Skip to main content

The Reformation Didn't


It has been almost 500 years since the Great Reformation in Europe, when the Church that had been the symbol-bearer of the society split apart, most notably between the establishment, centered in Rome, and the followers of Martin Luther, located in Germany.  What had been the old Roman Empire and the uncouth Germanic tribes came raggedly apart; not along neat lines.

 The Roman Empire, the old Roman Empire, had stretched itself too far, and had found itself, a thousand years earlier, coming undone.  The barbarians in the north--those Germanic tribes who did not understand that the Emperor was divine, and all that, crowded in.  The Jews, over there on the other side of the Mediterranean, had spawned a Jesus cult, and it was spreading like cancer.  So the Empire adopted the new religion for itself--you use the glue you can find--and the Holy Roman Empire was formed.  The Holy Roman Empire had, in fact, two heads:  the Emperor and the Bishop at Rome.

 Ever since, even now, even still, there are people who think that governments and religions are a kind of divine arrangement to be achieved.  Christians got used to the idea when their god took the place of the gods who came before them.  

 If you look down the street, or listen to the news, or Sunday sermons, you will hear the echoes of "a Christian nation", or "a white Christian nation", or--when it gets even darker and uglier--that people with other religions do not belong here, and ought to go home (or much worse!).  We have drunk deeply of the nectar of a State Religion:  we demand our leaders be religious in the right kind of way, we pray at football games and at picnics and at community meetings, and hang the Ten Commandments of Moses on the public school wall.

 Donald Trump does not seem to be a religious man--Shall I say it so nicely?--but he is on to something when he says he wants to make American great again, the way it used to be great:  Christian, white, male, and military.  He does not quite say he wants to restore the Holy Roman Empire.  He just means European, Christian, with male priests and female objects and real men in the home, the way it used to be for white Christian males.  

 And even one of the best of the recent popes occasionally says that maybe Christianity could be what it used to be.  Pope Francis, a few days ago, noted the centuries-long divisions in the western European and colonial church, and proposed that maybe we should all just get along again.  Maybe Lutherans should scrunch back alongside Catholics.  Without women in the priesthood, of course:  that, he said, will never happen!

And there we are, still:  the establishment, immigrants from uncouth places, women out of their places.  Yearning for the Holy Roman Empire, when Europe was great; when god and man, the bishop and the emperor, were great and got along, and when men were men, and women knew their place.

It sounds like an election year.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more