I've been producing some pages on the major historical branches of early Christianity from 200BCE -> 400CE (gnostic, ebionite, pauline, arian, nicene) and have got the stage where I am writing on, basically, modern Christianity.

In the late fourth century, the Cappadocian scholars promoted a new understanding of the godhead, incorporating the Holy Spirit (the hot-topic of the 4th C!). The Nicene Creed of 381CE (not its more simplistic predecessor of 325CE), combined with the Cappadocian theology, to produce the form Roman Catholic Christianity which became the Western norm for over a thousand years.

But what do I call this 'normal' form of Christianity? I can't call it 'orthodox' because further splits in the Church were still to occur over the Trinity, resulting in different orthodoxes, I can't call it "Cappadocian Christianity" because no-one would recognize that as modern, and the title for my page at present is:

The Victory of Cappadocian, Pauline, Nicene Christianity from the Late 4th Century.

Hardly a catchy title. The file name, christianity_cappadocian-nicene.html is just as ugly.

Did anything particuarly interesting happen in Christian theology from the end of the 4th century to the 16th? I have glossed over chapters on Medieval Christianity whenever I stumbled across them.

The general trend I've noticed is that in history, the victorious parties that have got to define doctrine, have largely been the more violent, less spiritual, popularist, power-centric churches. Probably very telling that the 1000 years that followed was called the Dark Ages until the RCC's power was broken by Protestantism.

Example pages:

Early forms of Christianity: Who were the original Christians?
Ebionite Christianity (1st century)
Marcionite Christianity (2nd century)
Arian Christianity: The Father is Greater Than the Son (3rd century)

Illinois suburb library tells censor-happy dommies to have a nice warm cup of STFU.

To sum up: A group of roughly 5 or less families - which oh-so-conveniently happen to be affiliated with the same anti-choice dominionist-friendly organization that is hellbent on running out of town the new Planned Parenthood that opened in Aurora last year - complained about a local library that permitted its teenaged patrons to access the PP Teenwire website on its computers. Well, the library handed down its decision today, and the verdict is that Teenwire stays (albeit relocated under a different reference section).

Yay for common sense!

One librarian's response to a challenge to a children's book on gay marriage. Although dominionism is not explicitly mentioned anywhere, the letter is probably the most lucid refutation of the dominionist arguments for censorship in the U.S. that I have read.

There is apparently a proposal in the wings by Health and Human Services to kowtow to the religious right's desire to count the pill, the patch, IUDs, etc. as "abortion" because they *might* prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Just to be clear, this potentially would affect any organization that takes government grant money. Suddenly it would be up to them (for now) as to whether they felt like offering such medical services or not. If the legal status of abortion changed, though, they could conceivably be barred from offering such services.

I was alerted to this development by a friend of mine...his sources were Reproductive Health Reality Check (which links to the "leaked document") and feministing.com.

*sigh*

Tags: women's health
Current Mood: irate

Found this on crooksandliars just now. Can someone tell me what the hell these people were thinking? Putting a semi-automatic weapon in the hands of a teenager? Oh, well, that begs the question--WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

Now, I don't know if this church is a dominionist sect, but any church that thinks it's a-ok to give guns to children is something I think should be closely monitored., after all, they like to call themselves God's Army. , don't they? This is outrageous.

Wow. Just wow.

http://www.koco.com/news/16860079/detail.html

(Oklahoma City):

An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event’s organizers was unable to attend.

The church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it’s a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.

“We have 21 hours of preaching and teaching throughout the week,” Ross said.[..]

“I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill,’” said Ross. “That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”

Ross said the conference isn’t all about guns, but rather about teens finding faith.

Current Mood: hrrified

Athiest sues for discrimination in the army...


I find this really horrible and worrying-- while there is no direct reference to Dominionism in the article, lines such as this: "A spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform empowered by the Holy Spirit."
start to look like the particular branch of Christianity the soldiers are expected to embrace is one of the dodgy ones.

Michael Weinstein, a retired senior Air Force officer and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is suing along with Hall. Weinstein said he's been contacted by more than 8,000 members of the military, almost all of them complaining of pressure to embrace evangelical Christianity.

That is really, really messed up. They're there to do their job-- and it's tough enough without having fundies getting stuck into them.

The US Christian Military

Nothing there that many here have not seen or read about before, but it is good to see that this alarming issue is getting a wider airing.

Former state science director sues over intelligent design e-mail, from the Dallas Morning News.

A former state science curriculum director on Wednesday sued the Texas Education Agency and Education Commissioner Robert Scott, alleging she was illegally fired for forwarding an e-mail about a lecture critical of the movement to promote intelligent design in science classes.

Christina Comer, who lost her job at the TEA last fall, said in a suit filed in federal court in Austin that she was terminated for contravening an "unconstitutional" policy at the agency. The policy required employees to be neutral on the subject of creationism – the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans, she said.

The policy was in force, according to the suit, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism as science in public schools is illegal.

"The agency's 'neutrality' policy has the purpose or effect of endorsing religion, and thus violates the Establishment Clause" of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit said.

More at link.