Some of the most accommodating religions, as far as tolerance of local beliefs and customs go are polytheistic, that is have more then one god. Historically, most ancient polytheistic religion's gods varied widely from city to city and often Incorporated local gods and deities. Now when Christianity arose, along with the other monotheistic religions we know today, this tolerance disappeared, or did it?
Christianity is one of the most, if not the most wide spread monotheistic religion in the world, and a good chunk of those Christians are Catholic.Catholicism is the most accommodating form of Christianity, if not monotheism in general in this day and age. But is it really a monotheistic religion?
Obviously if you ask a Catholic they will tell you there is only one god, but if we widen our definition of god, or goddess, and we include subcategories such as demigods, then an interesting religious picture arises. We have God, who we can view as the head power, then we have his earthly emissaries, Mary and Jesus who people pray to for help, there not praying to god, they are praying to Jesus or Mary, effectively making Mary and Jesus demigods. Then we have the patron saints, these are like spirits, they look after a very precise area and so are prayed to for things within there jurisdiction, once again people are not praying to god to grant them luck in the mines today, they are praying to a saint who is jurisdiction is mining.
Now the place we see the most worship of saints is central and south America. Before the Europeans arrived and spread the word of "god" there was the Aztec, the Maya and Inca as well as the 1000s of smaller cultural groups, what did all these religions have in common? polytheism, so when Catholicism arrived it took hold and Incorporated many of the local beliefs, and now thanks to this, we can enjoy the the Christan blood cult we know as Mexican Catholicism. Now weather this is embraced by the pope or not is not important, its the fact that they identify themselves with it.
So whats this about? Catholicism rains supreme because of its ability to embrace and adopt local customs, and this is mainly possible because its core beliefs are basically polytheistic.
1 comment:
The story of early Christianity is rarely taught outside of individual study. This is because it is conservitial to all forms of groups. For example the very hardcore say that the religion has just been there underlaying throughout the entire history of man. Further there has been no 'evolving' of the religion and it has been the same since its induction.
THIS is a major aspect of religion. We want to have some security in the history and know it is infaliable. The problem in this logic is once you get into the history you start to realize that this simply is not true and some things are being hidden away for faiths sake :p.
The bible is one of those big thrones, was it written by man over a long period of time or handed down in one instance? If it was the first one then that means the bible is extremely questionable because humans at their core are manipulative in some extent. Meaning that some issues which are conservatial could just be political issues of the past that people keep bring up with reference to people who were complaining about them in the past. But if it was handed down then thats how its SUPPOSED to be, and not a Utopian view like others could view the world.
As far as saints go the idea was started in Europe, I do not know the exact time. Most religious practices that took place during pagan times; blessing of fields etc; continued to take place after the bishops took over the regions! Christianity was extremely adopting to local circumstances in its early reigns. Thats why war was so questionable. The kings, dukes, emporers etc of the area wanted to war, but Christianity is at its core a religion that was founded on the principals of peace!! Hints why they compromised and allowed individuals to be baptized after, or even on their death bed. Saints thus followed from the pagan beliefs of the regions.
For the most part the church would not of survived with out this flexibility. Given a lack of this the individuals would of had a very hard problem inducting the migrants of the period. If you look at a history of movement after the fall of Rome you notice that a ton of people suddenly shifted, especially pagans from the north into the southern areas, and most importantly a very large number of tribal inhabitants invaded Byzantines western provinces (Think Serbia and stuff.) all of this had to be taken into account with religious tolerance.
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