Who Was Jesus?

[grateful servant]

Jesus preached the message but on a deeper level, he is the message!

Paul preached that message.

dodging the question... why can't you just answer with a simple yes or no?

 

[justjess]

No they weren't, the exploration hadn't even started till the 15th century. 600 years ago was the year 1417. Columbus didn't sail till 1492. Magellan sailed around the world in 1519. This is a historically inaccurate statement. Colonization wouldn't really take place until the 17th century. Exploration and colonization were also politically motivated and not actually a part of church history aside from the fact that Christians lived in these same countries. The church has never had authority to colonize anyone. These parts of history were initiated by countries wanting to expand their borders. Christianity has never been a theocracy. The king of England initiated colonization, not the church.

However, in 1417, the Catholic church was the spiritual authority of England and England was not a Protestant country if that is what you are implying. You do realize that England separated from the Catholic church during the reign of King Henry in the 16th century and that establishing the Church of England so he could get divorced has nothing to do with Christian history of people like the puritans who did not colonize anyone and came to the US for religious freedom. Puritans and Pilgrims would not have had the power to do such things that countries like France or England were capable of doing. France and England exploring and colonizing the US is not church history. Church history is the history of people who believed Jesus was the Son of God and gave their lives to Him like Tyndale, or Puritans, or Quakers, or Luther, etc. This is Christian history.

So like I said, in the 15th century, Christian history teaches that we were being oppressed by the Catholic church who was reading to the congregation in a language they didn't know in order to hide from them what Christ taught about loving others and not being afraid.

I apologize for my mathematical error. I don't see how your argument that the horrible things done in the name of Christianity were even MORE RECENT helps the case you were trying to make though.

And no you can not separate colonialism from Christianity when Christianity was used to justify it.

 

[Damien50]

dodging the question... why can't you just answer with a simple yes or no?

Because the question itself is dishonest. It's not about merely following Paul or Christ but about the entire Word of God contained in the Bible.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

dodging the question... why can't you just answer with a simple yes or no?

Do you think that everything that is true has a yes or no answer? Yes or no?

 

[rainerann]

I apologize for my mathematical error. I don't see how your argument that the horrible things done in the name of Christianity were even MORE RECENT helps the case you were trying to make though.

And no you can not separate colonialism from Christianity when Christianity was used to justify it.

Please cite a quote where Christianity was used to justify colonialism.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

Please cite a quote where Christianity was used to justify colonialism.

Most ideologies have been reached for by evil people to justify their actions.

Cruel, power hungry ISIS reach for Islam, greedy Popes reached for Christianity, Stalin reached for Atheism.

The test is to see whether the ideology truly lends support to the actions of those who carry out their deeds in its name.

 

[Serveto]

Please cite a quote where Christianity was used to justify colonialism.

A quote? There was an entire ideology, ready-made, from the Old Testament. The Puritans, who arrived on American shores, held to a doctrine, or concept, of "Manifest Destiny," in which they, as the "new Israel," had the right to the land. Theirs was the Promised Land, and they the chosen people (and we know, or at least are informed of, the unenviable fate which befell the native inhabitants of Canaan and the other nations the original Israel wiped out on the way).

That concept of "Manifest Destiny," with all of the scriptural justifications for it, even if it is arguably a farrago of scriptural misapplication and mistaken identitites ("supercessionism"), continued to play itself out in American colonial and post-colonial warfare. There is more than a quote, in other words, there is a literature.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

A quote? There was an entire ideology, ready-made, from the Old Testament. The Puritans, who arrived on American shores, held to a doctrine, or concept, of "Manifest Destiny," in which they, as the "new Israel," had the right to the land. Theirs was the Promised Land, and they the chosen people (and we know, or at least are informed of, the unenviable fate which befell the native inhabitants of Canaan and the other nations the original Israel wiped out on the way).

That concept of "Manifest Destiny," with all of the scriptural justifications for it, even if it is arguably a farrago of scriptural misapplication and mistaken identitites ("supercessionism"), continued to play itself out in American colonial and post-colonial warfare. There is more than a quote, in other words, there is a literature.

