The Dark Side of Christian History

[LongTomH]

Whether you're a believer or non-believer, I think you will find some things to ponder in Helen Ellerbe's The Dark Side of Christian History. Perhaps believers need to read this more than atheists and agnostics.

Excerpts from the review:

In a 1994 confidential letter to cardinals, which was later leaked to the Italian press, Pope John Paul II urged the Church to use the event of the approaching millennium to recognize what he called 'the dark side of Christian history.' Acting on that proclamation, Helen Ellerbe provides a baseline work from which to put the Pope's words into practice and comprehend Western Chrisitan history in a new light. She believes that some sort of a reflective endeavor is needed as the millennium approaches, so that Christians can take stock and perhaps atone for their sins. As Ellerbe notes, 'Ignoring the dark side of Christian history perpetuates the idea that oppression and atrocity are the inevitable results of an inherently evil or savage human nature' and it 'allows the beliefs which have motivated cruelty to go unexamined.' She insists that 'the dark side of Christian history was not an unavoidable result of human nature; it was the result of a very specific ideology and belief structure.' The book sets out to examine the origins and development of that belief structure, with emphasis on how it still influences the present.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to clarify Ellerbe's terminology and assumptions. She uses the term 'orthodox Christianity' to refer to the beliefs and structures arising out of 'Pauline Christianity,' which itself is an extension and elaboration upon the the original message of Jesus after contact with Roman civilization. After discussing how this form of Christianity developed in its crucial first centuries, especially with respect to the numerous local interpretations of the message, Ellerbe concludes: 'By castigating Origen's theories of reincarnation, the Church upheld its belief in the unique physical resurrection of Christ as well as the belief that a person has but one life in which to obey the Church or risk eternal damnation. With the Donatists, it established the precedent of using force to compel obedience. And with the Mannichaeans, the Church demonstrated its willingness to abandon its own beliefs for political expediency.' Once its innovations were codified into official State dogma, the Church set about to ensure allegiance to its new norms, at the expense of other interpretations and permutations of the message of the Prophets, whether via Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, peace upon them all. To compel belief, the Church often used torture and physical violence, which was a mainstay of Christianity until very recently: 'Torture remained a legal option for the Church from 1252 when it was sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV until 1917 when the new Codex Juris Canonici was put into effect.'

In an interesting, though undeveloped allusion, Ellerbe notes that, 'Protestants and Catholics competed with each other over how little they could care for their bodies, using little soap and water throughout a lifetime,' referring to the Christian idea of the body as a defiled and corrupted vessel for the soul. What she did not realize, however, is that suspicion toward cleanliness was a direct result of the Inquisition, when the Pope instructed the authorities of the Church to arrest and torture any Christians who washed daily, since it was thought that washing was a sure sign that they were Muslims in dissimulation. And, though Ellerbe misses this, the same could be said for eating pork with respect to both Jews and Muslims, to the point that the earmarks of good Christian behavior included regularly eating the flesh of swine and remaining unwashed for weeks on end. Ellerbe does, however, provide some useful sources and insights into the relationship between Catholic and Protestant Christian beliefs and practices on the dark side: 'Although Protestantism vehemently denied the necessity of the Church as an intermediary between the individual and God, it removed most of the means through which a direct and personal relationship might develop.' She notes, in particular, that 'Protestant leaders fervently embraced St. Augustine's ideas about free will and predestination: that Adam's fall from grace had left humanity inherently flawed, incapable of acting correctly, and thus entirely dependent upon God's mercy.' And violence was used by Protestant Christians to compel this belief in the Americas, as exemplified by the Puritan Cotton Mather, who 'affirmed the value of punishment and echoed St. Augustine's "compel them to enter" with his famous phrase "Better whipped, than Damned."'

I think many members on this forum will take issue with her ideas about science and the enlightenment, and, as the review states, there are more scholarly works on this subject available; but, I think she has done a good job of summarizing "The Dark Side" for a popular audience.

[struggle4progress]

1. The book was self-published 20 years ago by Morningstar and Lark, a vanity press

The author's credentials appear to include her time as a stockbroker

[cleanhippie]

2. And this is relevant to the OP, how?

[struggle4progress]

3. How is information on author and publisher relevant to the book the OP encourages us to read?

[skepticscott]

4. Do you have any intelligent comment

on the actual content of the book, or just vague smears of the author and publisher?

[struggle4progress]

5. Information on the publisher and on the background of the author is a smear?

[skepticscott]

6. Do you have any intelligent comment

on the actual content of the book? Or any reason other than a smear why the fact that the author spent time as a stockbroker is relevant to the substance of the book?

[struggle4progress]

8. Her self-stated background as "a German translator, a Fortune 500 sales representative,

a stockbroker, a sculptor of mythological figures" does not suggest any particular ability to work with primary historical sources not any particular familiarity with the academic literature on the topics she wants to address

The vast majority of her bibliography consists of secondary sources and popular texts, such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters; all texts cited are English; thus, again, one ought to suspect her ability to work with primary historical sources and her familiarity with the academic literature

She makes the usual amateurish mistake of mishmashing materials together, without regard for continuity of time or place, in her pursuit of her thesis. One short paragraph (pp 6-7) in her first chapter quotes from the Apocryphon of John (found in Coptic versions in Egypt), Theodotus in Asia Minor (known in Greek), and Irenaeus in Gaul (known in Latin)

Her interpretations are driven entirely by her agenda -- "The theories of scientists and philosophers such as Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, and Charles Darwin reinforced orthodox Christian beliefs ..." (for example), though it is rather doubtful that the views of any of these three could properly be described as "orthodox Christian" in their time

Her agenda is frankly bizarre at times: "As orthodox Christians understood God to be detached from the physical world, so Western medicine understood the workings of the human body to be disconnected from a person's mind or consciousness. Illness was seen simply as a malfunction of mechanical parts ... Western physicians attempted to prevail over the body rather than work with it ... An example .. is the treatment of non-life-threatening illnesses with antibiotics. Antibiotics subdue the body's immune system"

Overall, the book is riddled with errors and suffers from constant ax-grinding

[skepticscott]

9. Nice that you were able to read and review the book

All within a few hours. Well done.

[struggle4progress]

10. It's available online

[skepticscott]

11. And you were able to read the whole book

and write a review of your own, all in the interval between your post #5 and post #8.

Impressive.

[struggle4progress]

12. If you find errors in my remarks, let us know

[skepticscott]

13. I find an amazing ability to speed read

and concoct a book review, that's all. Less than two hours from start to finish. Almost inconceivable. Your parents must be very proud.

[rug]

7. This is an interesting paragraph from the review.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the last, 'A World Without God.' Drawing upon recent research in the history of religion and science, Ellerbe echoes the now well-accepted conclusion that there never was any real disparity or conflict between religion and science in western civilization. After introducing the 'Age of Enlightenment,' she notes that, 'These new beliefs and attitudes mirrored those of orthodox Christianity. As orthodox Christians believed there to be a division between heaven and earth, so scientists perceived there to be a similar division, coined by Descartes as that between mind and matter. As Christians believed God to be detached from the physical world, so scientists thought that consciousness and physical reality were detached from one another. Although orthodox Christianity and modern thinkers differed in their belief about the devil, both understood the physical world as a realm devoid of divinity and sanctity.' She continues: 'The belief that the physical world functioned independently of consciousness found new validation in Newton's laws.' And, 'Accepting the orthodox Christian idea that God no longer had impact upon the physical world, modern thinkers concurred that human consciousness similarly did not influence physical phenomena.'