Self-inflicted ignorance of history can be devastating

The first stirrings of what we now call Christianity can be found 2,000 years ago in Judaism, which is almost twice as old.

But both faith traditions have evolved from their origins in ways that some of the early adherents might not recognize. For instance, although Jesus once prayed (John 17:11) that all of his followers would be one, today adherents to Christianity are divided in thousands of ways, including the broad divisions of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism, to oversimplify history.

And yet oversimplifying history can be profoundly misleading. We simply cannot understand the religious landscape today without some foundational grasp of what went before us and why. And if we lack that understanding we may add to the confusion and misunderstandings that have led to war and the dehumanization of our fellow human beings.

Consider, for instance, the "Doctrine of Discovery," (about which I've written several times, most recently here). It was promulgated in 1493, drawn from papal bulls that gave European colonizers theological and ecclesial permission to steal the land of Indigenous people and force them into Christianity.

Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University, digs into that sordid history in this article from The Conversation.

His focus is on how Indigenous people, particularly in the Americas, are continuing to weave their own historic practices into Catholicism today and how the slow-moving church is making accommodations to allow that to happen.

"Across the Catholic world," he writes, "the Vatican has been opening to multicultural Catholicisms in recent years." That and the fairly recent repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery by Pope Francis, Levey writes, have been "important as an institutional recognition of historical atrocities."

The process of how the church and Indigenous people live and learn together is far from over, but -- at least in the Catholic-Indigenous case -- that no longer seems controlled by the arrogance of religious leaders who have felt justified in imposing their strict vision of what religion should be on subjugated people.

This Catholic-Indigenous story is just one example of how religions and religious practices evolve. For me as a Protestant, although I find that an interesting story, my own obligation is to understand the roots of the Protestant Reformation and, from there, how the early work of the reformers led to the splintering of Protestantism into many branches. And, beyond that, how that history now helps to shape my own Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination and my own congregation, which dates to 1865.

History matters, both in how religions developed and how nation states came to be, including our own. If we ignore or minimize that history we are more likely not to notice when movements come along that want to undo the foundational principles on which our nation was founded. Is that happening now? Yes. Can we prevent it? Yes, but only if we understand our own history and why the founding principles still matter.

(The graphic above today came from here.)

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FIRST COMMUNITY CHURCH, INC.?

Some churches, this RNS story reports, are offering paid spaces in their parking lots and pairs of certified eclipse viewing glasses -- plus baptism -- for Monday's total eclipse of the sun. Not very capitalistic thinking. This is America, after all. Why not throw in a wedding and burial for a few thousand more bucks?

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P.S.: AIDS Walk 2024 in Kansas City happens Saturday, April 27, and, as usual, I'll be walking to raise funds to support the AIDS Service Foundation's great work. I hope some of you can join the walk. If not, feel free to make a contribution here. And thanks.