Looking into the shadows of the history of Christianity

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Sep 29, 2004

First off, I am a christian, so please do not think I am trolling. To the best of my knowledge, everything stated is factual.

ANTI SEMITISM by Christians:

315 (AD): Constantine established religious tolerance for christians, though Jews lost m ore rights. Jews no longer allowed in Jerusalem.

415: St. Augustine writes, "The jews will forever bear the guilt for the death of Jesus." Other early Church Fathers echo this sentiment and write of the perpetual punishment and slavery of Jews by God.

613: Spanish persecution begin in earnest: "convert or leave!" Jewish children over 6 kidnapped and given christian education.

722: Leo III outlaws Judaism altogether and Jews were baptized against their will/

**1096 First crusade launched. As soldiers passed through, Jews heard "Christ killers, embrace the cross or die!" 12,000 Jews in Rhine Valley alone killed in 1st crusade.

1099: Crusaders force all Jews of Jerusalem into symagogue and set it on fire. Those who tried to escape were forced back into the burning building.

1141: 2nd Crusade- Monk Calls for destruction of the Jews.

1179: 3rd latern Council state in Canon Law: "Jews should be slaves to Christians and at the same time treated kindly due to humanitarian considerations" (how nice of them).

1215: Segegation: 4th Lateran Council: "Jews and muslims shall wear a special dress." Practice of requiring Jews to wear special Badge in form of oval or ring begins.

**1321 5,000 Jews Burned alive at the stake in France, accused of poisoning wells.

14th century: Black plaque takes millions of lives. Jews, as scapegoat and rumors spread that satan was protecting the jews because they died in smaller numbers. SOLUTION: torutre, murder, and burn Jews. EX: Trench dug in tours, france, filled with blazing wood and 100's of Jews burned in a single day.

1492: Queen isabellas Panish Inquisition

Ghettos created.

1915: 600,000 Jews expelled to russian boarders. Estimated 100,000 die on move.

________________________

Luthers solution to the "Jewish Problem"

1543: Martin Luther, distressed by the reluctance of jews to convert to christianity wrote "On the Jews and their lies, On SHem Hamphoras":

"What then shall we as christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?

First, THeir synagogues or churchs should be set on fire...

Secondly, Thier homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed... they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like Gypsies.

Thirdly, they should be deprived of thier prayer books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught.

Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more...

Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should absolutly forbidden to the jews...

Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury ( charging money for intrest). All thier cash and valuables of silver and gold ought to be taken from them and put aside for safe keeping.

Secenthly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the axe, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle and let them earn their bread by sweat of their noses as in enjoied upon Adam's children...

To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your dominions, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilsh burden- the Jews."

This is luthers take on Jews.... The founder of the prodistant church.
___________________________

Holy War/Mass Murder Passages in the Hebrew Bible:

Exod. 12: 29-30
Exod. 15: 3-7**
Exod. 32: 26-28***
Exod. 17:14

Num. 25: 1-9**
Num. 31:1-38**

Deut.2:34-35**
Deut. 3:6-7
Deut. 7: 1-5**
Deut. 13:12-18
Deut. 20: 2-4
Deut. 2010-18**

Josh. 5:13-15**
Josh. 6:17-21**
Josh. 8:24-28
Josh. 10: 28-40

1 Sam. 15:3
2 Sam 8

1 kings 18:17-40**
2 Kings 2:23-24**

______________________

Your thoughts?

Thursday · Sep 30, 2004

I am ashamed at the history of how some Christians have treated the Jews. The best thing to do is turn nd work for change in the other direction.
Pope John Paul II is a wonderful example of this

Check this article:

Pope John Paul II and the Jews said:
Jews in 1978 were not at all sure what to make of a Polish pope. Yet he has come, despite a number of difficult controversies over the years, to symbolize for them much of what is best in Christianity.

Pope John Paul II was the first pope to visit a death camp, Auschwitz, in 1979. Auschwitz is the symbolic center of Jewish remembrance of the Shoah (Holocaust).
The communist government, as it had done in Babi Yar in Russia, had built a monument at Auschwitz that obscured what took place there for the Jews, making it a memorial to humanity in general. Memorial stones in many languages were laid out to represent the countries from which people had been taken by the Nazis. Ignored was the fact that most of the victims were Jews and that many others were Poles.

