizing was practiced by religions of all varieties.

Regarding the Soviet Union and China, I’m conflicted. I’m not convinced that the lack of religion was responsible for the atrocities committed in those societies. In China the major culprit was another one of over a thousand famines that have occurred in China over the centuries, and in the Soviet Union three wars, two world, and one civil, were the greatest causes of death. That’s not to say there weren’t atrocities committed, but a fair appraisal of atrocities would show that the West was not immune from committing atrocities, and some would say the atrocities perpetrated by the West, and its agents, were of a greater magnitude over the last 500 years, and clearly evident over the recent decades.

The evaluation of claims and counter claims of death tolls, and responsibility for death tolls is obscured by political propaganda, and frequently accompanied by outrageous claims that are accepted without question by some. For example, Solzhenitsyn claimed Jewish Bolsheviks were responsible for the deaths of 70,000,000 Russians, while John Stockwell, former Station Chief for the CIA in Angola, has claimed that the CIA is responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 people. Russian citizens have scoffed at Solzhenitsyn’s claims, while people in the west would also scoff at Stockwell’s claim.

I have taken this discussion far afield. I’m not opposed to religious thought, in it’s purest and most noble sense, nor am I opposed to people frequenting houses of worship, in a genuine effort to enhance their spirituality, but I think that there is a serious danger when people begin to adapt an attitude of religious superiority, and use their particular faiths to justify or excuse the worst kinds of non-humanity.

A final thought; Its been reported that Newt Gingrich told one of his three wives that his hypocrisy was not an issue, as long as he was speaking in favor of perceived virtue. I think that most people of good character would say that his hypocrisy would disqualify him from speaking about, or being able to identify the myriads of virtue with any meaningful degree of sophistication, and that his hypocrisy was proof of his lack of qualification.

Final thought #2. I’ll proffer that the West and its religious culture could become superior, if it were to abandon its self righteous sense of superiority.

One more critique on Islam and on Christianity both:
As organized religions they both pretend to a sanctimoniousness that permits them to each assume that they are not only “better than” people outside the pale but they lay claim to a snobbish special privilege in the eyes of God. Fully as much as the Jews, they regard themselves as “Chosen People.” Such arrogance, if it ever existed in Buddhism, has long since disappeared.  Maybe other faiths claim to be uniquely connected to God or gods, but I haven’t heard of them.

JDMysticDJ
I understand your point about prosperity, and it is more complex. But that said, there are those who would seem to imply that until the secular modern world came about, life was hell on earth because of religion, particularly Christianity. They think it was one long Inquisition. The fact is it wasn’t and it isn’t. One example, what does the name Fr. George LeMaitre conjure up? Well go check he was a Belgian Priest that is credited with the theory of The Big Bang. In the field of seismology there is a long list of notable scientists that were Jesuit priests, that is true in the Biological sciences, in linguistics, in art in many fields.
I wish these commentators would be a bit more reflective, after all in the 20th Century, supposed enlightened secular and atheist societies, such as the Soviet Union, China, Germany oversaw the industrial killing of over 100 million people. Nothing in human history compares.

We live in the age of Politics more than any other. It has trivialized everything under that reformulation- the politicization of education, science, the arts and no less, religion. The search for Peace, God, Beauty, Truth has been replaced by self-serving Ideology. Neitzche would have felt madly vindicated.

Religion is nonexistent without the evolution of the human mind. Freedom, justice, liberty, virtue, morality, and all that other good stuff that a “god”  so graciously bestows on us are, again, nothing more than functional social tools acquired over millenia of human evolution and retained for their value in the preservation of the species. The conceit of theocratic parasites that only they fully understand the origins and meaning of life and that their parochial views are somehow superior to that of other contenders leads the gullible masses to bigotry, intolerance, and violence when these delusional prerogatives seem to be threatened by interloping infidels. Say what you will about all the good that religion has done over time and I will ask at what cost and to the ultimate benefit of whom?

Emphasizing the differences between Islam and Christianity blinds us to the similarities.  This is a crucial error because it is the similarities, inculcated into politics, that keep people of both faiths from “thinking outside their respective boxes.”
  Historically, both faiths lie at the root of powerful inter-nation cultural blocks and hold power over millions of people.  Further, both aspire to increase their power, believing in their own supremacy. And even beyond this conceit, both believe they are “ordained” by some “higher power” to do exactly as they are doing. Thus they have little motive to change or to modify their behavior in the world.  Nor do they see any need to include in their view of the polity of humankind those who hold differing beliefs or none.
  From time to time they make gestures at “tolerance” of each other, meet ecumenically, and consider these meetings a step toward world comity, never realizing that the exclusion of millions (whom they both consider “unwashed” in a sense) militates against understanding, tolerance and peace.
  Understanding, tolerance and peace are the foundations of democracy, and so, in a sense, both religions are basically undemocratic yet far from recognizing this fact and its .profound implications for the future.

