Sheshonq

Correction: Paul's formula of equality of all believers in the Church. Those are two different statements.

1. Since Paul's vision of equality was limited to co-believers in the Church, the accomplishment is not as grand as you make it out to be. Equality of believers is found in many religions, including Islam.

2. You're also getting overwhelmed by your own love of flowery exaggeration. As far as general examples of society-wide equality and inclusiveness go, here are plenty of independent parallels in modern times. Gandhi, for example.

Incorrect. The Enlightenment rationalism of the 18th century arrived at a concept of human rights independent of the religious framework you propose.

Or someone actually familiar with the history in question. Someone who knew the material and wasn't merely looking to artificially inflate christianity's reputation.

Then your guarantee is worthless because you're wrong. Britannica:

Despite its brutality and inhumanity, the slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment began to criticize it for its violation of the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups condemned it for its un- Christian qualities. [


In which he is also incorrect. Consent was required for pre-christian germanic marriage as well as celtic tradition. In point of fact, the adoption of christianity set back the cause of women's rights in most places it was introduced in Europe. It wasn't until the Enlightenment, a thousand or so years later, that women would begin to regain some of the rights they lost when Christianity was adopted.

I'm glad you brought up Aquinas. He also rationalized slavery - but you knew that, right?

1. However being started in a church and using its facilities does not demonstrate that woman's suffrage was supported by the churches, whether you define that as either the broad organization of churches or the body of members.

2. The churches you list were the non-mainstream, non-traditional Enlightenment congregations present primarily in the Northeast: Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Irrespective of their denominational labels, they were out of the theological mainstream for their time. Their modern-day counterparts would be the liberal churches that shelter illegal immigrants, protest against the Iraq war, and treat gays & lesbians with respect.

3. AND FINALLY - the same abolitionists that you tried to credit christianity with? Guess what: they blocked the inclusion of woman's suffrage in the post-Civil War 15th amendment. Britannica again:

After the U.S. Civil War, American feminists assumed that womans suffrage would be included in the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited disfranchisement on the basis of race. Yet leading abolitionists refused to support such inclusion, which prompted Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a temperance activist, to form the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869.


Indeed.

My advice to you would be to put down your copy of D'Souza and open a good history book instead.

Sheshonq

No, it did not. It depended upon the sense of Enlightenment civilization that Britain claimed to inherit and post-WW2 fatigue from maintaining an empire under siege. And if you're laboring under the belief that Britain's response to Gandhi was measured and peaceful merely because Gandhi and his movement were peaceful, then you're obviously unfamiliar with the events of that period.

Then why have several other non-violent changes of govt occurred, in non-Christian (or nominally Christian) countries?

KrisK10

Can you give a specific citation?



Please provide your absolutely earliest example of a non-Christian person being against slavery (other than non-Christian slaves themselves).


Kris

Sheshonq

History of Islam course by Farhat Ziadeh, University of Washington. A similar encapsulation is found here:

In the years that followed, Muhammad worked to create a community based on shared religious beliefs, ceremonies, ethics, and laws--a community that would transcend the traditional social structure based on families, clans, and tribes, and would unite disparate groups into a new Arabian society. This work proceeded on several levels. First, the Quran set down the rituals of Islam. These include the five pillars of the faith: salat (ritual prayer); zakat (almsgiving); hajj (pilgrimage); the fast of Ramadan; and shahada (the obligation to bear witness to the unity of God and the Prophethood of Muhammad). The five pillars were derived from Arabian, Christian, and Jewish precedents and were public rituals that, when collectively performed, reinforced the collective awareness of the Muslim community and its members' consciousness of a special destiny. Brothers in religion shared alms just as clan brothers shared their livelihoods. Prayer, fasting, and the bearing of witness humbled men before God and made them open to his will. The pilgrimage was derived from an ancient Arabian rite. Almsgiving was a symbol of the renunciation of selfish greed and acceptance of responsibility for all members of the community of faith.


