The Course of Religious History

Vern Schanilec
March 4, 2018

About every 500 years something significant happens within religion. There’s always a give or take of 50 to 150 years so don’t set your fitbit by it, but let’s keep with the interval theme.

I will start with the time of Abraham around 2000 BC, give or take 100 years. You could ask why I don’t start with the mythic time of Adam and Eve. I don’t see their existence in the framework of religion because no formal institution was in place. God was still the boss.

Abram (whose name was lengthened to Abraham) is asked by God to walk with his family 1000 miles from today’s Persian Gulf, the land of Ur, northward up the Fertile Crescent of today’s Iraq as bordered by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers unto what was known then as Canaan. At the top of the Crescent his brother Haran was left behind along with his beautiful daughters Rebekah and Rachel who would later be courted by their cousins Isaac and Jacob. This was the origins of the Semitic group of Hebrews that institutionalized what later came to be known as Judaism.

Around 1500 BC, give or take 150 years, a famine strikes the Promised Land. Jacob is in charge and decides to go to Egypt for relief. He was not to leave the Promised Land, he was to trust that God would provide, yet, he and his family of 70 members left to be reunited with his politically powerful son Joseph. They prospered in Egypt’s Land of Goshen in the next three centuries, give or take 100 years, till a new Pharaoh came along and drove them to slavery, a period officially known as The Exile. Three centuries later, depending on whose calendar you reference, God tapped Moses to plead with the Pharaoh to let his people go and the Exodus unfolded.

Around 1000 BC, give or take a mere handful of years, David coalesced the Israeli Tribes into a confederacy, defeated the Philistines, and proclaimed a theocratic monarchy upon his famous march into Jerusalem. That lasted only as long as David’s heirs were able to mess it up “royally” (pun intended) and were back to being enslaved, this time in Bondage, being marched to Babylonia around 600 BC.

Around 500 BC, give or take 50 years, King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians, and upon discovering this large group of ragtag enslaved Jews, sent them back to Jerusalem to start over.

Around the time of Jesus’ birth the Jews were enslaved for the third and last time, this time in their own land by the occupying Romans and by 135 AD, give 135 years from Jesus’ birth (though the timeline for his birth is in question,) there were no longer any Jews in Jerusalem. The situation persisted until 1948 when they were foisted upon the Palestinians as recompense for the Holocaust. The bad news is they were foisted, the good news, there is a democracy amidst the Arabian madness in the Near East.

Around 500 AD, give or take 100 years, Pope Gregory I (also known as “The Great”) looked around, assayed the threads of the abandoned Roman Empire as a result of sloth, accompanied by raids by Goths and Visigoths, and stitched the Church back together in such a way that Constantine’s dream of a Christian Monarchy was ultimately realized within the Vatican, ultimately under the title of Holy Roman Empire.

Depending on your point of view for good or bad, holy or unholy, the Empire engaged in forced proselytization of the populace to Christianity to where the Bishop of Rome declared he was the superior bishop of the Empire, ultimately leading to the papacy. The Byzantine Bishop of Constantinople objected, bolted, and the Great Schism occurred, unhealed to this day, forming the Eastern Orthodox Church of which there are Greek, Russian and other divisions.

Around 1000 AD, give or take 50 years, the Empire began engaging in the Crusades to further their proselytization, and in an effort to retake Jerusalem from the resident Arabs. The Jews are potentially back in the middle of things even though, as of 165 AD, they were dispersed among the nations known as the Diaspora. The attempts failed. I wonder if they had consulted God.

Around 1500 AD, give or take 50 years, the Great Reformation coalesced as spearheaded by Martin Luther; along with Calvin, Zwingli, and others. Another schism occurred, splitting Christianity down the middle just as the curtain of the Temple was torn when Jesus died, the Gospel reports. The movement occurred due to the hegemony put upon the populace by the Vatican and it blew up in their face with little hope, again, of healing the schism.

2000 AD has come and gone. If you look around, have you witnessed a significant event occurring in the last 18 years in the area of religion? In retrospect, those who have acted in the name of religion have proffered: faith, lack of faith and oppression of the faithful by despots, ever encouraging revolution from without. If we agree we’re past due for a tumultuous religious experience perhaps we need give 50-150 years for such an event to occur and might make one wonder who or what would be behind the benevolence of second and third chances.

