Religious Transformation
Now here's an intelligent, thoughtful article by AC Grayling on the subject of religion and 'Christian' values which turn out not to be very Christian at all, but largely Greek and Roman in terms of being tolerant, forgiving, considerate and kind.
In most western countries religion has been 'tamed' and brought under reasonable control in recent years, to the point where religion now has a place in society and civic life, but is no longer feared or revered as it was in times gone by, when terrible persecution was the punishment for refusing to accept that the Bible was the literal word of God.
All we need now is for Islam to undergo a similar transformation and the world will be a much better, more tolerant place, if you ask me.
Even Christianity is not really Christian
By AC Grayling - The Times
Much of the religion’s ideas – and many of Britain’s defining characteristics – really come from Greece and Rome
I am sure that David Cameron’s remarks about our being a “Christian nation” were well-intentioned; he wished to draw upon those magnanimous and liberal characteristics once connoted by the term “Christian”, as when people talked of “the Christian thing to do” to mean being tolerant, forgiving, considerate and kind.
No doubt he also meant to refer to the historical fact that from the early seventh century, after Augustine’s visit in 597, Christianity was the dominant religious outlook of England, and eventually the entire British Isles. That hegemony over thought and belief lasted until the 18th century, when a more ambiguous attitude increased among educated minds.
But it is important in a pluralistic society such as ours that we should not think that uses of “Christian” to suggest kindly attitudes entail that we are a nation of believers in the dogmas and legends of the religion.
For, first, Christianity not only has no monopoly on tolerance, kindness, and generosity — characteristics that people of any religion or none can and should have — but it has in a bloody past often exhibited the opposite: the crusades, the Inquisition, wars of religion and persecutions trouble the world’s history with too much suffering to be ignored.
Second, “being Christian” was enforced for many centuries, on pain of punishment up to and including death. Church attendance, tithes and adherence to doctrine were legal requirements. Does enforcement make us a Christian nation? Until the repeal of the Test Act in 1824 only those prepared to subscribe the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England were allowed to go to university or hold public office. The dissenting communities of Britain — comprising the most vigorous, innovative and entrepreneurial of all Britons — were excluded from these fiefdoms of privilege.
In the Christian church’s early dominance — from the 4th century CE — much of the effort of church fathers such as Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine was devoted to “apologetics”, the explanation and justification of Christian teachings in an attempt to persuade a sceptical world. By the time of the church’s greatest temporal power and influence, the late Middle Ages, apologetics was an outdated genre, for it was no longer necessary to persuade people of Christianity: it was a capital crime not to believe it.
Third, for most of the time since the 17th century, Britain and its empire were run by graduates of the ancient universities, where the main studies were the classics. So the British governing class was brought up on the literature, philosophy and history of classical Greece and Rome. This was a fine education in government, military strategy, ethics, political theory, management of an empire, social conditions, education, law and much besides. Aristotle and Cicero, Homer, Aeschylus and Virgil, the ancient myths and legends, the examples of Horatio and Mucius Scaevola, had as much if not more influence on ruling-class minds as Christianity, which provides little instruction — beyond a few bland generalisations about being nice — for dealing with life’s complexities.
And this is not surprising: if you go to the New Testament for instruction on how to live, you are told to give away all your possessions, make no plans for the future, reject your family if they disagree with you and stay celibate if you can (see Matthew xix, 21, Matthew vi, 25, Matthew xii, 48, and I Corinthians vii). This is the outlook of people who sincerely believed the Messiah would return very soon, within weeks or months. It is an unlivable ethic and when, after several centuries, hope of the second coming had been deferred indefinitely, more was needed. Where did it come from? From Greek philosophy, not least from the Stoics, and the Roman republican virtues of probity, honour, duty, restraint, respect, friendship and generosity that Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace and others wrote about. “Christian values” are largely Greek and Roman secular values. So Christianity is not even Christianity.
