Blog 9: Christendom

Having been raised in a Catholic household and attended a Catholic high school as an atheist, I'm pretty familiar with Christian indoctrination. I've always been interested by the ways in which Christianity plagued the world. I don't mean that all Christians are bad, but rather the incidents of when Christianity failed to uphold the mission of peace and love is has so long claimed to carry.

To me, the most interesting part of the text was that which discussed the "crusading tradition" of Christianity. Despite proclaiming peace, Christianity was often time spread through territorial conquest. As a Christian culture over-threw a non-Christian society, the new culture indoctrinated the old. Ultimately, the old culture was forced out in the name of the new, and more powerful culture which had won control.

As the Crusades demonstrate, religious wars don't often appeal to the ideals of the religion the hail to. By way of destroying other cultures, Christians were not exactly "loving thy neighbor" as Jesus may have intended. If you "love thy neighbor" should you not accept them for their differences or rather, battle them to submission and force your values upon them? The Crusades obviously did the latter.

I find this next image to be particularly relevant in the discussion of religion and its influence or effectiveness in the world. Just some food for thought, I suppose.