By omygodnotagain, August 12 at 8:38 pm Link to this comment

“By prosperity I mean women not dying in child birth, children surviving childhood, universal education, social nets (however frayed), Hospitals and Clinic throughout the country, roads, clean water etc… anyone who has travelled abroad to developing countries Indonesia, the Middle East, South America, one sees the poverty of the old way, but they also see modern roads, transportation, hotels, airports, in other words modernity. All that came from the West, the culmination of innovations over 1500 years from the fall of the Roman Empire. Christianity in its various forms nurtured it, unlike the Middle East the West didn’t start with the great Ancient Civilizations, like the Sumarians, Egyptian, Babylonians, Persians etc.. they had to mold illiterate normadic tribes into the nations that built what is called Modern Life.
Sometimes I think the reason these articles get written, is that a certain groups with a chip on its shoulder and an overinflated opinion of themselves do not want to recognize that they have very little to do with it. So they keep pushing this negative stuff to demean, like a spoilt child breaking anothers toy out of jealousy.”

====================================================

You state you’re case well, but I’m not certain the correlation you assert is valid. Aren’t there other factors to be considered, and aren’t you leaving out a few details. Also aren’t there intangibles that need to be considered in order to measure quality of life. Is the prosperity, and the things that seemingly come with it, attributable to religious teachings, or a culture that has seemingly derived from those teachings, or is the prosperity you assert derived from a worldly, rather than an other worldly source. I’ll argue that the prosperity and modernity you attribute to religious culture, has in fact come to pass in contradiction to religious thought, and not because of religious thought.

Are you sure that you want to attribute this prosperity and modernity that has evolved to religious culture. This prosperity and modernity you seem so proud of comes with a lot of baggage doesn’t it? Surely you are aware of some the missing details. The devil is in the details, as they say. I won’t take the time to state the magnitude of the details and their consequences, I’m sure that you have heard them all before. If so, I’m wondering how you can ignore these details so easily.

I envy you with your optimistic outlook. It would make life so much easier to have an outlook such as yours, and I like your definition of prosperity, it’s a kind of prosperity we would all love to see, but is it a reality? Do you really think the West is a paragon of moral virtue? Forgive me, but I’ll refer to this quotation used by Robert Kennedy, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not”?

How does one endeavor to improve the quality of life without pointing out life’s iniquities? I think you misjudge the motives of those who feel compelled to point out life’s iniquities, but I also think you are justified in criticizing those who are against something, rather than for something.

Let me paraphrase, “What does it prosper a man, to win the whole world, but to lose his soul.”

Charles Mee….....MEETING AT POTSDAM

  He documents the BIG BOOMS in Japan..

and the negociations between the two
IMPERIALIST , CAPITOLIST, PIGS,  STALIN AND TRUMAN

A GREAT DOCUMENTATION
 

  Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War

by Walton…................He documented the phoney war.

JDmystic
By prosperity I mean women not dying in child birth, children surviving childhood, universal education, social nets (however frayed), Hospitals and Clinic throughout the country, roads, clean water etc… anyone who has travelled abroad to developing countries Indonesia, the Middle East, South America, one sees the poverty of the old way, but they also see modern roads, transportation, hotels, airports, in other words modernity. All that came from the West, the culmination of innovations over 1500 years from the fall of the Roman Empire. Christianity in its various forms nurtured it, unlike the Middle East the West didn’t start with the great Ancient Civilizations, like the Sumarians, Egyptian, Babylonians, Persians etc.. they had to mold illiterate normadic tribes into the nations that built what is called Modern Life.
Sometimes I think the reason these articles get written, is that a certain groups with a chip on its shoulder and an overinflated opinion of themselves do not want to recognize that they have very little to do with it. So they keep pushing this negative stuff to demean, like a spoilt child breaking anothers toy out of jealousy.

Another good historian,  Barbara Tuchman
good WWI “The Proud Tower”

Another one ..

  Sink The Rainbow!    John Dyson….
Screwy French, of course, with U.S. backing….....