The early Christians, like St Paul, were Jews. They believed that when you die, your body sleeps in the grave until the last trump, at which point the graves open and the dead rise to be judged. St Paul said that the faithful will “see no corruption”, that is, their bodies will not rot in the grave. But when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, new needs arose. Churches were being built apace, all wanting relics of the saints. But when the saints were dug up, they were found to have rotted in their graves. This embarrassing problem was quickly solved by importing another idea from Greek philosophy — Plato’s doctrine of the immortal soul. That is how, starting several centuries after the lifetime of Jesus, Christians came to believe such a thing. Once again, Christianity is not Christianity but borrowed Greek philosophy.
Mr Cameron would have been more right to say that “we are Greeks and Romans”, meaning that we are defined by the following words, and therefore concepts, of classical Greek and Latin origin: democracy, liberalism, values, history, morality, comedy, tragedy, literature, music, academy, alphabet, memory, politics, ethics, populace, geography, energy, exploration, hegemony, theory, mathematics, science, theatre, medicine, gymnasium, climate, clone, bureaucracy, dialect, analogy, psychology, method, nostalgia, organ, encyclopaedia, education, paradox, empiricism, polemic, rhetoric, dinosaur, telescope, system, school, trophy, type, fantasy, photography . . . take almost any word denoting political and social institutions, ideas, learning, science and technology, medicine and culture, and it derives from the language — and therefore the ideas and the history — of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Christianity attempted to suppress all this heritage, and for a time succeeded. The Emperor Justinian in 529 closed the Athenian schools founded by Plato, Aristotle and others because they taught “pagan” philosophy (“philosophy” then meant all inquiry including science).
There was little learning worth the name in the first seven centuries of Christian dominance because it had suppressed inquiry; later it persecuted those who advocated ideas in conflict with scripture: Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake, and Galileo nearly so, for not accepting that the Earth is fixed at the centre of the Universe as claimed by Psalm 104 and Joshua xx, 12. If the list of words just given provides us with the terminology that we use to describe ourselves today, then Christianity’s attempt to obliterate those words and what they mean makes us anything but a Christian nation.
In our letter to the press last weekend we who had protested against the description had in mind also that we are a highly pluralistic nation, with many faiths and none, and that the “nones” are net contributors to our society and culture in major ways. They do not deserve to be overlooked.
But the description of us as a “Christian nation” is deeply misleading if taken to imply that we are a nation of believers in Christian doctrines and legends. I hope and trust Mr Cameron meant something different and better: that we are a tolerant, generous, kindly nation. And I hope and trust he is right.
Much of the religion’s ideas – and many of Britain’s defining characteristics – really come from Greece and Rome
I am sure that David Cameron’s remarks about our being a “Christian nation” were well-intentioned; he wished to draw upon those magnanimous and liberal characteristics once connoted by the term “Christian”, as when people talked of “the Christian thing to do” to mean being tolerant, forgiving, considerate and kind.
No doubt he also meant to refer to the historical fact that from the early seventh century, after Augustine’s visit in 597, Christianity was the dominant religious outlook of England, and eventually the entire British Isles. That hegemony over thought and belief lasted until the 18th century, when a more ambiguous attitude increased among educated minds.
But it is important in a pluralistic society such as ours that we should not think that uses of “Christian” to suggest kindly attitudes entail that we are a nation of believers in the dogmas and legends of the religion.
For, first, Christianity not only has no monopoly on tolerance, kindness, and generosity — characteristics that people of any religion or none can and should have — but it has in a bloody past often exhibited the opposite: the crusades, the Inquisition, wars of religion and persecutions trouble the world’s history with too much suffering to be ignored.
Second, “being Christian” was enforced for many centuries, on pain of punishment up to and including death. Church attendance, tithes and adherence to doctrine were legal requirements. Does enforcement make us a Christian nation? Until the repeal of the Test Act in 1824 only those prepared to subscribe the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England were allowed to go to university or hold public office. The dissenting communities of Britain — comprising the most vigorous, innovative and entrepreneurial of all Britons — were excluded from these fiefdoms of privilege.
In the Christian church’s early dominance — from the 4th century CE — much of the effort of church fathers such as Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine was devoted to “apologetics”, the explanation and justification of Christian teachings in an attempt to persuade a sceptical world. By the time of the church’s greatest temporal power and influence, the late Middle Ages, apologetics was an outdated genre, for it was no longer necessary to persuade people of Christianity: it was a capital crime not to believe it.
Third, for most of the time since the 17th century, Britain and its empire were run by graduates of the ancient universities, where the main studies were the classics. So the British governing class was brought up on the literature, philosophy and history of classical Greece and Rome. This was a fine education in government, military strategy, ethics, political theory, management of an empire, social conditions, education, law and much besides. Aristotle and Cicero, Homer, Aeschylus and Virgil, the ancient myths and legends, the examples of Horatio and Mucius Scaevola, had as much if not more influence on ruling-class minds as Christianity, which provides little instruction — beyond a few bland generalisations about being nice — for dealing with life’s complexities.
And this is not surprising: if you go to the New Testament for instruction on how to live, you are told to give away all your possessions, make no plans for the future, reject your family if they disagree with you and stay celibate if you can (see Matthew xix, 21, Matthew vi, 25, Matthew xii, 48, and I Corinthians vii). This is the outlook of people who sincerely believed the Messiah would return very soon, within weeks or months. It is an unlivable ethic and when, after several centuries, hope of the second coming had been deferred indefinitely, more was needed. Where did it come from? From Greek philosophy, not least from the Stoics, and the Roman republican virtues of probity, honour, duty, restraint, respect, friendship and generosity that Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace and others wrote about. “Christian values” are largely Greek and Roman secular values. So Christianity is not even Christianity.
The early Christians, like St Paul, were Jews. They believed that when you die, your body sleeps in the grave until the last trump, at which point the graves open and the dead rise to be judged. St Paul said that the faithful will “see no corruption”, that is, their bodies will not rot in the grave. But when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, new needs arose. Churches were being built apace, all wanting relics of the saints. But when the saints were dug up, they were found to have rotted in their graves. This embarrassing problem was quickly solved by importing another idea from Greek philosophy — Plato’s doctrine of the immortal soul. That is how, starting several centuries after the lifetime of Jesus, Christians came to believe such a thing. Once again, Christianity is not Christianity but borrowed Greek philosophy.
Mr Cameron would have been more right to say that “we are Greeks and Romans”, meaning that we are defined by the following words, and therefore concepts, of classical Greek and Latin origin: democracy, liberalism, values, history, morality, comedy, tragedy, literature, music, academy, alphabet, memory, politics, ethics, populace, geography, energy, exploration, hegemony, theory, mathematics, science, theatre, medicine, gymnasium, climate, clone, bureaucracy, dialect, analogy, psychology, method, nostalgia, organ, encyclopaedia, education, paradox, empiricism, polemic, rhetoric, dinosaur, telescope, system, school, trophy, type, fantasy, photography . . . take almost any word denoting political and social institutions, ideas, learning, science and technology, medicine and culture, and it derives from the language — and therefore the ideas and the history — of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Christianity attempted to suppress all this heritage, and for a time succeeded. The Emperor Justinian in 529 closed the Athenian schools founded by Plato, Aristotle and others because they taught “pagan” philosophy (“philosophy” then meant all inquiry including science).
There was little learning worth the name in the first seven centuries of Christian dominance because it had suppressed inquiry; later it persecuted those who advocated ideas in conflict with scripture: Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake, and Galileo nearly so, for not accepting that the Earth is fixed at the centre of the Universe as claimed by Psalm 104 and Joshua xx, 12. If the list of words just given provides us with the terminology that we use to describe ourselves today, then Christianity’s attempt to obliterate those words and what they mean makes us anything but a Christian nation.
In our letter to the press last weekend we who had protested against the description had in mind also that we are a highly pluralistic nation, with many faiths and none, and that the “nones” are net contributors to our society and culture in major ways. They do not deserve to be overlooked.
But the description of us as a “Christian nation” is deeply misleading if taken to imply that we are a nation of believers in Christian doctrines and legends. I hope and trust Mr Cameron meant something different and better: that we are a tolerant, generous, kindly nation. And I hope and trust he is right.
