by Ulf Wolf
However, by the time Aquinas died, storms had already begun to gather over the Western church. In 1309 the papacy fled Rome to Avignon, where it remained until 1377 during the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the church. This was followed by the Great Schism, during which there were two (and sometimes even three) claimants to the papal throne. That was not resolved until 1417, but the reunited papacy found it impossible to regain control or even respect.
Reformation and Counter Reformation
By this time, reformers of many colors denounced the now quite obvious moral laxity and financial corruption that had blighted the church “in its members and in its head” and called for radical change.
Martin Luther was the catalyst that sparked the new movement.
His personal struggle for religious certainty led him, actually against his will, to question the medieval system of salvation and the very authority of the church itself, and his subsequent excommunication by Pope Leo X was the step beyond any point of return that eventually lead to the division of Western Christendom.
This reform movement was not confined to Luther’s Germany. Native reform movements in Switzerland found leadership in John Calvin, whose Institutes of the Christian Religion became the most influential synopsis of the new theology.
The soon-to-follow English Reformation, provoked in part by the troubles of King Henry VIII, was to reflect the influence of both the Lutheran and the Calvinistic reforms, but it took its own “middle course,” retaining some Catholic elements such as the historic episcopate (too wealthy and politically influential to dismantle, methinks) alongside Protestant elements such as the sole authority of the Bible.
In his native France, Calvin and his teachings helped establish the Huguenot party—initially fiercely opposed by both church and state, but finally recognized with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 (though ultimately revoked in 1685).
The more radical Reformation groups, notably the Anabaptists, set themselves against other Protestants as well as against Rome, rejecting such long-established practices as infant baptism and sometimes even such dogmas as the Trinity and denouncing the alliance of church and state.
That alliance of church and state, however, helped determine the ultimate outcome of the Reformation, which succeeded where it gained the support of the new national states.
As a consequence of these ties to a rising national spirit, the Reformation also helped create the literary milestones—especially translations of the Bible from its revered Latin to the vernacular—that were to decisively shape the language and the spirit of many peoples.
The Reformation also gave fresh stimulus to biblical preaching and to worship in the vernacular, for which a new hymnody came into being.
Because of its emphasis on the participation of all believers in worship and confession, the Reformation also developed systems for instruction in doctrine and ethics, especially in the form of catechisms, and an ethic of service in the world.
However, the Protestant Reformation did not entirely exhaust the spirit of reform within the Roman Catholic Church, for in response both to the Protestant challenge and to its own needs, the church summoned the Council of Trent, which continued over the years 1545-1563, giving definitive formulation to doctrines at issue and legislating practical reforms in liturgy, church administration, and education.
The task of carrying out the decisions of the council fell on the Society of Jesus, formed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It is also worthy of note that the time coincidence of the discovery of the New World and the Reformation was seen by the Roman Catholic Church as a providential opportunity to evangelize those who had never heard the gospel.
The bottom line here is that the Council of Trent on the Roman Catholic side and the many confessions of faith on the Protestant side had the effect of making the division between the two Christian Churches permanent.
The Modern Period
Already apparent during the Renaissance and Reformation, and even more so during the 17th and 18th centuries, it grew increasingly clear that Christianity would have to define (and defend) itself in response to the rise of modern science and philosophy.
The condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy was eventually to find its Protestant counterpart in the controversies that arose over the impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution on the biblical account of creation, which begged to differ.
While theory of evolution was a major bone of contention between Christianity and Science, it was not an isolated conflict but just one of the modern movements that put Christianity on the defensive.
One such was the 17th-century critical-historical method of studying the Bible, which threatened the authority of Scripture and which eventually led to the condemnation of Enlightenment rationalism as a, what the Church called, “a source of religious indifference and anticlericalism.”
Even democracy, due to its emphasis on the human capacity to determine human destiny, would soon also be denounced by the Church.
And it grew worse. The increasing secularization of society gradually removed the Church’s control from other areas of civic life, especially education, which it had once wholly controlled.
Church versus State
This eventually led to a fundamental redefinition of the relation between Christianity and the civil order: the granting of religious toleration to minority faiths and an ongoing separation of church and state was a deep and radical departure for a system that had held sway over much of the Western world since the conversion of Constantine the Great and is, one must conclude, the most far-reaching change in the modern history of Christianity.
New ecumenical movements have since tried to bring together, or at least bring toward a better understanding—though sometimes even toward reunion—various Christian denominations that separated long ago. It is, after all, supposed to be the same religion.
Important steps in this direction were taken at the Second Vatican Council, where the Roman Catholic Church moved toward reconciliation both with the East and with Protestantism.