Shirer wrote several good history books

The Rise and Fall…..of the Third

a great history book,  I read that in high school soon
after it came out.

I’ve not heard Shirer’s name in a while.

With a treaty here, and a treaty there, here a treaty,
there treaty, everywhere a treaty, treaty.
All of Europe killed the Jews ei, ii, ei,  ii,  ooooo!!!!

I see I am not the only one who sees this wave of antiIslam in the US (do you remember the first wave of radio news after the OKLA bombing that it was Muslim radicals who did it?) as being like Germany in the 1930s.  I see it as a Jew (atheist Jew) who thinks it has the feel of what it must have been like for Jews in Germany…  (Read William L. Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” which came out in the 1960s and is excellent; Howard Zinn liked it,too.)

I am one of the majority of people in Manhattan who support the Mosque and cultural center being built near the World Trade Center former site. Recent support for it is the only good thing Bloomberg has done in my memory of his being mayor.

Fweedom of Religion?  What a strange idea.  Let’s explore it some more, pwease.

Let’s ask Billy Bob Obama of the new left if he can see his way clear to come out on this topic.  If he’s even half a pant load instead of a panty waste, he might use the bully pulpit to voice his, or should I say his handlers’s, opinion.

But wait a minute.  I vaguely remember something from FDR and a painting that’s now part of Americana.
Rockwell, I think his name was.  From Stockbridge, MA.  Have I been asleep for the past few years?

Separation of Church and State?  Extremely difficult.  Maybe impossible, but worth the effort to maintain, even on a temporary basis, frequently in need of renewed efforts.
  Why so difficult?  Ideas of Church are in the human head.  Ideas of State are in the human head.
Ideas of Power are in the human head. 
  Church thinks it would be more powerful if it owned the State.  State thinks it would be more powerful if it owned the Church.  Therefore they tend to slide toward each other. Desire for Power is the lubricant. However:
  Both Church and State are social instruments of control and are held together by convincing people to relinquish freedom in the interests of protection
(now called “security”). One offers spiritual security by trying to defeat evil “enemies”.  The other offers physical security by trying to defeat economic “enemies.”  In both cases, people are required to relinqhish personal judgment in exchange for institutional solidarity.
  Church requires agreement to dogmas and leadership.  State requires agreement to laws and leadership. Both tend to deteriorate over time and
use tradition and conformity to hold them together.
  Both are dangerous human inventions. When they both get together, all Hell breaks loose. When they remain apart, there is less chance of a fatal collision.
  The only thing that can prevent a collision is political intelligence.  Democracy is mankind’s experiment in political intelligence.

Re Whatley: “There are now warnings emanating from some circles that Muslim leaders are seeking gateways through which to implement an “Islamification” of American politics and society.”

Lord, help us.  .  . not another religious group trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.  .  . I was just reading about a group of evangelical Christians firing a group of Catholics because they didn’t consider the Catholic to be “born again.”  .  .  .  What’s with these types of people and when will it end?

“CORONA, Calif.—Four teachers and seven other workers at a Southern California religious school have been fired because of differences in biblical interpretation and incompatible beliefs. 

Most of the dismissed workers were Roman Catholics whose beliefs conflicted with those of Corona’s conservative evangelical Crossroads Christian Schools, which last year lost its autonomy and came under the umbrella of the 8,000-member Crossroads Christian Church next door.  .  .

“To me, it feels like religious cleansing,” said the Rev. John Saville of St. John’s Episcopal Church, where fired elementary teacher Marylou Goodman is a parishioner . .  .

The fired employees had been told a year ago of the school’s closer relationship with the church and a requirement that they attend a “Bible-believing church,” meaning born-again.

School superintendent Beth Frobisher said officials took a closer look at the religious beliefs of employees in an effort to make school and church teachings compatible.

“How can the school be a ministry of the church if what is spoken and taught into the hearts of the children isn’t consistent with what is taught in the church?” Frobisher said.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15730800?nclick_check=1

Christian fundamentalism is a sect of Christianity. 
Fundamentalism is a narcissistic faith concerned most
of all with the wrong suffered by the righteous,
Christian fundamentalists.  Their concomitant mission
is a jihad against all those who would sully their
ranks, the purification of which they zealously
pursue.

If it hasn’t occurred to anyone, this definition
could be applied to the likes of militant Islam. 
Different religion, same God, same paranoia.

