The Search for a Just Society Part 9

THE SEARCH FOR A JUST SOCIETY

JOHN HUDDLESTON

GEORGE RONALD                       1989

PART IX

 

Chapter 9: Christianity: The Concept of Brotherhood

In tracing the historical development of the idea of the just society, it is now chronologically appropriate to consider the contribution of Christianity. Having roots in both Judaism and the Roman Empire, this religion has, during the course of nearly 2,000 years, spread to just about every corner of the world and it is credited with at least the nominal adherence of about one third of the world’s population. (See Table 1.) It is numerically the largest religious community in the history of the world. That being so, it is unlikely that the reader will be unfamiliar with the main facts concerning its history and teachings. Nevertheless, it is important to record here some of those facts because not to do so would be to leave a large gap in the history of the evolution of the concept of the just society. Clearly Christianity has had an enormous impact – particularly in the West – on the ethics of society over an extended period of time; it has been a major source, both direct and indirect, of many of the movements in modern times for political, social, and economic reform.

• Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have been born about 4 BC in Bethlehem and to have been a descendant of King David.
• He had an active ministry of about three years, following baptism by His cousin, John the Baptist, a prophet who criticized the existing state of morality and foretold the coming of One greater than himself.
• In His talks, Jesus said that He had not come to abolish existing religion but to reform and complete it.
• His theme was a renewal of the Covenant between God and man, which came to be symbolized in the Last Supper.
• He called on men to love God, to develop their spiritual qualities and to be prepared to accept persecution rather than deny their Faith.
• He pointed out that man could not develop his spiritual qualities if he was preoccupied with material things.
• Outward form is not enough; there is a need for the heart to be pure and free of hatred and lust.
• A spiritual person should not swear to prove himself, nor should he make a great show of his religion (an implied criticism of the religious hierarchy), nor should he thrust it on those who are not interested.
• To love God is to love all men (including those previously considered to be enemies) because all are the children of God.
• We should treat others as we would that they treat us, be slow to judge, be merciful and forgiving, return good for bad, and act as peacemakers.
• The poor in particular should be our concern.
• Marriage is a spiritual union and divorce should only be undertaken if a party is in adultery.
• Jesus called Himself the Son of God – God’s representative on earth; He was seen as the prophesied ‘Anointed One’ (the ‘Messiah’ in Hebrew, ‘Christos’ in Greek) who would renew the spirit of man.
• He was also known as the Son of David; but it was made very clear in the episode of His forty days in the wilderness that He was not a secular king come to lead the Jews to freedom from the Romans.
• His kind and gentle personality and the power of His teaching attracted many to His cause, but as always with a Messenger of God there was strong opposition, especially on the part of the priesthood who also saw His claim to independent authority as a threat to their own, and who resented His charges of hypocrisy.
• Jesus did not shrink from His destiny and went up to Jerusalem, where, following trials by the Jewish religious council and the Roman civil authority, He was crucified.
• Before He died He promised His followers that He would return in the spirit – for He had yet much to tell them.
• He warned them to be aware of false prophets who would appear as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ and told them they would know the true Prophet by the ‘fruit’ of His presence and teachings.
• The crucifixion at first devastated His followers but then inspired them to continue, and at the instigation of Paul of Tarsus the teachings of Jesus were taken beyond the Jewish community to the wider world outside.
• At first Christianity was rivalled by other popular religions such as that of Isis and Mithraism.
• Mithraism had an advanced ethical system but could not compete with Christianity because the latter was monotheistic, had a real Founder, and heroic martyrs in the face of persecution.
• The nascent community was much strengthened because it involved women as well as men in its activities.
• Growth was slow at first and it was not until the year 200 that it became an officially recognized religion for the first time – in the city of Edessa.
• The first independent state to become officially Christian was the kingdom of Armenia in AD 287.
• The Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire and it began to spread more quickly so that by AD 500 it is estimated that it had been embraced by over 20% of the world’s population.
• By AD 1000 most of Europe, including England, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia and Russia as well as the Mediterranean and Ethiopia had to a greater or lesser extent become Christian.
• There were also outposts in Asia: in Iran, India and even China.
• Christianity proved to be a source of spiritual strength in the face of the terrible experience of seeing Roman civilization collapse under attack from barbarian invaders.
• In The City of God Augustine (354-430) wrote that what was important was the inner spiritual world, not the physical world, pointing out that when man failed to follow the teachings of God then ‘the Mandate of Heaven’ might be withdrawn.
• The Church became the centre of learning in the West, particularly the monks – virtually the only members of society who were literate.
• Though the Church was to be corrupted by materialism, there were always to be influential groups such as St. Francis (1181-1226) and the Franciscans who set an example of detachment and who devoted their lives to the service of he poor.
• Almost from the beginning the message of Jesus was clouded by superstition and division, as has been the case with other religions.
• A council in 172 ruled against the Gnostic view that the physical world is totally evil and therefore Jesus could not have been human.
• A much more important council was held in Nicaea in 325 with the support of the Emperor Constantine, which ruled against the view of Arius (260-336) that Jesus was superior to man but inferior to God, and supported the view of Athanasius that He was begotten, not made, by God, and therefore He was the Creator.
• A controversy which came to a head in the 8^th and 9^th centuries concerned the role of images (ikons) in worship, contributing to the split of the Church – between the West under the Roman Pope, and the Eastern ‘orthodox’ churches which had originally accepted the primacy of Rome but in the event would not accept its right to interfere in their affairs.
• Christianity gave little guidance about public affairs except to say: ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.’
• Over the centuries the role of the church as moral standard-bearer in politics gradually deteriorated into crude power struggles with the secular authorities.
• Thomas-à-Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, resisted the English King Henry II (1133-1189) at the cost of his life when the latter tried to make the clergy subject to the law of the state.
• Another aspect of this theme was who should appoint bishops: the Pope or the local monarch. For the Church the point was to maintain the spiritual quality of its leading officers; for the state it was a question of control over wealth and influence.
• As the centuries went by the moral leadership of the church institutions declined, especially after the rise of Islam, symbolized in the Crusades campaign to recapture and hold Jerusalem for Christianity, an attempt which continued without success for some 200 years.
• Though nominally a spiritual enterprise, the crusades rapidly deteriorated into a power struggle amongst the various European warlords.