This total equality of all believers before God is reinforced each year during the hajj, which is meant to be a reminder of the reality of standing before an almighty God one day in judgment. The earthly equality is emphasized when muslims forego whatever they're used to wearing and all wear the same white simple gown during the season.

1. Hoping you realize that the text you quoted from my post actually came from Britannica originally, and not from myself?

2. To answer your question: Alcildamas and Philemon - 4th century BCE Greece.

KrisK10

Sheshong,

Your reference says:

"By the late 4th century BCE passages start to appear from other Greeks, especially in Athens, which opposed slavery and suggested that every person living in a city-state had the right to freedom subject to no one, except only to laws decided using majoritarianism. Alcidamas, for example, said: "God has set everyone free. No one is made a slave by nature." Furthermore, a fragment of a poem of Philemon also shows that he opposed slavery."


To what God was Alcidamas referring? Was he Jewish? Was Philemon Jewish too (I couldn't find his poem opposing slavery)?

Kris

Solo

But I have made the allowance that it was equality based on a religious belief. So I don't understand your protest. You are not denying, or are you, that Paul in viewing women and slaves as "equals" in his church, he was aeons ahead of hism time.


Kindly provide some sort of evidence that Islam had in its canon (Qur'an, Sirat, ahadith) a statement or statements affirming the equality before God of individual believers irrespective of their gender or social status. I am unaware of equality of moslem believers other than in duties and observances.

I am aware of Qur'an (sura 23:2) makes it lawful to lust after slave-girls, who are considered "God's booty" (sura 33:51) to a moslem believer. Again, I would be grateful to you if you pointed out some Christian canonical equivalent to viewing fellow believers (I am sure you know that all humans are born moslems, according to Islam) in a similar manner.



It was free from religious casting as I indicated. It is just a secularized form of the religious belief. That is why I bolded the truth being "self-evident". It needs no elaboration: it is plain as day for people who live under God (meaning in a Christian tradition), with whatever particular confession or lack thereof.


I am not sure what Britannica refers to. Neither the U.S. Bill of Rights nor the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, mention slavery at all. I am aware that there was "la societe des amis noirs" during the French Revolution which campaigned against slavery in Haiti. I am uncertain of its religious affiliation. (The one person who was campaigning in Haiti and France for civil equality for blacks based on rights of man between 1780-and 1800, Julien Raimond, did so on behalf of the "free people of color', not slaves.) Slavery was outlawed during the first Repuiblic but shortly re-instated in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Lousiana.

As for the British anti-slavery movement, it started with the Quakers no doubt. Its first proponent in Parliament, and the man who eventually won the abolition, William Wilberforce, was in fact a religious missionary.

For Germanic pagan marriages (as well as in Danelaw and other Viking societies) there was no requirement, even customary, for the woman's consent to marriage :

Marriage was a topic where Christian laws differed much from the older
Germanic. Prior men had become independent of their fathers at
puberty, but women were subordinated to their husband, their father or
their brothers. With Christianity the bride's consent was demanded for
marriage, prohibiting also the formerly customary marriage by capture,
as well as concubines.

Dowry and bride price (the latter paid at the betrothing) remained
customary. Divorces, which prior had been an equal right of booth
spouses, without demands on certain causes, were also prohibited
http://stason.org/TULARC/travel/nord...tian-laws.html
.......

Since marriages were arranged by the families of the bride and groom during the Viking Age, love between the two prospective partners was an insignificant consideration when compared to bride-price, dowry, political maneuverings and the like. The sagas support this view, for they "are not particularly interested in good marriages: post-nuptial remarks like 'their love began to grow' or 'their marriage became good' indicate that the couple is now out of the story" (Roberta Frank, "Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland," Viator 4 [1973]: p. 478). Such tags also indicate that the newlyweds were expected to forge a workable relationship after their wedding, as is the case in many arranged marriages. The Vikings did not practice what we would recognize as a courtship, in which a man and a woman could evaluate their comparability, or in which love could blossom: it was sink or swim within the bounds of wedlock.

