It didn't. It took several hundreds of years to take a hold of people's fears and worries to subject them to eternal servitude to the ones that claimed they are superior.
One of the features of Christianity that made it popular was the idea that all are equal in God's eyes. The poor, enslaved, and downtrodden are no less worthy of God's love and attention than the most high Roman Senator. Even women were equal, a truly revolutionary concept.
This is really not true though. Hell, there were pagan religions that held women in higher standing and more equal to men than Christianity
One of the features of Christianity that made it popular was the idea that all are equal in God's eyes. The poor, enslaved, and downtrodden are no less worthy of God's love and attention than the most high Roman Senator. Even women were equal, a truly revolutionary concept.
One of the features of Christianity that made it popular was the idea that all are equal in God's eyes. The poor, enslaved, and downtrodden are no less worthy of God's love and attention than the most high Roman Senator. Even women were equal, a truly revolutionary concept.
Not really.
Telling women that they are inferior and that they should accept their abuse while they're alive just because they could end up in their religion's heaven is mental abuse, which religion, especially Christian religion, is an expert in.
Telling slave owners that they are blessed, for 1,000 years of practicing their actions, is one of the features of Christianity that made it what it is ... allowance for imposing suffering for one's finanial benefit.
Yeah, and the early Church, as well as Judaism actually made those principles realized in communnitarian, economic and social spheres in life.
Something American Right With Christians always try and avoid to defend their idol of Capitalism.
Too bad that communitarian thing usually doesn't work out. Venezuela seems to be the latest failure in that regard, even with all that oil money. Perhaps it is simply that the leaders of leftist governments are seldom christian.
Of course, the whole whole libertian/free market economy is being tried in Honduras, and it raced to the bottom of the scrap heap. And the president is very decisively Catholic
And the coup d’état, the resulting international sanctions, the crack down on the free press, and the rampant crime and human rights violations have nothing to do with their economic troubles. :roll:
Too bad that communitarian thing usually doesn't work out. Venezuela seems to be the latest failure in that regard, even with all that oil money. Perhaps it is simply that the leaders of leftist governments are seldom christian.
Venezuela is failing because it was a one Resource economy ... Not because it had anti-poverty campaigns and nationalized oil.
Pre-1970s, in Europe many socialist governments were explicitly christian, that was even the case in the US With MLK and Eugene Debs being the most famous examples of explicitly christian socialists, Hell Hugo Chavez, whatever you think of him, was the most vocally and emphatically Christian political head of state in the Americas at the time, the New guy not so much.
But the point is, whether or not leftist governments are or are not christian, doesn't change the fact that the communitarian and economic egalitarian principles in the scriptures and in Judaism and CHristianity are there and binding for christians today .... I mean if Nazi's and Stalinists were anti-abortion, that would say absolutely NOTHING as to whether or not CHristians should be anti-abortion, the scriptures dictate that a christian should be.
Stalinists and Nazi's also considered homosexuality and abomination, but that should have NO bearing on a Christians view on homosexuality as a sin.
The fact that in the United States most so-called leftists are also post-modern liberals who have no real moral grounding, doesn't mean that Christians should latch on to ultra Capitalism, which has been the most destructive force to communities, families, the Church, and is the nubmer one Idol of today and goes explicitly against Christian values.
Christianity appealed strongly to disaffected populations in the Roman Empire, which made up a majority of those who lived there. Paganism was more of a civic duty to Romans than a religion. Few Romans actually believed in the Gods. There was a sense that only the patricians of Rome had a legitimate claim on paganism. The pagan gods would take little heed of common people, so the common people needed a god to watch over them. That's what Christianity provided along with a revolutionary idea -- that all people are worthy of God's love and attention, the poor and downtrodden especially so. As Christianity became the dominant religion in the Empire the leaders gained a sense of responsibility for the poor and downtrodden that they may not have had before. That's not to say that pagan Rome had no charity, but that charity was more of the patron-client sort previously. If you were not potentially useful to some powerful patron you were pretty much out of luck.
No. Suffice to say that 2000 years of Christian scholarship, teaching, reflection and prayer say that the scriptures you refer to don't mean that we should all live as communists or that buying and selling or holding private property or having money are bad.
There is a crucial difference between the charity shown in the Book of Acts and throughout the Bible and the "charity" of a communist government, which is that the former is freely, personally, and voluntarily given in love for the glory of God, while the latter is coerced, impersonal, soulless, and godless. The idea that the scriptures seem to support communism is contradicted by the practice of communist governments.
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