The pope went first to the Hebrew inscription and prayed there. Rising, he went to the Polish stone, prayed and then departed.
It was a subtle rebuke of communism's attempt to deny the Jewish reality of the Shoah.

Pope John Paul again made history in 1986 by being the first since St. Peter to visit and pray in a synagogue (though his gesture had precedents in visits by American bishops to synagogues). The pope condemned anti-Semitism as "sinful." He also affirmed the validity of Jewish faith and of God's covenant with the Jews: "The Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us but in a certain way intrinsic to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and, in a certain way, it can be said that you are our elder brothers."

Though some Jews thought this referred to the biblical Jacob usurping the divine promise from his elder brother, the reference was most likely to Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son in which the father reassures the elder son: "My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours" (Luke 15:31).
Pope John Paul II in 1987 met with the Jewish leadership of both Poland, which had the world's largest Jewish community before World War II, and the United States, which now does.

---In Warsaw the pope called Jewish witness to the Shoah a prophetic and salvific "warning voice for all humanity."

---In the United States the pope called for Holocaust education on every level of Catholic education and urged the world to recognize the Jews' right "to a homeland."
And in 1994 the Vatican and Israel entered into a "Fundamental Agreement," exchanging ambassadors the next year. The exchange removed what had been a major block in Jewish-Catholic dialogue. (Jews thought the church had refrained from recognizing Israel for a theological reason based on the ancient "deicide" canard that God, punishing the Jews for their role in Jesus' death, cursed them to wander forever without a homeland.)

When the newly reunited Germany sent its first ambassador to the Vatican in 1990, the pope spoke for the first time of "the heavy burden of guilt for the murder of the Jewish people" that for Christians "must be an enduring call to repentance." In 1994 the pope presided over a Holocaust Memorial Day concert within the Vatican itself.
During the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul led a liturgy of repentance in Rome in which he articulated the church's sorrow over seven major categories of pervasive Christian sin over the centuries; one category included sins against Jews over the centuries.

Only a few days later, the pope went to Israel. His predecessor, Pope Paul VI, had briefly come to Jerusalem in 1964, but this was the first extensive visit by a pope to the Jewish state.

As was his custom, the pope kissed the soil of the land he was entering and listened to its national anthem. Many people in the Jewish community wept to see this.
The pope then visited Yad VaShem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, meeting there with a group of survivors, among whom were people from his own hometown in Poland.

Finally, Pope John Paul went to the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Jerusalem Temple. There, like so many humble Jews before him, he placed a prayer of petition to the God of Israel in a crack between the stones; this prayer reiterated the prayer from the year 2000 liturgy of repentance.

The pope's prayer affirmed in the strongest way possible that anti-Semitism has no place in the church. The prayer acknowledged the legitimacy of Jewish faith and the church's debt to Judaism for having given the world the revelation of God:
"God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations: We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant."

http://www.the-tidings.com/2004/0917/fisher.htm

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Sep 30, 2004

realizing your catholic, I will try not to make it seem I am attacking you personally. I shall speak openly and honestly. I feel the catholic church carries 0 weight with what they say due to the scars they carry from thier past, and thier open wounds from thier mistakes presently. I do not wish to share details.

Thursday · Sep 30, 2004

You have the right to your opinion. And I'll not try to deny that the Church has done some terrible things in the past. But please remember to separate dogma and doctrine from actions and politics. And most importantly, the pope has apologized on behalf of all Christians to the Jews for crimes committed centuries and millenia ago.

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Sep 30, 2004

"the pope has apologized on behalf of all Christians"

unfortunatly that doesn't mean very much. Sure, the pope is in the right, but one mans appollogetics cannot plotch out a millenium a religions' imperfection, especially when it came with a cost of a million innocent lives of another religion.

Thursday · Oct 1, 2004

You are right, we cannot change the past. Time travel is impossible. But we can make a new future, and I'm glad that is being worked out right now.