Since there was no expectation that love should be a prerequisite to marriage, predictably there was less fuss over the prospective couple's consenting to the union. There are few indications in the sagas that the young man was asked for his opinion of the match (Jochens, Icelandic Heroine, p. 37): whether this reflects the assumption that his assent was required prior to the opening of negotiations, or the fact that a man was not overly concerned with the qualities of his prospective bride because of his easy access to concubines and other women during the marriage is unknown. The consent of the woman was definitely not required in the laws, being vested in her fastnandi, her father or guardian responsible for her interests during wedding negotiations (Frank, p. 477).
http://stason.org/TULARC/travel/nord...tian-laws.html

As for the Celts, it is a bit more complicated given the new "feminist" fads in anthropology. I have heard also that consent of the woman was required under the Brehon laws in Ireland. I remain skeptical, based on the saga of Branwen but admit that it is a possibility. At any rate, as I said, the church did not invent the consent to marriage, it re-instated it from the old Roman laws in Europe where the vast majority of women were either married by their kin, or abducted and claimed as property, or sold as brides. The Church declared such unions outside of holy matrimony, and legally invalid.


Like which rights ? The only one I can think of was a divorce and that one came a century after Enlightment. The Church canon law was generous though in granting "annulment of marriage" on number of grounds.

Look, I am perfectly ok with you believing the whole world lived in Shangri La until the Christians screwed it up.

In the case of Quakers, anti-slavery and suffrage was pretty well the lingua franca of the church. And even in the other ones, many of the pastors and presbyters were actively involved. It cannot be denied.

....so what ? I am not sure wher you want to go with this. All I am saying is that many of the human rights movements actually started in the churches.

That is a very one-sided if not a silly way of describing the situation. First, the term "feminist" was not used until the end of the century. Second, Anthony and Stanton were the radicals in the movement and their branch of the suffragist movement was a splinter group in the larger liberal movement which consolidated as AWSA the same year. The abolitionists among whom there were many male supporters for women suffrage did not wish to include women in the suffrage amendments fearing a backlash, proposing instead enfranchising women at the next opportunity after the 'Negro Hour'. This did not sit well with S.B.A. and E.C.S. who switched sides and started their own campaign with a racist pamphleteer George Francis Train who financed their newspaper, the Revolution. This naturally alienated the abolitionists friends of women in the Republican party.



Jiri

neilgodfrey

And Paul's group is a faith-based group. Unity (not "rights" or "equality" -- we know what Paul's views were of slaves and women) of membership of those believed to be "in Christ". Human rights is surely a concept according rights for all "humans" regardless of race, faith, etc.

Paul's sense of unity (Galatians 3:28 is about unity -- all being "one", all belonging to God's family -- not rights) is nowhere closer to the concept of human rights than, say, a nazi concept of Aryan unity. Paul nowhere expresses any notion of innate rights by virtue of being human.

Neil Godfrey

Joan of Bark

Er, Solo, have you not read 1 Corinthians?

Or 1 Timothy?

Now, you can claim these are interpolations, but the fact is these passages were added by Christians and accepted by Christians. Egalitarian thought? Hardly ...

Joan of Bark

Any study of medievel Europe will spotlight a constant contempt for human rights; and that was a continent where everyone -- with the exception of Muslims in southern Spain and a smattering of Jews -- was Christian. If Christians are the reason we now have human rights, why the hell was Europe so full of persecution on the basis of gender, race, and social class?

KrisK10

Jiri,

Since I bombarded you with several questions, how bout just trying to answer one:

How can one say that Gal 3:28 had neither precedent nor independent parallel in antiquity given the second century B.C.E. Buddhist passage: "Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I" (Sutta Nipata 705)?

Kris