On the other hand, perhaps an event is actually in-progress. It may have started in 1850 with Lord Farrington teaching his students at the Royal Military Academy regarding the activity of invisible electromagnetic waves. In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,

which is controversial yet today, as it mapped evolution, to which scientists are in hot pursuit. In the 1890s men such as Julius Wellhausen began looking at the authorship and accuracy of the Bible, deducing that the Earth could not be just 6000 years old as it proposes; and that many hands were in its composition instead of, or along with such persons as Moses, or those whose name appears in its titles. That apple-cart is in full tipping mode today and will not be reconciled soon.

What this movement signaled is, that which heretofore was taken for granted as Biblical historical truth, is now being questioned by science. What has also heretofore taken for granted is that science is Godless, a point to which I take great opposition because, strange as it may seem, the godless scientists are now accompanied by scientist believers and those experienced of God. Their experience encumbers quite a different perspective, one of awe and reality, and free of institutional religion. And, as they pursue space, will ironically reveal to us how God is in fact the Great Scientist and guides humankind and the cosmos accordingly.

Religion took a sharp right-turn in 1959 when Pope John 23 announced his calling of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, known as Vatican II, an event incidentally, strongly opposed by his cohorts in the Vatican. He said he was told by God to begin a new Pentecost, a term I have not mentioned to this point but is nothing new since it jump-started the Church 2000 years ago, give or take 30 years. Pentecost had been abandoned and ignored since around 800 AD and I’ve already itemized the mayhem incurred by the empire-builders-that-be since that point in time, and what happens when the Pentecostal Holy Spirit is thus callously treated.

The Charismatic movement was born of the Council which encompasses all of Christianity and those who may inquire. Others will claim it was born in the 1800s due to the efforts of Joseph Smith, Aimee Semple McPherson and others. For believers and those who have experienced God, the lesson all along this sordid 2000-year history of Christianity is that unless you listen to God’s direction, crap will happen. Non-believers may demure. They and others could say, “Well, it’s the evil within the human condition that propels religious leaders to behave badly and God has nothing to do with it.” Perhaps. In which direction do you think the evidence points?

The Charismatic movement is composed of both the charlatans who use its properties for personal gain, and the faithful who look to God for guidance and healing. Side by side, the two forces pursue their goals. There are those concerned whether or not God will win the tug of war.

Will we know by the signs if something religiously significant is occurring among us? Look around, the signs are there. Governments are engaged in their corruption, the culture is steeped in violence and abuse, people are starving, despots oppress and murder their people and religious leaders practice their exclusivity. Are those issues (or signs) any different than what the 4000 year religious history demonstrates? Not in principle has anything changed but the magnitude has increased with the nuclear threat, the enlarged egos of despotic leaders who would conquer the world’s population if they could, and are trying, inside and outside of religion.

A march away from God is in progress of unprecedented volumes. Much is religiously self-inflicted due to the division and exclusivity practiced within Christianity, with which it seems quite comfortable. “Believe what you will, just leave me in my comfort zone.” Is the divide and ensuing exclusivity (therefore lacking inclusivity) in Christianity what Jesus taught and would see as compatible with what God wants for us? Another tug of war.

It’s déjà vu all over again, century after century, despot after despot, religious or secular. Our leaders apparently cannot and will not learn from history. It is believed by many that God stepped in to create change every 500 years, give or take. If so, then apparently we should be looking for that kind of spiritual guidance in our time, guidance so desperately needed and to which might awaken the world.

There is an enigma wrapped in an irony at work. First, one need consider if there in fact is a God. If no, we can still discuss the conundrum of, if there is a God who has taken great pains to set up a faith system, why do humans continue to operate as if in a vacuum apart from God, ignoring the perils of religious history? There seems to be a separation of levels between what God offers and the path humans pursue, ironically, in the name of God. What, if anything, can be done if our leaders will not change their ways?

“Vanities of vanities,” says the Preacher, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity”, so proclaimed the biblical teacher Ecclesiastes. Apparently the religious leaders of history are not aware of their own teaching.