I get that as well. In addition to the confused scriptural motivations, there was also our old friend Francis Bacon with his "New Atlantis" as a distinct undercurrent in the founding of the good old USA.

 

[rainerann]

A quote? There was an entire ideology, ready-made, from the Old Testament. The Puritans, who arrived on American shores, held to a doctrine, or concept, of "Manifest Destiny," in which they, as the "new Israel," had the right to the land. Theirs was the Promised Land, and they the chosen people (and we know, or at least are informed of, the unenviable fate which befell the native inhabitants of Canaan and the other nations the original Israel wiped out on the way).

That concept of "Manifest Destiny," with all of the scriptural justifications for it, even if it is arguably a farrago of scriptural misapplication and mistaken identitites ("supercessionism"), continued to play itself out in American colonial and post-colonial warfare. There is more than a quote, in other words, there is a literature.

Great example of an extreme Christian group that cannot be found guilty of mass colonization because they didn't have the means or authority to do something even if they did develop an extreme view of Christianity. They did not take large areas of land in order to be able to define a larger boundary. They settled in North America where there were many open places to inhabit without creating conflict with anyone to gain religious freedom. Puritans are not guilty of colonization. They are just people with some extreme views who left their own country to find a place where they could apply them. They lived in a small defined area where they practiced their religion to an extreme.

Quote from Encyclopedia Virginia on the experience of Puritans.

"About a year later, on April 18, 1644, some Virginia Indians under the leadership of Opechancanoughlaunched a devastating attack on English settlements in Virginia. Several hundred Virginians were killed, but the Puritan community was spared. (Virginia's Puritan settlers were no strangers to Indian attack, however; twenty-two years earlier, nearly half of the planters at Bennett's Welcome had been killed in an assault that also had been ordered by Opechancanough.) Some Puritans interpreted the attack as divine vengeance for the government's treatment of the New England pastors. Others reasoned that the Indians attacked because, as Winthrop recorded in his journal, they "understood that they [the English] were at war in England, and began to go to war among themselves …" https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Puritans_in_Colonial_Virginia#start_entry

So, clearly they had some extreme views and even some conflict with the Indians. However, Puritans were attacked by the Indians. They weren't the ones who attacked. They were just people trying to apply the Bible to the fullest extent possible, and they believed England prevented this.

Now, find where the Puritans are guilty of conquering any land once belonging to Indians or how the conquering of American land had anything to do with this book created by the Puritans.

 

[Serveto]

I get that as well. In addition to the confused scriptural motivations, there was also our old friend Francis Bacon with his "New Atlantis" as a distinct undercurrent in the founding of the good old USA.

Spot on. And speaking of Rosicrucianism, which I think we in some ways now are, I find it interesting, though I have never searched the matter out in much detail, that Martin Luther's coat of arms contained, apparently, a rose cross. I am tempted to say caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, but will cut my sentence short with an ellipsis ...

 

[Serveto]

Great example of an extreme Christian group that cannot be found guilty of mass colonization because they didn't have the means or authority to do something even if they did develop an extreme view of Christianity. They did not take large areas of land in order to be able to define a larger boundary. They settled in North America where there were many open places to inhabit without creating conflict with anyone to gain religious freedom. Puritans are not guilty of colonization.

I didn't say the Puritans were guilty of colonization. They were, however, colonists. And this is what you originally said, and is the comment to which I responded ...

Please cite a quote where Christianity was used to justify colonialism.

Perhaps I misread you (by conflation of terms). In which case, I am sorry. With that said, it wasn't long thereafter until some of those Colonists' progeny were conducting witch trials in New England, and I think they were also reading the Bible in the process. Those trials are a strange anomaly in ostensibly Christian history, but might be worth mentioning.

By the way, I don't think that you and I have ever spoken directly until now, so, like, hi, it's nice to meet you. I benefit from reading many of your contributions to the discussions. Sorry if this thread feels, or seems, a little off kilter. I didn't intend for that to happen.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

Spot on. And speaking of Rosicrucianism, which I think we in some ways now are, I find it interesting, though I have never searched the matter out in much detail, that Martin Luther's coat of arms contained, apparently, a rose cross. I am tempted to say caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, but will cut my sentence short with an ellipsis ...