Christopher Fox · Oct 1, 2004

It is important to recognise the church's guilt for these historical crimes against the Jews (and others) But the church is a living organism. At this precise point in history it is the sum of all its current members. Whilst we should never forget the past, neither should we let it cast its shadow into the present and future that we seek to create.

It is much, much more important to eradicate prejudices such as anti-semitism from the current church than dwell forever in a past that we cannot change.

Chris.

Russebby · Oct 2, 2004

You certainly did your homework. A few more aggressions I would like to add, a few more indiscretions against humanity that good God-fearing people did in the name of God.

1215: In a forgotten episode during the Crusades, the Pope urged the Christians of Europe to eradicate infidels from Europe where they could. This resulted in the "ethnic cleansing" of the Albigensians, a Manichean sect in southern France. In a ghastly show of Christian love, the Christians under papal authority slaughtered the Albigensians, and within thirty years the dirty deed was done. Never forget that genocide involves women and children.

1400's: Portuguese explorers and traders first began to import African slaves, using scripture to validate their deeds. Begin four hundred years of subjugation of the indigenous African peoples to the antics of the so-called Christian peoples. Never forget that people who honestly saw themselves Christian--like John Calhoun of the US in the 1830's--firmly believe that God provided for Caucasians the Africans to serve them, and that scientists of the Christian world even into the 20th century tried to prove Africans inferior and brutish.

1500's: Spanish conquistadors and Jesuit priests rode side by side in conquering the Americas and Christianizing the local populations. From 1519 to 1890 the Europeans subjugated the Native Americans from the Arctic to the tip of South America genocidal warfare, disease, slavery,and torture defined the Christian aspects of the missions. Of the three G's--gold, God, glory, it is the second G and the genuine want to spread the Good News mixed with greed and vanity that made God-fearing people manipulate scripture in the want to subjugate another people to the Christian cause.

I am a Christian and have taken Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I also have a degree in history and am a perpetual student of the human condition. And it amazes me the things mankind has done in Jesus's name. I do hope in the future that we as individuals take the Gospels to heart, that we stop letting denominations do the thinking for us, that we use the Scriptures to inform us of what work we must do as Christians to make this world a better place instead of using it to validate our darkest passions.

fragile one · Oct 2, 2004

Well, this is really interesting. Christians are actually admitting that there are things that happened in the past of Christianity that are horrific? I'm shocked. Literally. The Christians I know try to justify what happened or explain it away.

Interesting.

BigEd · Oct 4, 2004

yes christians have made many mistakes in the past. I think this has happened for two reasons. 1. when the church becomes part of the state. ( as in the dark ages and middle ages when the papacy became very much a secular governement). 2. when the church has a greater focus on spread and perpetuation of its culture, governemnt or econmonic forms instead of spreading the gosple ( we saw this alot in european and american imperialism).
i can find this somewhat disturbing this day, when christians in america are becoming better know for our political stances rather then our following of Christ.

Douger · Oct 4, 2004

Whaoh! you guys figured out that man is evil and the church is full of hypocrites, yep there are still plenty of them today, in fact there's one in the whitehouse who mixes mass murder with bible scriptures and there's a bunch of so called christians who back him up. Reminds me of the Nazi church. (yep there was a nazi so called church, with alters baptisms and the works, though probably the last place in the world God would hang out in.)

And guess what? Jews have commited there share of evil too. Look at the Bolsheviks and the current state of Israel. Basically mans a mess when he rejects God's ways whether he call himself a christian jew or what have you

Douger · Oct 4, 2004

sorry, repeat of original post

Douger · Oct 4, 2004

yep man is evil when he doesn't know God and even worse when he thinks he does but doesn't obey a word of God's laws. I know of some so called Christians today who are no better than the ones who slaughtered the jews all those years ago

And the Jews have their fair share of crimes (bolshevik revolution and current state of Israel to name a couple. not to mention persecution of early christian church

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Oct 5, 2004

Douger said:
Whaoh! you guys figured out that man is evil and the church is full of hypocrites, yep there are still plenty of them today, in fact there's one in the whitehouse who mixes mass murder with bible scriptures and there's a bunch of so called christians who back him up. Reminds me of the Nazi church. (yep there was a nazi so called church, with alters baptisms and the works, though probably the last place in the world God would hang out in.)

