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Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The Decline and Fall of Our Western Religions I can speak with some authority about the decline of religion because I studied it at it roots -- then being exposed as mythic expansion on the debris of ancient religions of all colors -- ranging from the nightmarish gods of the Babylonians with their contempt for humans to the Zoroastrian worship of the competing gods of light and darkness which spawned our parallel dual conceptions of a god of wrath eternally waging war with Satan and vice versa -- to the various prejudices enhanced by the Christ hater, St. Paul, who set running two millennia of pogroms, prejudices, and wars against all vulnerable members of human society -- women, Jews, gays, and non Christians of all persuasions. I studied with Bob Handy at Union Theological Seminary the peculiar history of Anglo-American religion in America -- the Manifest Destiny conception of a New Israel that was exploited to justify genocide for native Americans, the use of a sloppy emotive ('born again') hate religion emerging from the Middle West and South to sanction slavery, hatred of strangers, and, thereafter, our enduring racism and contempt for successive waves of immigrants to our country -- Irish and Italian Catholics to the Latinos and African Americans now serving as our American caste system laborers. My outrage is set against the reality that I also discovered in the life and Gospel of the original Christian, slaughtered by brutal Roman authority (NOT the Jews -- pace our anti-Semites) as a suspect revolutionary with his pleas on behalf of humanity and particularly the poor and meek ones repressed by Roman society. My grandfather, Charles Foster Kent, was one of those who published among numerous other scholarly works on the Bible, a Life of Jesus, attempting to get to the real man underlying the stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Kent My own primary teachers along the way (some his students who conveyed a sense to me of the man who had died before my birth) recognized the perversions taking place in American religion, e.g. Reinhold Niebuhr's protest against the Billy Graham simplistic pieties: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/126/23.0.html to Ernest Nagel's explanation as to why he was an atheist: http://skeptically.org/againstreligion/id19.html Both of these men were among the most humane and caring about humanity that I have had the privilege of knowing. They were last in line, perhaps, of men of such stature. Yes, I am angered by the betrayal of the best features of our world's religions, which can easily be discovered in their sacred writings -- their concerns for peace and social justice that are now at such risk with the little men with little minds and withered spirits running things in far too many centers of power. May some divinity save us all before it is too late. We live in the era of WMD --lightly proposed as appropriate responses to oil crises -- and an environment that is being rapidly destroyed by human hubris (greed). So ended the 600 years Pax Romana of Roman Empire some 16 hundred years ago in the 5th century. -- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/ http://www.bloggernews.net Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Ed Kent at 9:37 AM |
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2 Comments:
True Believers Jesus Christ believe in his words recorded by Saint Mark:
Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:
Mark 3,28,29
Western religions have been failing to consider that True Believers in Christianity are who allow us to keep the faith of Christianity, and in turn understand how Jews, Moslems, and other faiths can understand us and each other, and live side by side with us for centuries.
When people forget the distinctions between Theology, Theosophy, Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, Zionism, Judaism, and Islam, we begin to lose our diversity. When we start coming back to center, we see that the stories are all about balancing tolerance and diversity.
Faithkeepers are not all Christians, but we are those who value diversity enough to respect our roots, as we allow many peoples to enrich us all.
Please keep the faith,
Rita Hill, Princess Knight of the Golden Fleece
http://leouna.tripod.com/id2.html
http://www.graveyardofthegods.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1614
http://www.frostcloud.com/forum/index.php
Christian fundamentalists are crackers. Totally insane. AND, Jesus would be the first to agree with that!
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