Guns & Roses - check out the T-Shirts!

 

[grateful servant]

Because the question itself is dishonest. It's not about merely following Paul or Christ but about the entire Word of God contained in the Bible.

I don't want to beat the dead horse here, but the question was not about who you follow.

 

[grateful servant]

Do you think that everything that is true has a yes or no answer? Yes or no?

Answering the question with a question. Sorry it's so hard or you find it bothersome. I thought you said that truth stands on its own so I expected I would get a direct reply, I won't press it any further with you though.

Anyways to answer your question: When it comes to God and matters of Creed - a firm 'yes'.

 

[Lady]

Not all churches fall under the Protestant or Catholic heading. Many of the born-again believers in Christ have left their Protestant denominations in favor of churches lining up doctrinally with those mentioned in the following list. Or non-denominational churches. This is part of the waking up of the church-we are coming out of the false churchianity that we have experienced in favor of more scriptually-sound teaching. Sometimes that means going to or starting a Home Church with like-minded individuals.

http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/anabaptists-and-baptists

Anabaptist congregations separated themselves from all forms of state control and avoided contact with society outside their own communities. They rejected both the Roman Catholic Church and the new Reformed Protestant Churches. The Mennonites, the Amish, the Hutterites and other similar groups originated in Anabaptist congregations.
Anabaptism influenced several nonconformist sects in England and the New World, especially the early Baptists, but the word "Anabaptist" was generally a term of abuse during the Civil War and Commonwealth era, used to denote any potentially subversive religious doctrine.

 

[justjess]

Puritans weren't the only Christian colonizer but sure, let's play I guess:

The Puritans viewed themselves as God's special people, replacing national Israel. Nowhere do the dangers of this assumption become more clear than in the Puritans' treatment of the native Americans. Since the Puritans considered themselves God's chosen people, they concluded that they had the right to take the land from the heathen Indians. The American Indians were the "new Canaanites" in America's "Promised Land." The fruit of Puritan theology was brutal. They saw their mission as convert these "Canaanites" to Christianity; failing that, it was acceptable to slaughter them in the name of Christ.

For example, the Puritan massacres of the Pequot Indian tribe on May 26, 1637, and again on July 14, 1637, were deemed by the Puritans to be directed by God -- Captain John Mason declared, "God laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies" (Segal and Stinenback, Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny, pp. 111-112, 134-135). Converting the pagans for God was acceptable to the Puritans, but killing the pagans for the Lord was also acceptable!

Defenders of the Puritans claim that it was the hostility of the Pequots that led to their unfortunate demise. But the Pequots were one of the most tranquil tribes in New England. History reveals that their "hostility" did not manifest itself until they were hunted like animals. For argument sake, let's say that the Pequots were the instigators of hostilities, virtual savages if you will (which they were not). Does this justify hunting them down, slaughtering the men, women, and children in their sleep, and then doing it again six weeks later to finish the job!? (Not exactly "battlefield" victories!) Moreover, the Puritans claimed it was in obedience to God that these pagans were slaughtered!

Here the reasoning of the Puritans defies logic and a sense of common decency, let alone Christian principles. Captain John Underhill also wrote of the Pequot slaughter: "Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents ... We have sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings." What an incredible testimony for one claiming to be a Christian!

But they were never violent right? And you will argue that Massachusetts just naturally belonged to them or to nobody and was open for the taking?

How about some inter Christian denominational violence courtesy of the puritans?

The Massachusetts Bay Colony of the New World was a Puritan theocratic state in the early 1650s. Puritan leaders did not have much tolerance for people of other religions, and as a result, the Puritan government often persecuted and banished religious outsiders who tried to enter and live in their Puritan towns. A fear was embedded in the Puritan society that if they started to admit outsiders, they would lose their political and religious control of the colony.

Beginning in 1656, members of the newly formed Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) started to arrive in the Massachusetts colony on ships from England, where Quakerism had recently emerged. The Quakers who arrived in Boston's harbor demanded that they be allowed to live in Massachusetts and practice their own religion freely. They were greeted by intense hostility and were often forced to board the next ship out.