And guess what? Jews have commited there share of evil too. Look at the Bolsheviks and the current state of Israel. Basically mans a mess when he rejects God's ways whether he call himself a christian jew or what have you

hmmmmmm...

Bush and mass murder?**thinks** I don't see it.

What YOU may not realize is that I am a christian and am the one who created this thread and another thing you may not realize is that I am also a soldier who is for this war.
There IS justification in liberating a nation from a tyrant.

And yes, jews have done thier evil to, but I will tell you that it is not even comparable to the flip side.

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Oct 5, 2004

Douger said:
yep man is evil when he doesn't know God and even worse when he thinks he does but doesn't obey a word of God's laws. I know of some so called Christians today who are no better than the ones who slaughtered the jews all those years ago

And the Jews have their fair share of crimes (bolshevik revolution and current state of Israel to name a couple. not to mention persecution of early christian church

???

Dude, we are defending israel as a country. Yeah, there are SOME Jews taht hate us christians, who wouldn't after how we have treated them. A few of one religion is not comparable to a whole religion through out centuries.

Paladin Dave · Oct 5, 2004

I have heard of this nazi church. Bad news from what I hear. You know, I'm pretty sure there are more nazis in america than in germany, which is odd since we fought them so fervently in WW2. But anyways, ya, there has been a lot of corruption in the church, and it is people who think the church to be infallible that allow it to grow, or atleast that is what I believe to be a major factor in it. Also, although I can't seem to recall any mass murdering done by our president, I was not keen on us going to war. Yes, it was a good thing to do, but we didn't take our time on it, and we should have. We didn't spen much time planning, and it is evident in the way that our government was so surprised that the Iraqis didn't immediately welcome us in and set up a democratic government. They really forgot the culture of that land, and they are being hypocritical by claiming to make a government of by and for the iraqi people, but not letting them choose how it is set up and run. I mean, I like Alawi, but he was put in by us, and he was not elected. I realize the importance of making Iraq a democracy, but it is going to take for freaking ever for it to take effect. And we should have waited for more UN support so that we could have more UN peacekeepers patrolling the streets and watching for insurgents than American soldiers. However, we really deserve to do this on our own because there were no terrorists in Iraq before Saddam went down the tubes, because they were bad for his government, and he didnt let em hang around. Now that he is gone, the terrorists have been pouring over the border to make it a breeding ground for terrorism. We could have waited. Don't let anyone tell you that Saddam was a threat, becasue he wasn't, and we steamrolled his armies in no time flat. There is no way he could have built a gigantic army or made tons of lethal WMD's in the time it would take to get more support from the UN, because he already had 20 years to do it. Saddam may have been a lunatic, but he wasnt stupid, he knew better than to challenge us, and the reason he is in prison now is probably because he never turned in the paperwork for destroying his weapons. I mean, the inspectors havent found any, and neither have we. All we can really do is hope for the best, because we are in there and can't get out until the job is done, so we have to make up for our mistakes, but theats what it was. A mistake.

Douger · Oct 5, 2004

Dude, we are defending israel as a country.

What buisness do Christians have defending a country that exists on theft slaughter and opression

who wouldn't after how we have treated them. A few of one religion is not comparable to a whole religion through out centuries.

Are you trying to say that all Christians throughout history have persecuted the Jews?

What YOU may not realize is that I am a christian and am the one who created this thread and another thing you may not realize is that I am also a soldier who is for this war.
There IS justification in liberating a nation from a tyrant.

Think about what you're saying. You are a Christian who supports "freeing" people by killing people and then occupying the survivors land. :sick:

That is so not Jesus. You want to debate that? then show me where in Jesus teachings that is justified.
Oh by the way, most Iraqis don't even want the Americans there.