And frankly, for about the last 30 years Americans
have fallen victim to some kind of public neuroses, a
belief that conformity, no matter the unreality of
what is being conformed to, is sanity. No surprise
that the anti-mosque movement seems to be sweeping
the country.

Caveat!
We do not need to define peace, justice, sanity, truth,timocracy, etc. It’s best to treat the as undefianable;i.e., the symbols mean whater they mean to each individuals.
So, let’s not be fooled by those who cry out:define you terms!
But i would like to hear from people who can explain this better than me! tnx

It seems to me that when people speak of democracy, they regard it as existing in total isolation from media reports, schooling, timocracy, pantisocacy, justice, peace, exploitation, jailings, torture, ruling for money, banking,WMD,cults, system of governance.

Is it any wonder that such thinking did not and will never bring us peace-justice-sanity-etc.

How can anyone behave democraticly if s/he had been schooled-educated by private media, schools. holliwood, congress, priests,and thus rendered vastly unsane and then the unsane people blamed for being victims of the greatest criminal minds.

I do not use the word “unsane” as existing appart from lack of peace-knowledge-justice-etc.
But lack of peace-justice-etc., cannot but make a person unsane!
And, thereafter, ruling is easy!  tnx

What a huge topic. There is nothing inherently democratic about Christianity that can be gleaned from it’s Scripture or its teaching tradition. The Roman Catholic church is as Roman as Christian and functions as an authoritarian monarchy. Mainstream Protestant denominations impose hierarchical authority, although the clerical authority is congregationally elected. What is far less compatible with the Gospels is capitalism. The early Church was totally communal. Jesus spoke too many parables about the mandate to help the poor to be ignored. ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
Any American politician saying those words would be branded a socialist (shudder).
The Divine Right of Kings can be traced to Pauline theology. In fact most of the Hellenistic influence on Christianity (Paulianity?) is traceable to Paul.
And how do democratic principles hail from Roman imperialism? An absurd proposition. The Greeks were not a democracy - they considered that to be the worst form of government.

ofersince72 “What good has Christianity done recently???????????????

On a macro scale, let’s simply forget the influence of Pope John Paul in the fall of the Soviet Union.

In the microcosm of small communities, all over the world, aid, comfort and kindness are metted out without condition. Silent in the MSM,(a sound byte has little discriptive value here, so it may not appeal to you immediate need for gratification) these Samaritans have a profound influence upon how Western culture is interpretted.

This piece isn’t even worth commenting on except

to repeat what 115 said,  otherwise what was the

point???  I guess a little diversion for those that like

to talk religion.  Make believe all of our resource wars

are about religion.  Make believe the Arab/Israeli

conflict is about religion..and so on and so forth
What good has Christianity done recently???????????????

This piece isn’t even worth commenting on except

to repeat what 115 said,  otherwise what was the

point???

This was a typical, elitist liberal piece which says the right things from the wrong angle. Nobody is addressing the fact that this new wave of racist paranoia is a result of the current, insecure economic atmosphere and mass disillusionment in the system. Just think of Weimar Germany.

omygodnotagain

“Why is it so important to denigrate the achievements of Chrisianity which laid the foundations for our current prosperity.”

So… It wasn’t those parables, it was the foundation of prosperity?

There is a lot than can be said for prosperity; but what was the cost of prosperity, and who paid for it? Did they pay an arm and a leg, or was it less tangible?

One doesn’t have to be an ascetic, to see that prosperity has run amuck.

It is one thing to adapt the values of earlier thinkers, its another to develop them over 2000 years. The statements in this article maybe true, but the Roman Empire which had adopted these ideas too fell by the 5th Century.  The “barbarian” tribes were not versed in Ancient Greek thought. It was the monasteries an concept imported from Syria, through France, then Ireland that keep the flame of these ideas alive. I get sick of people trying to downplay their achievements and they are many, from Universities (Paris, Oxford), to Hospitals, bringing the clock from China to allow scheduling of a person’s day, the adaptation of the water wheel that increased food production, the work of Gratian, laying the foundations for Western Law. Magellan sailed around the world, the Printing Press invented in 1440, the Churches and Cathedrals still standing in Europe, did not happen because of Epicurus, they happened because Christianity allowed for this type of creativity. I won’t bother mentioning the Renaissance. Why is it so important to denigrate the achievements of Chrisianity which laid the foundations for our current prosperity.

Nice effort, but a little too academic.

You will play hell getting the Right, Christian or secular, to allow muslims into their perceived vision of what America is, and should be.