The Crusades reflected the growing intolerance of the Church and its willingness to use its power to crush those whom it regarded as heretics. Soon after becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christian leaders began to persecute Jews in the Empire and so began that anti-semitic aspect of western civilization which has lasted nearly two millenniums and which was clearly one of the most important factors making possible the Holocaust of the Jews in Hitler’s Nazi empire. Nothing could have been further from the teachings of Jesus. However, up until the 11^th century persecution of those with different religious views was relatively mild compared with later practices and most church leaders agreed with the statement of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) that:

Faith must be the result of conviction and should not be imposed by force. Heretics are to be overcome by arguments, not by arms.

• In the 12^th century came the Inquisition and a standard death penalty for heresy. In the 13^th century the Pope authorized the Inquisition to use torture.

It was the material corruption of the Church which caused most indignation, and led to the second major split of Christendom: the Reformation. On the one hand were the bishops of the Church with their ostentatious wealth, and on the other the priests of the people, poverty-stricken and ignorant. Attempts to remedy the situation by imposing celibacy on all the clergy had little effect. By the late Middle Ages by far the worst offenders were the Popes themselves: members of Italy’s patrician families, little concerned with spiritual matters and almost totally devoted to their role as powerful territorial princes. The papacy lost its moral authority; it fell under the domination of France during the period (1305-1375) when its seat was transferred to Avignon in the south of France, and for another 40 years (1378-1417) it was split by the Great Schism when rival popes held offices simultaneously.

• John Huss (1370-1415), Dean of Prague University, objected to the sale of indulgences (the practice of selling the churches’ forgiveness of sins as revealed in confession), and who in consequence was burnt at the stake.

These rumblings were the preamble to the Reformation itself. It began when Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenburg on 31 October 1517. Luther had been particularly shocked by the brazenness of a ‘Jubilee’ campaign to raise money (for the building of the new and gigantic St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome) through the sale of indulgences, which he fiercely denounced , along with celibacy and the use of relics. He saw the Scriptures as the Word of God, and as the only religious authority, and believed therefore that they should be made available to all the people through translation from the Latin to the vernacular (he himself was responsible for the translation of the Bible into German – as significant a step in the development of the German language as the King James Bible was to be for the English). In religious matters, Luther taught the Church had no authority over the individual who must be answerable only to his own conscience. In political matters he was more conservative; for instance, he did not give support to the peasants of Germany when they rose up against their oppressors in 1524.

• Luther’s rebellion (he was excommunicated in 1521) opened a veritable floodgate of criticism of the Church.
• John Calvin (1509-1564), like Luther, stressed individual responsibility for one’s own spiritual development.
• He believed that a priests’ main function was to preach: to draw the attention of the populace to what they should be doing and what they were doing wrong.
• He also saw the state as having an active role in protecting the moral wellbeing of its citizens.
• Calvinists have become known for their honesty and for an ethic of hard work, and as a group they have contributed much to the modern view that government should be elected by and accountable to the people.
• The Reformation undoubtedly served to blow fresh air through the institutions of the declining Christian religion and arguably to give it a new lease of life.
• Its emphasis on individual responsibility for spiritual development and the importance of the Scriptures was an attempt to return to the roots of Christianity.
• As a result bishops were given greater power to supervise activities in their dioceses, there was a tightening up of discipline in the monasteries, and rules were established that an individual could only hold one bishopric at a time and furthermore must be resident in that bishopric.
• It can hardly be said that the Reformation rekindled the original spirit of love which came from Jesus. It was followed by one hundred years of religious wars that were amongst the most bloody in European history and the relative unity of western Christianity was shattered into a thousand fragments.

In the four centuries since the Reformation, Christianity has added much to its spiritual glory, though more through the activities of individuals and groups than through the established churches. Achievements have been particularly noteworthy in the social fields and in activities on behalf of the oppressed such as the anti-slavery movement and the protection of children, women and other manual workers from the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution, as we shall see later. Leading parts in these activities were played by the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Unitarians, the Wesleyans and the Methodists. The churches, including the Catholic Church, also played a creditable part in moderating the worst aspects of European imperialism thrusting its way to all parts of the globe from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries, although again this was to be devalued to a degree by the cruel and intolerant approach to indigenous religions and cultures. In recent years Christians have played a prominent part in the human rights and peace movements, and at long last the Catholic Church has denounced anti-semiticism and stated publicly that the Jewish people have no responsibility for the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Yet it is undeniable that since the Reformation Christianity has continued to decline as a spiritual power. The Reformation wars exhausted Europe spiritually as well as physically, and resulted in a general distrust of religious enthusiasm. This over time turned into strong anti-religious feeling amongst many of the educated, who despised the Churches for their superstition and opposition to science (notably in the cases of Galileo and Darwin), for their lack of unity, and for their general materialism and identification with the interests of the wealthier classes. There have more recently been well-meaning ecumenical movements, but attempts at re-establishing unity have been painfully slow and only successful when there is a general fear that otherwise there will be a drastic decline in the total number of believers.

Chapter 10: Islam and the Idea of Equality