Church, state and doing what comes naturally

[naamagatus]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Kathryn Cawte" <kcawte at n...> 
wrote:
> 
> As barb points out historically religion, especially religious 
persecution, has been run by the State in Christian countries - Mary 
I burnt all the protestants she could and then when Elizabeth I came 
to the throne she returned the favour to the Catholics. And let's not 
forget that the Pope wasn't a seperate institution on his own he had 
an *army* for goodness sake at some points and when he didn't he 
>could demand that countries provided one for him! 

Definitely popes became political, secular powers. However, this was 
seen - at the time - as a corruption of the institution. When - 
Julian, I think? - rode to the war, with a sword in his hand, it was 
a tremendous shock for Christian believers. A landmark in the path to 
the Reformation.

>Religion and politics were deeply intertwined as can be seen by the 
titles of a lot of European Monarchs "His most Catholic Majesty" was 
the normal way of referring to the Spanish monarch, "Defender of the 
Faith" was a title conferred on Henry VIII by the Pope, then he broke 
from Rome and became the Head of the Church of England, the Holy 
>Roman Emperor etc etc. 
>In fact if during the medieval period you wanted to live in a 
country that *didn't* persecute its religious minorities - you needed 
to move to a Muslim country. Other than having to pay extra taxes 
Christians and Jews lived persecution free in Moorish Spain - which 
is more than the Jews could say in most other countries >in Europe. 

Only monotheistic religions were tolerated by the Muslim world. Jews 
and Christians were indeed tolerated as inferior citisens. Pagans, on 
the other hand, had to convert or be killed.

>And if you want evidence of how closely intertwined the state and 
the religious establishment were look no further than the standard 
version of the Bible used in the UK - the King James
> Version - because he was the one sponsoring the translation into 
English.
> 

I think there was some misunderstanding regarding my post. I don't 
think (and haven't said) that Christianity is tolerant. I said (or 
meant to say) that the current secular regimes of the Western world 
developed *from* Christianity. Of course Christianity is intolerant - 
as an exclusive religion (such as Judaism and Islam) it has to be. 

> And another thing - how seperate can religion and the secular 
spehere be when technically it is the duty of every good Catholic to 
try and *kill* the monarch (as was the case whenever England was 
ruled by an excommunicated monarch)!
> It was only in the 19th century (I think) that a Catholic could 
become a memer of Parliament (which had been banned under Charles II) 
and a Catholic still cannot become Monarch. In fact if you marry a 
Catholic you instantly remove yourself from the order of succession. 
The seperation of Church and state in effect stems from the French 
Revolution (and they've now taken it to the extreme that they are 
trying to claim that if I were to wear an ostentatious crucifix, or a 
Jewish skull cap or a Muslim headscarf in a state school I would be 
infringing the rights of others), which is where a lot of the 
political theories prevelent in the American Revolution came
> from.


But it was the Christian view of the world, as divided into a 
religious sphere and a secular sphere, that allowed the very 
formulations of enlightenment thought. In the same way, it was the 
Christian ontology, seperating matter from spirit that enabled the 
formulation of the natural sciences. I.e., the concept of a physical 
nature guided by natural *laws* (making divine intervention 
unnecessary as an explanatory mean). That doesn't mean that the 
Church encouraged the development of modern science, or was anything 
but extremely intolerant towards it. But that's the way ideas 
develop - it's a queer sort of genealogy sometimes.



Naama