Religious links

[erudito]

Difficulties over direction of prayers in Indonesia.

New York ad man 5 days a week, shaman one day a week. There is now shamanism online.

An Orthodox Church destroyed by 9/11 is apparently not going to be rebuilt.

A nice post on the complexities of al Andalus.

Wrestling with what a religion is, means and differences in perspective in the

Comments

[marycatelli]

In the last story, there is the trivial little difference that the Nazis were openly and avowedly anti-Christian. Some of them tried to revive pagan religions -- though Hitler did not want to approve as he wanted them solely devoted to Germany.

Yes and no

[erudito]

Almost all the key organisers of the Holocaust were born and raised Catholic. (The rest were Protestants raised in Catholic milieus.) The Catholic Church had put centuries of effort into demonising the Jews. Supporting Jew-hatred was one of its prime responses to the pressures of modernity. The Nazis put effort into co-opting various Christian Churches and, at least rhetorically, Hitler put effort into presenting himself in a favourable light to Christian sentiment.

Pointing out the anti-Christian element in Nazism does not actually get you all that far. Particularly as the Holocaust put together two principles which had been part of Catholic teaching for centuries -- the degradation of the Jews and social purification through slaughter (that is, after all, still their theology of Genesis 19 and turned up in all sorts of documents and forms: it is still Catholic teaching that the same-sex oriented are metaphysically deformedThe Holocaust really was just a great big pogrom, and followed the patterns of a pogrom down the centuries --

Re: Yes and no

[jordan179]

Though of course the Holocaust took place at a time when most of the West had turned away from that interpretation of Christianity. By the year 1800, and certainly by 1900, most Catholic and Protestant sects were no longer murderously hostile toward the Jews. Ironically, given Hitler's hatred of the Slavs, it was more akin to what Tsarist Russia had been doing right before the Tsarist collapse; it was more an Eastern Orthodox behavior.

Re: Yes and no

[erudito]

The Catholic Church had always opposed outright killing of Jews: that is not the point. The point was that it put lots of effort into making Jews profoundly morally problematic -- and was continuing to do so. The Church bitterly opposed Jewish emancipation, for example. It was also still committed to the accusation of Deicide. It is a case of ideas have consequences: that the dark side of Christian tradition was real, toxic and not erased simply because the Nazis were anti-Christian or took Jew-hatred further than the Catholic Church was ever willing to do.

[cutelildrow]

The last two points you listed were very clearly illustrated in the last big discussion I had on my journal (a discussion that was cut off because I had a funeral and a 4 day wake to attend) - both tashiro (on his own blog, at any rate) and mikepictor dismiss the evidence before them as painting with the broad brush, or 'preaching to the choir' and being 'unable to convince anyone of the opposing point of view otherwise'. They readily painted the evils of Christianity but chose to keep the evils of Islam to be blamed on the individual. mikepictor in particular, railed at the broad brush that I smacked him with after he used it on me

Annoyingly persistent minority

[erudito]

The Jews suffer from being, to various folk for various reasons, annoyingly persistent in being themselves, rather than accepting whatever makeover is being insisted upon this particular century or centuries.

I am very interested in the dynamics of monotheism, but it is important to understand the differences between the broad versions, and different strands within them. The Ismailis, the Kurds and the Kossovars are not the same as Saudis or Iranians, for example. And well, lots of Iranians are not like that either.

As for the performance of the Catholic Church: on balance, inadequate compared to that of the Greek Orthodox Church, which was in a much more vulnerable position. (Not a lot of Orthodox soldiers in the German armed forces: lots of Catholics though.) But Germans from Catholic parts of Germany and Austria were much more likely to be death camp guards than Germans from Protestant parts. As A. J. P. Taylor noted, (Protestant) Prussia had a better record of resistance to Hitler than (Catholic) Austria.