That same council also expressed, and for the first time in an official forum, a positive appreciation of the genuine spiritual power present in the world religions.
The relation between Christianity and its parent, Judaism, has always been that between a father and a problem child, but after many centuries of hostility and even persecution, the two faiths have now moved toward a closer degree of mutual understanding than at any time since the 1st century.
The reactions of the churches to their changed situation in the modern world have also led to increased theological interest.
Reformation
Such Protestant theologians as Jonathan Edwards and Friedrich Schleiermacher and such Roman Catholic thinkers as Blaise Pascal and John Henry Newman launched a reorientation of the traditional apologias for their respective faiths, this time drawing upon religious experience (rather than pure scriptural survey) as a validation of the reality of the divine.
Thus, the 19th century proved to be a preeminent time of historical research into the development of Christian ideas and institutions, which research not only indicated to many that no particular form of doctrine or church structure could claim to be absolute and final (most, if not all of it, being hearsay in the first place), but it also provided other theologians with new resources for reinterpreting the Christian message.
Subsequent literary investigation of the biblical books—although viewed with suspicion by many conservatives—led to new insights about how the Bible had been composed and assembled; and the study of liturgy, combined with the understanding that ancient forms did not always make sense to the modern era, also brought reform to the worship.
Church versus Modern State
The ambivalent relation of the Christian faith to modern culture, seen in all these trends, is also evident in the role it has played in social and political history.
You would find Christians on both sides of the 19th-century
debates over slavery—both (naturally) using biblical arguments, while much inspiration feeding revolution, from the French to the Russian, was explicitly anti-Christian.
The 20th-century Marxist regimes, in particular, actually oppressed the Christians for their faith, and their traditional beliefs were denounced (politically speaking) as reactionary. Nevertheless, the revolutionary faith has frequently drawn from Christian sources.
Mohandas K. Gandhi always maintained that he was acting in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was, in fact, a Protestant preacher who strove to base his political program on the message of the Sermon on the Mount.
By the last quarter of the 20th century, the missionary movements of the various strands of the Church had carried the Christian faith to every corner of the world.
One characteristic of modern times, however, saw a radical change of leadership in the far-away mission churches. In fact, since World War II leadership in such daughter churches have increasingly been assumed by local or national clergymen from the previously prevalent Western leadership of Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches in the Third World.
Spreading the faith world-wide has, however, not been frictionless, and adaptations or assimilation of native customs have often posed problems of both theology and tradition, as, for example, when African polygamists attempt to live Christian family lives.
Among Protestants, evangelicalism saw a resurgence of strength during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and many, including Pentecostals and Fundamentalists, again emphasized the authority of the Bible, personal commitment to Jesus, and salvation through faith.
On the family and on other social issues, this resurgence tended to take a conservative stance. Some leaders questioned the teaching of evolution in schools, while many American Catholics regretted what they saw as their church’s failure to remain relevant in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Concern about a dwindling clergy also grew as the Roman Catholic Church continued to exclude married priests and women.
The Kaleidoscope Religion
A thorough study of how the New Testament came to be reveals how fragmented and historically revisionist this book truly is.
Created from the memories of those told by those who were told by those who perhaps (and perhaps not) had been told by those present (or who had known someone who had been present) at one or more of the events chronicled, it is no surprise that facts and figures might be hard to reconcile, or that they sometimes feel a bit stretched.
It is a well-known fact that several versions of the New Testament existed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Origen, for one, tried to reconcile the diverse manuscripts. Saint Jerome then tried to translate this kaleidoscope of a book from mostly Greek into a unified Latin version, and he had may choices to make (which part from which version?) and he made them all.
I guess you could say that if anyone is the father of Christianity—for he provided Rome with the Latin version of this religion—it’s Saint Jerome.
Founded upon such disputed (or disputable) ground, it is no wonder that the Church is as fragmented as it is.
The truth is that Buddhism and “average” Christianity have more in common than the Roman Catholic Church and some of the more extremist fundamental Protestant movement.
Add to this the Roman Catholic Church history as an immensely profitable business venture, fueled by virtually endless priestly and papal greed, and it is no wonder that it seems we are looking at many, not one, religion when we view Christianity of today.
:: Islam ::
Islam is one of the three major world religions—alongside Judaism and Christianity—that proclaim monotheism, that’s to say: the belief in a single God.
In Arabic, the word Islam means “surrender” or “submission”—submission, that is, to the will of God. A follower of Islam is called a Muslim, which in Arabic means “one who surrenders to God.” However, the Arabic name for God, Allah, does indeed refer to the same God worshiped by both Jews and Christians.
