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October 28 - Milvian Bridge Day
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE by which Constantine began the reunification of the Roman Empire by beating the Eastern emperor, Maxentius. It is at this battle that he is said to have seen a cross in the sky and heard a voice telling him that "In hoc signo vinces". Whether or not it happened that way, Constantine certainly converted to Christianity and went on to make it the religion of the state. He asserted and imposed the authority of the state over the church by calling councils, appointing bishops, etc. The following centuries saw this entanglement of state and church as the very basis of governance.
Today, there is a general assumption in the West and among liberal democrats (please note the lower case!) that state and church should be separated but the actual nature of the relationship between them is under examination. We hear calls from extremists of all faiths, including Buddhist, for an end to separation. As a corollary they usually envisage a system such as that of the Ayatollah's Iran where the religious authorities can, and do, overrule the political state.
On the anniversary of such a pivotal event for the whole of West, and at a time when the place of faith in governance is ambiguous, I find myself wondering..............................
Today, there is a general assumption in the West and among liberal democrats (please note the lower case!) that state and church should be separated but the actual nature of the relationship between them is under examination. We hear calls from extremists of all faiths, including Buddhist, for an end to separation. As a corollary they usually envisage a system such as that of the Ayatollah's Iran where the religious authorities can, and do, overrule the political state.
On the anniversary of such a pivotal event for the whole of West, and at a time when the place of faith in governance is ambiguous, I find myself wondering..............................
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Comments
Not that i would argue against secularism, but...
Did it ever occur to you that the most horrible idelogies of the last century were deeply unreligious, bolshevism even radically anti-religious?
And what Religion would that be? What humanity, greed, lust and egotism would ultimately be the religion that co-mingled with a State?
IMHO - we have plenty of history where Church has been too mixed up with State and it took us to some very bad places. We lost two very large buildings in New York not too long ago by people whose actions were being dictated by religious ideas.
Do we really need to go there again?
-bf
Whilst I am entirely in favour of a secular state, I am also aware that it is the two avowedly atheist regimes (USSR and PRC) which slaughtered larger numbers than any religious state.
BF: the attack on the twin towers or the Omagh bombing may have been committed in the name of a particular religious sect, just as our governments invaded Iraq in our name. Doesn't actually serve any useful purpose to blame the religion.
2) I'm truly not blaming any religion. I think that if one reads through the various teachings of major religions - the message of love, peace, compassion, kindness is overwhelming. Unfortunately, it's what happens to these beautiful stories, statements and teachings once humans get their hands (and minds) on them.
-bf
If you call the mass murder of people inquisition or cultural revolution doesn`t matter. Really.
It's written by a highly respected and authorititive writer, called Jack Holland, whom has now sadly died...His daughter approached nine different Publishing Houses before she could find one that eventually agreed to publish the book.
It is well-researched, unbiased and totally factual.
And I mention it, because Mr. Holland goes into great detail into just how instrumental The Emperor Constantine was, in authorising the dreadful treatment of women, in Christianity, giving not-so-tacit approval into their dominance and subjugation.... Extraordinary book....
I can't argue that point. It doesn't really matter what name people are murdered under.
It just seems that it is so much easier to whip people into a killing frenzy under the teachings of someone twisting various scriptures.
Ii think it's easier for people to kill themselves or others under the teaching that "by killing this heretic/infidel/moniker-of-your-choice, you will receive heavenly rewards in the hereafter".
But - Hitler did it to Germany under the guise of creating an Uber Deutchland that would last a millinea...
-bf
I am not arguing against secularism, but i have to admit I`d rather live in the Vatican than in North Korea. Marxist Buffons have killed millions of people simply because they belonged to the wrong caste. Alas, where`s the difference between marxist classes and hindu casts besides that the latter one at least has some metaphysics, where the former one is simply a fad of the industrial revolution?
For me there have always been univeraslists and seperatists, the former ones on could describe maybe today as humanists, the latter one`s are all but that, you find them in any religion, any state, any gender, any phenotype and so on. I merely say that splitting everything into religious and not religious, the first one being evil(TM) is misleading. And of course I do not want to have the middle ages back
-bf
It's also about groups of people, and who does or doesn't belong to the dominant group as in Germany during Hitler and Rwanda in the 90s and so on.
In a nutshell I think it could be said to be all about the misapprehension that we are separate beings from one another and that whatever makes one group different from another makes them a threat of some kind, whether that difference is religion, ethnicity, political ideology or even minority within the dominant group. Simply put, we don't get along because we're afraid. We're like Alzhiemers (sp?) patients becoming frightened and losing our tempers because we're confused.
It was after the battle of the Milvian Bridge that Constantine I established Christianity as state religion. He forced the legions to carry banners of Christ, convened councils of the church and set in train the whole structure of state-appointed bishops. As for his own, personal beliefs, there can be some doubt as to those - he was, after all, a consummate politician and you know what they are like!
If religions should remain free of blame, should it not follow that any ideology is also free of blame? I'm sure Marx did not intend slaughter in his manifesto, nor Nietzsche agree with Hitler's interpretation of his work.
May it be that any ideology is dangerous, whether religious or secular? A verse from the tao te ching reads 'a mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas'.
I don't think that one can ever blame an idea. To misquote the gun lobby: it's not ideas that kill people, it's people who kill people.
It would be simplistic, however, to suggest that ideas are not powerful. The Tao Te Ching makes it quite clear that, once the great Tao is lost, ideas arise. And it is the nature of samsara that the Tao is lost. It is a sad truth that the 'moderate person' is very different from the run-of-the-mill human, acting within a context and culture. Once again, whilst we may see flaws and pressures within that context and culture, they are not of a nature that can be blamed, only individuals who carry out actions and those who benefit can carry that responsibility.
And yet we find this idea within most of the cultural contexts, whether it be by warfare or by capital punishment.
If I remember correctly, violence was seen as neccessary means by marx to overcome the rule of opression against workers, nietzsche hailed war and destruction of weakness. This of course doesn`t mean they would have agreed with mass murder.
But still, we see that ideologies that propagate non-violence produce often violence by followers of them, then people start to argue about exceptions of the rule and the neccessety to break the sometimes, and so on.