The first known Quakers to arrive in Boston and challenge Puritan religious domination were Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. These two women entered Boston's harbor on the Swallow, a ship from Barbados in July of 1656. The Puritans of Boston greeted Fisher and Austin as if they carried the plague and severely brutalized them. The two were strip searched, accused of witchcraft, jailed, deprived of food, and were forced to leave Boston on the Swallow when it next left Boston eight weeks later. Almost immediately after their arrival, Fisher and Austin's belongings were confiscated, and the Puritan executioner burned their trunk full of Quaker pamphlets and other writings. Shortly after they arrived in Boston, eight more Quakers arrived on a ship from England. This group of eight was imprisoned and beaten. While they were in prison, an edict was passed in Boston that any ship's captain who carried Quakers into Boston would be fined heavily. The Puritan establishment forced the captain, who had brought the group of eight Quakers to Boston, to take them back to England, under a bond of £500.

Despite the intense persecution of Quaker newcomers by Massachusetts' Puritans, Quakers continued to come to Boston in increasing numbers and attempted to spread their message by whatever means possible. They came by ship from England and Barbados and by foot from Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Once in Massachusetts, they rose to speak following Puritan sermons and during trials and shouted from jail cell windows. They published pamphlets and held illegal meetings. They refused to pay fines to the Puritan government and refused to work in jail, with the latter often resulting in their jailers depriving them of food.

The Massachusetts Puritan government soon passed other laws aimed at stopping Quakers from entering and disrupting their status quo. Ship captains, learning of the fines, often refused passage to Quakers intending to sail to Boston. One Englishman, Robert Fowler, from Yorkshire, however, felt called to build a ship to transport Quakers from England to Massachusetts. He built the Woodhouse and set sail from England with eleven Quakers. One of the eleven was Dorothy Waugh, a farm servant from Westmorland who said she had been called by the Lord to come to America and share the Quaker message.

In all, from 1656 to 1661, at least forty Quakers came to New England to protest Puritan religious domination and persecution. During those five years, the Puritan persecution of Quakers continued, with beatings, fines, whippings, imprisonment, and mutilation. Many were expelled from the colony, only to return again to bear witness to what they believed. One of them, 60-year-old Elizabeth Hooten, returned to Boston at least five times. The Boston jails were full of Quakers, and four known executions of Quakers took place in Massachusetts during those five years.

As is evident, the Quakers were not a quiet group in Puritan New England. From their speeches in the courthouse, the church, and from jail cell windows, they attracted a number of supporters and converts. Locals would often give money to jailers to feed the otherwise starved inmates, and the Quakers' unflinching commitment to speaking their truth touched many. There is evidence to suggest that the Puritan hatred towards Quakers was not omnipresent within the Puritan community. For example, the law banishing Quakers from the colony on pain of death was only passed by a one-vote majority. John Norton was the most outspoken critic of the Quakers and is credited with spreading much of the anti-Quaker bias.

Perhaps the most notable Quaker to be brutalized and eventually executed by the Massachusetts government for being a Quaker was Mary Dyer. Dyer originally came to Massachusetts in 1633 and settled there with her husband. In 1652, Dyer returned to England, where she was exposed to Quakerism and accepted Quaker ideals. Five years later, on her way to rejoin her family who had since moved to Rhode Island, she landed in Boston, along with two fellow Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson. The three were at once jailed for being Quakers and were banished from the colony. Dyer left for her family in Rhode Island, but Robinson and Stephenson stayed. Two years later, in 1659, when Robinson and Stephenson were jailed again, along with several other Quakers, Dyer returned to Boston to visit them in jail. She was arrested upon entry and all were held for two months without bail. Upon their release, they were banished from the colony under penalty of death, but Robinson and Stephenson refused to leave.

In October of that year, Dyer returned to Boston once again to visit another imprisoned friend. This time Dyer, Robinson, and Stephenson were all jailed and sentenced to death. On October 27, the three were led to the gallows, and Dyer watched as her two friends were hung. When it came to her turn, she was granted a last minute reprieve but refused to climb down from the scaffold until the law banning Quakers was changed. She had to be carried down and was forcibly removed from the colony.