The central teaching of Islam is that there is but one all-powerful, all-knowing God, and that this God created the universe. This unbending monotheism, as well as the Islamic teaching that all Muslims (regardless of class or gender) are equal before God, provides the basis for a collective sense of loyalty to God that transcends race, class, and nationality.
All Muslims, in other words, belong to one community, the umma, irrespective of their ethnic or national background.
The initial growth of Islam was nothing if not explosive: within two centuries after its 7th-century rise, Islam spread from its original home in Arabia into Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain to the west, and into Persia, and India to the east. In the following centuries, Islam also reached Anatolia and the Balkans to the north, and sub-Saharan Africa to the south.
Today, the Muslim community comprises well over 1 billion followers on all five continents, and, statistically, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world.
The country with the most Muslims is Indonesia, followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh. Beyond the Middle East, large numbers of Muslims live in India, Nigeria, the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as well as China.
One of the reasons—if not the main reason—for this explosive growth of the Muslim community has been its openness to new members, and the ease with which you can join up. Children born to Muslim parents are considered Muslim as a matter of course.
Also, at any time, a non-Muslim can convert to Islam by declaring himself or herself to be a Muslim. A person’s declaration of faith is sufficient evidence of conversion to Islam and need not be confirmed by others or by religious authorities.
The Teachings of Muhammad
Muhammad, the founding prophet of Islam, was born circa 570 CE in Mecca, which at that time was the central city of the Arabian Peninsula.
Some 40 years later, Muhammad began preaching a new religion, Islam, which taught that there was one God, and that Muhammad was the last (and final) in a series of His Prophets and Messengers.
Through His Messengers God had sent mankind various codes and laws for living, culminating in the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam (whispered to Muhammad by the arch angel Gabriel).
These messengers, according to Muhammad, were all mortal men, who included, among many others, Moses and Jesus (whom Christians believe to be the son of God rather than a prophet).
Muhammad also taught that both the Christian Bible and the Qur’an are holy books, but that the two earlier Scriptures (referring to the Old and the New Testaments) had been altered over time from their original forms given by God, while the Qur’an would remain perfect, preserved by God from such distortion—implying thereby that Islam is, and forever will be, the best of all religions.
In addition to distinguishing itself from the Hebrew and Christian traditions, the new religion also taught that the God of Islam had, through the prophets and the Qur’an, provided humanity with the means to know good from evil. Therefore, on the Day of Judgment all people will be held accountable for their actions—ignorance no longer holding up as defense for doing evil.
Initially, Muhammad’s teachings met with severe and hostile opposition, and in the year 622 he fled Mecca and sought refuge in the city of Yathrib, as a number of his followers had already done. Upon Muhammad’s arrival, the name Yathrib was changed to Medina (meaning “the city”).
The date of Muhammad’s arrival at Medina was later set as the beginning of the 12-month lunar Islamic calendar.
The Five Pillars
During the ten years between his arrival in Medina and his death in 632 CE, Muhammad laid the foundation for the ideal Islamic state, and by its tenets formed around him a core of committed Muslims whose community life was ordered according to the requirements of his new religion.
In addition to general moral injunctions (many of which have their counterparts in all major religions), the requirements of Islam c
ame to include a number of institutions that continue to characterize Islamic religious practice today.
Foremost among these requirements are the five pillars of Islam: the essential religious duties required of every adult Muslim who is mentally able.
The five pillars are each described in some part of the Qur’an and were, in fact, already practiced during Muhammad’s lifetime:
The profession of faith (shahada),
Prayer (salat),
Almsgiving (zakat),
Fasting (sawm), and
Pilgrimage (hajj)
Although some of these practices had their precedents in Jewish, Christian, and other Middle Eastern religious traditions, as a group they do distinguish Islamic religious practices from those of her neighbors.
The five pillars are thus the most central rituals of Islam and constitute the core practices of the Islamic faith.
Polemical descriptions of Islam usually focus on and stress the Islamic concept of jihad. Jihad—considered by some Muslims to be the sixth pillar of Islam—is often, in these descriptions, understood to mean holy war. However, this Arabic word means “to struggle” or “to exhaust one’s effort,” in order to please God.
Within the faith of Islam, this effort can be individual or collective, and it can apply to leading a virtuous life; helping other Muslims through charity, education, or other means; preaching Islam; and (its most understood implication) fighting to defend Muslims.
Current Western media continue to focus on the militant interpretations of the concept of jihad, whereas most Muslims do not.
The Profession of Faith
The absolute focus of all Islam is Allah, the supreme, the all-knowing, all-powerful, and above all, all-merciful God.