--- In [email protected], "Irmeli Mattsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is an interesting theme I have been pondering also. The way of > thinking that our religion, our belief system, is the best, and peace > and happiness for all humanity (or heaven on earth), is attained only, > when we have got victory over the other religions, belongs to certain > stages of moral development, most notoriously the mythical > fundamentalist stage. Only when you develop beyond that stage you > start to see the general pattern in it that is similar in many other > religions and what is created by that pattern. > > I belong to a spiritual organization, that doesn't see itself to be > the best. Rather seeing itself to be contributing to the progress of > humanity and the individual. It doesn't accept rigid doctrines at all, > only some general moral principles, one of which is to see the > differences between people as richness rather than a threat. This kind > of approach doesn't attract too many people.
But fortunately it still attracts some. I like the way my favorite songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, once put it: To be one more voice in the human choir rising like smoke from the mystical fire of the heart > I have been wondering why there are so many stable democracies only in > the part of the world where Christianity has prevailed for a long > time. Also those countries have been most successful in eliminating > poverty. I consider true democracy to be the most advanced form of > governance created by humanity so far. Has this progress happened > because Christianity has allowed more real human rights for women than > other religions? Or has this part of the world been capable of > maintaining those rights in spite of the religion? I'm not convinced that the correspondence between democracy and Christianity works quite the way you are envisioning it. :-) The first democracies (America and France) were conscious revolutions *against* the uniting of Church and State. When Jefferson spoke the words, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to any form of tyranny over the mind of man," he was explicitly referring to *religion* as the tyrant. Those words come from a letter he wrote in response to an attempt by a Christian group to take over a school system and impose a "proper" religious education on everyone. In addition, for almost a millenium Christianity has actively *suppressed* the rights of women rather than "allowing" them. It really started to get heavy in the 13th century, in the south of France. At that time, in that place, women had equal rights with men. Women could own property in In their own name, something that did not happen in the rest of France until De Gaulle. In the Cathar religion that sprung up as an alternative to the Roman Church in that area, there were equal numbers of men and women priests. Women were celebrated as artists, writers, and poets. The Roman Church reacted to this by creating two Crusades and the Inquisition to "deal with" this "problem" and basically exterminated 200,000 fellow Christians. They then set about reversing all of the advances that women had gained in that region and throughout Europe. So I would say that perhaps there IS a relationship between democracies and Christianity, but would suggest that if you look into that relationship more deeply, you might find that the democracies were created to *stop* the tyranny of Christianity rather than created as an expression of it. Barry/Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
