thread: 2007-02-26 : Exorcism followthrough
On 2007-02-28, MikeRM wrote:
James:
1. Why the heck is our culture, which is so loud about being Christian, obsessed with war and wealth and loneliness?
Christianity was hijacked relatively early on by the Emperor Constantine, who made it the official religion of the Roman Empire and so co-opted it into the whole war/wealth realm. The people who disagreed with this opted out and went and lived in the North African desert, where they were known as the Desert Fathers (there were Desert Mothers as well, but it was a sexist age).
Today, after approximately 1700 years of close relationship with the various power structures, the best-known, most public version of Christianity is still very much alongside the war/wealth thing. Throughout history there have continued to be people who have disagreed with this; by the nature of things, they tend to get killed, and/or be impoverished and sidelined and denied access to education and the opportunity to publish, and so their voices are not as prominent as those who participate in the power structures. People who are genuinely humble and don't value material things, for example, don't tend to own television stations.
Talk to a Mennonite some time about pacifism. Make sure you're sitting comfortably and have no other plans for several hours.
Loneliness? That's an Industrial Revolution/modernist thing. Same reason as families in India are now neglecting their old people instead of honouring and supporting them. Nothing particularly to do with Christianity except inasmuch as the deep values of Christianity have been abandoned in the industrialized West (as the deep values of Hinduism are being abandoned in industrializing India). Modernism feeds people better and extends their lifespans, but it tends to be quite bad for their mental and social health.
2. What's a religion appropriate to a culture that has suffocated itself, and every other ecosystem that's part of God's gift to us, in its own shit?
Pretty much any religion that hasn't frozen itself prior to, say, 1965. Which actually includes the radical wing of evangelical Christianity (Sojourners, for example) as well as progressive and postmodern Christianity.
Western Buddhists frequently have something to say about environmental concerns (more traditional Eastern Buddhists not so much, since if the world is an illusion it's not really a matter for concern, to oversimplify). And the various forms of neopaganism which have arisen and diversified in the late 20th century mostly have a big environmental aspect to them - the Druids most of all, and perhaps not so much the Asatru.