Russebby · Oct 6, 2004

Douger said:
And the Jews have their fair share of crimes (bolshevik revolution and current state of Israel to name a couple. not to mention persecution of early christian church

Sorry, Doug, gotta call you out on these. History chould never be seen through hindsight; real historical scholarship comes when we put ourselves in the place of the people we are studying, when we consider the climate of time and place. Honest pursuit of history does not come from playing Monday morning quarterback, but from empathy.

As such, I hardly blame the Jews for joining with hte Bolsheviks in 1917 Russia. Considering how the czar used Jewish villages as personal pinatas for centuries, I can see how Jews could seek a solution that promised to rid them from their feudal overlords. In their eyes, anything had to be better than being perpetual Russian serfs. If Vladimir Lenin comes to your downtrodden village promising equality in wealth and an end to class strata, and you and your family had always lived on a subsistence level, I could hardly blame you for fighting to unshackle yourself from the czar's tyranny and to better your life.

Modern Israel has plenty to answer for in terms of how it deals with Palestinians. But I ask you how you view the American saga against terrorism. I don't know your stance, but there are plenty of Americans that want to nuke the whole Middle East, that thought Abu Ghraib should have been ignored, and that we should cut off Arab heads in this country. We in America still have the luxury as of this date to talk like this, the war is 7000 miles away from home. But Israel has to deal with this in their front lawns, and they've had to deal with it for fifty years. There is no religious zeal in how Israelis deal with Palestinians, so I think trying to lump what Jews are doing here and now to the thread topic of the horrific things done in the name of Christ is a stretch at best.

Persecution of early Christian Church?? Unless you are talking about when the Jews chose Barrabas over Jesus, I have no idea where this comes from. Christians and Jews were both persecuted by the Romans, so it you're going to go after anyone, go after Rome. The Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 anno domini, dispursing the Jews--how in the world could there have ever been any organized Jewish persecution against Christians? And even if there was the teeniest tiniest bit, I would think 2000 years of Christian brutality of the Jews during the Crusades, Black Death, Inquisition, and the Holocaust would more than offset anything Jews might have done in the scant few years between the death of Jesus and the destruction of the temple.

I think your feelings about the Jews are a little overboard.

xtxArchxAngelxtx · Oct 6, 2004

Douger said:
What buisness do Christians have defending a country that exists on theft slaughter and opression

Are you trying to say that all Christians throughout history have persecuted the Jews?

Think about what you're saying. You are a Christian who supports "freeing" people by killing people and then occupying the survivors land.
That is so not Jesus. You want to debate that? then show me where in Jesus teachings that is justified.
Oh by the way, most Iraqis don't even want the Americans there.

Maybe because those who defend israel are looked upon as "good" in Gods eyes.

And no, christians have persecuted jews about a 100 times more than Jews persecuting us.

"You are a Christian who supports "freeing" people by killing people and then occupying the survivors land. :sick:

"

Uh... the people we killed were those who were hostile to us and to the iraqi non combatants. Do some reaserch outside of the media like I did, which is fist hand.

"Oh by the way, most Iraqis don't even want the Americans there."

Says the media in a chaotic situation in which they have no clue as to what is going on.

I have heard stories, seen pictures, seen physical evidence of the other way around. Sorry, the iraqi's need us. I should be seeing it first hand here within a year and I will be more than willing to help those people who need us.

fragile one · Oct 7, 2004

Paladin Dave said:
I have heard of this nazi church. Bad news from what I hear.

The Nazi Church was a scary thing. From research (not conducted by me), approximately 90% of Protestants in Germany either actively or passively supported Hitler and the Nazi party. I believe the number of Catholics actively or passively supporting the Nazi party was a bit lower, but still at least 80%ish. There are accounts of priests and pastors putting swastikas beside the cross, requiring Nazi party oaths of loyalty for leadership in the church, the HJ pretty much taking over church youth groups with the churches' blessings, praising Hitler for wanting to deal with the "Jewish vermin," and leading benedictions and prayers in "the names of our Fuhrers: Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler." :sick:

(some of the sources for these accounts: "Betrayal" by Ericksen and Heschel; "The Third Reich and the Christian Churches" by Matheson; and "For the Soul of the People" by Barnett).

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