Dyer spent the winter in Rhode Island and Long Island but insisted on returning to Boston the following spring. On May 21, 1660, she entered Boston and was immediately jailed. She was quickly tried, and on June 1, 1660, she was hung on Boston Commons.

It was not too uncommon that when a Quaker was being tried and prosecuted under threat of death, another Quaker would openly walk into the courthouse and disrupt the proceedings. Wenlock Christison did just this at the trial of William Leddra in 1661. Christison, himself, who had been banished from the colony under pain of death, burst into the courthouse crying out that for each “servant of God” that the Boston government hung, five more would rise up to take their place. Christison was arrested but never had to face the gallows.

The citizens and magistrates of Boston began to grow tired of having to punish the Quakers and Leddra was the last Quaker to be executed by the Puritan government. A messenger had gone to England to ask for a missive from the king. King Charles II, a Catholic supporter, wanted to provide a missive for the Catholics of the New World who were also being persecuted. When a Quaker messenger came asking the king to also provide sanctuary for the Quakers, he agreed. The “King’s Missive” did stop the executions, but punishment of the Quakers by the Boston government still continued, though it was less harsh. As more diverse groups of people landed on the shores of the New World, the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans gradually faded. By 1675, Quakers were freely and openly living and worshiping in Boston.

I don't personally understand the attempt at historical revision to make it seem like the only christians to ever do anything violent or despicable in the name of Christ were the Catholics.

 

[Serveto]

"Someone asked [Britain's] Lloyd George at the [Paris] Peace Conference why he had been so persistent an advocate of the conquest of Palestine by British arms? "Because," replied the Welshman, "it was not only the surest way to break the backbone of the Ottoman Empire, but the promise of a National Home for the Jewish people in the Holy Land gave the war a certain halo of righteousness in the eyes of my Methodist constituents."
Source (p. 403)

 

[justjess]

Not all churches fall under the Protestant or Catholic heading. Many of the born-again believers in Christ have left their Protestant denominations in favor of churches lining up doctrinally with those mentioned in the following list. Or non-denominational churches. This is part of the waking up of the church-we are coming out of the false churchianity that we have experienced in favor of more scriptually-sound teaching. Sometimes that means going to or starting a Home Church with like-minded individuals.

http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/anabaptists-and-baptists

Anabaptist congregations separated themselves from all forms of state control and avoided contact with society outside their own communities. They rejected both the Roman Catholic Church and the new Reformed Protestant Churches. The Mennonites, the Amish, the Hutterites and other similar groups originated in Anabaptist congregations.
Anabaptism influenced several nonconformist sects in England and the New World, especially the early Baptists, but the word "Anabaptist" was generally a term of abuse during the Civil War and Commonwealth era, used to denote any potentially subversive religious doctrine.

The beginning of The Anabaptist movement started with the Munster Rebellion - a violent takeover

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2012/08/a-mystery-in-the-history-of-anabaptists/

Now yes a lot of those groups are entirely nonviolent now but there are skeletons in every closet. I'm not sure why that's a difficult or even bad thing to admit.

 

[Damien50]

I don't want to beat the dead horse here, but the question was not about who you follow.

That's what it amounts to though isn't it?

 

[Damien50]

Not all churches fall under the Protestant or Catholic heading. Many of the born-again believers in Christ have left their Protestant denominations in favor of churches lining up doctrinally with those mentioned in the following list. Or non-denominational churches. This is part of the waking up of the church-we are coming out of the false churchianity that we have experienced in favor of more scriptually-sound teaching. Sometimes that means going to or starting a Home Church with like-minded individuals.

http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/anabaptists-and-baptists

Anabaptist congregations separated themselves from all forms of state control and avoided contact with society outside their own communities. They rejected both the Roman Catholic Church and the new Reformed Protestant Churches. The Mennonites, the Amish, the Hutterites and other similar groups originated in Anabaptist congregations.
Anabaptism influenced several nonconformist sects in England and the New World, especially the early Baptists, but the word "Anabaptist" was generally a term of abuse during the Civil War and Commonwealth era, used to denote any potentially subversive religious doctrine.

Hail to original Waldensians massacred in the Italian alps for going against the Catholic church by living, breathing, and spreading the true faith of Yahweh.