Instead of being a problem to the world they have been for 2000 years.
If they truly had practised love, peace and unifying mankind instead of wars, crusades, inqusitions, persecutions and other crimes.|||Not necessarily practicing peace and love but actually knowing and having a relationship with God. If we knew Him, everything will fall into place. There's too many "Christians" that have a crisis of faith that don't spend time in prayer and they don't even know what the Bible says, they come to these forums clueless.|||Credibility is based upon conformance to reality. Until such time as there is evidence of the god they believe in, there is no credibility.|||+ The Crusades +
Muslim armies had conquered Syria, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Sicily, Southern Italy, Cyprus, Rhodes, Sardinia, Majorca, Crete, and Malta which had been some of the most heavily Christian areas in the world. They attacked Rome and came within 100 miles of Paris before being pushed back.
Thousands, and possibly millions, of Christians died during this drive to eventually bring the entire world under Islam.
The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to check the advance of the Muslims and regain control of the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
If this defensive war was not fought then we would probably all be Muslim today.
I am sure that some atrocities were committed by individuals of both sides during this war but by most people's judgment this was a just war.
For more information, see:
+ The Crusaders by R茅gine Pernoud
+ The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996) by Bat Ye鈥檕r
+ God鈥檚 Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2009) by Rodney Stark
+ The Inquisition +
Modern historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. The Inquisition was actually an attempt by the Catholic Church to stop unjust executions.
Heresy was a capital offense against the state. It was considered a type of treason. Rulers of the state, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw heretics as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath.
When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig. It was not easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. The lord needed some basic theological training, very few did. The sad result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent judge of the crime.
The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, an attempt to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.
From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.
Most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or had their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed.
If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities with pleas for mercy that were frequently ignored. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.
Where did this myth come from? After 1530, the Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from the printing presses of Protestant countries at war with Spain accusing the Spanish Inquisition of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World. Most of these lies are still being circulated as fact.
For more information, see:
+ The Real Inquisition, By Thomas F. Madden, National Review (2004) http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/ma鈥?/a>
+ Inquisition by Edward Peters (1988)
+ The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen (1997)
+ The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction, By Marvin R. O'Connell (1996): http://www.catholiceducation.org/article鈥?/a>
+ The Church of the Apostles and Martyrs (1963) by Henri Daniel-Rops
+ Religious Dissent in the Middle Ages (1971) edited by Jeffrey B. Russell
+ The Inquisition (1927) by A. L. Maycock
+ The Inquisition: A Political and Military Study of Its Establishment (1932) by Hoffman Nickerson
+ Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (1978) by LeRoy Ladurie
With love in Christ.|||And now the torch has been passed down to the muslims who will cut a ***** for speaking ill of allah. If you poke fun at either religion, which one do you REALLY think is going to issue you a death threat?|||I completely agree. Instead of imitating the model Jesus' left for his disciples, they did the exact opposite. Instead of promoting peace and love among their neighbors, there wouldn't have been countless deaths over who's really the "right religion". And frankly, none of the Christian/Catholic churches have been fulfilling Jesus' biggest assignment to his disciples of all.
Matthew 24:14: "And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come."
No other organization has always promoted peace and love, remained completely neutral in any political or religious conflicts, and most importantly preached the "good news" to as many people as possible. Jehovah's Witnesses are currently preaching this good news of the kingdom in over 236 lands and in some 500+ languages. If you'd like to know more about the TRUE Christians, not according to what we say, but according to what the BIBLE says we would be, log on to www.watchtower.org or you can request a free home Bible study using YOUR Bible at your convenience.
https://watch002.securesites.net/e/conta鈥?/a>|||you don't have to be a christian to be a jerk|||i agree completely
however, in terms of wars and crusades - they aren't historically marked as as 'christian' endeavours - but rather land grabbing feudal lords - hungry for power and position, nothing to do with religion, but rather to validate claims in front of the pope.
there's been far too much political power attached to the term 'christianity' over the past - (well, thousand years rather than two thousand) - in europe. Asia has a much better history of christianity.|||They were not christians although they were called so!|||People saying that religion being the cause or the participants of violence and war is a response I have to agree with pretty much in my ministry. Then I have the task of showing people that not all faiths particularly like Jehovah's Witnesses who have participated in such terrible things.
In the First World War we had participated in non-combatant roles such as aiding battlefield hospitals but quickly came to recognise that even these roles supported war and compromised our neutrality to national politics and their military. Though we are completely neutral to earthly politics we are not pacifists since the government we stand and fight for is not an earthly one but a heavenly one and our nation's leader we fight; even prepare to die for is Christ Jesus.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment