Notre Dame and France

The Orthodox, The Catholics, The Anglicans, The Episcopalians and others. In other words the churches that most Christians are members of.

How they choose to organise themselves is their business, but to suggest that is based on equality rather than hierarchy is pie in the sky. To suggest that hierarchy is not inherent in Christianity flies in the face of the way most Christians practice their faith.
 
cremeegg said:
To suggest that hierarchy is not inherent in Christianity flies in the face of the way most Christians practice their faith.
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It is inherent in the organised churches. Of course, it is human nature.
Christianity does not advocate a hierarchical system other than to follow the word of Christ, and in doing so all people are equal.

That churches have organised on the basis that "we are all sinners" as a primary means to structure church into hierarchical form is nothing more than a failure of those churches.

The deliverance of true meaning of Christianity is its divinity. It is an aspiration of Christians (like most religions it is probably unattainable, but we keep trying).
JC, although a leader, was not afraid to wash the feet of his disciples as a symbol of equality. He did not request that his followers kiss his ring or fall to their knees before him (although many did/do).

In short, Christian churches are hierarchical, Christianity is not.
 
Purple said:
I always look at Cathedrals as monuments to inequality; all the highly skilled labour and backbreaking work that went into building them could only ever have been paid for in a grossly unequal society.
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But they were at the vanguard of medieval technology and were pushing out the boundaries of what was possible, we wouldn't have sky scrapers today if those guys did not build those cathedrals. Thats how progress happens even if its progress that initially does not benefit the common man. You cannot transpose modern social theories on the medieval world, in fact it is a luxury we can only indulge in because of that very progress.
 
This post will be deleted if not edited immediately often talked about being good to your slaves. He didn't say that you should free your slaves. In modern Bibles slave is translates as servant but he was talking about slaves.
 
Sure, but maybe they could have built fewer big churches and paid the people who built them a bit more.
Some valuable medical and scientific breakthroughs have happened due to appalling experiments on people. The ends don't justify the means.

The progress which out society and industry is built on happened when people became more free, something the Catholic Church fought against.
 
cremeegg said:
Not sure how you see this as the antithesis of Christianity, for most of its existence Christianity was a completely hierarchical institution, and for the very most part still is.
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I think you need to read my post again. I said it was the antithesis of what Christianity should be.
 
Purple said:
I think you need to read my post again. I said it was the antithesis of what Christianity should be.
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I got that, but I don't get that you are the arbiter of what Christianity should be.

Christianity is what christians have made it, hierarchical. Its a bit arrogant to say they should have made it some other way.
 
cremeegg said:
I got that, but I don't get that you are the arbiter of what Christianity should be.

Christianity is what christians have made it, hierarchical. Its a bit arrogant to say they should have made it some other way.
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I'm just going by my interpretation of what the authors of the New Testament wrote (whomever they were).
Personally I found it very derivative and contradictory but I'm not a big fan of fiction or self help books.
 
Purple said:
Sure, but maybe they could have built fewer big churches and paid the people who built them a bit more.
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The skilled craftsmen were paid alot and were highly sought after , its similar to sought after skills today. Yes there was alot of heavy low paid manual work but everything was drudgery then, better that than toiling on the land or conscripted into the Kings army to fight a futile war and sufffer horrendous injuries or death. Labouring on a cathedral job might be the best there is
 
And you don't see the contradiction between the Christian message and using cheap labour to build a monument to the vanity of the builder?
The argument that something is okay because some other alternative is worse had been used to exploit people forever.
 
Purple said:
The argument that something is okay because some other alternative is worse had been used to exploit people forever.
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But you are comparing labouring in medieval times to modern standards and because the work was hard therefore it was exploitative, that is false. Life was This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language then for everybody just to put bad food on the table was hard work. Therefore everyone was exploited by nature and the battle to eke out a living. The reason why they built those cathedrals was partly to lift themself out of drudgery to have something that was other worldly , that is also the reason why people were religious . You have to picture yourself working in a field in horrible weather subject to terrible diseases to understand it. You cannot judge building cathedrals in isolation and compare that to modern standards
 
You are missing the point; Christianity preached a sort of communist utopia where every man as your brother and everyone shared and all that good stuff. My point is that they are a permanent reminder of how far away from that ideal Christianity was at the time, as it has been for most of its history.
Ironically is it secularisation that led to greater equality.
 
You need to differentiate between christianity and organised religion. The major religious institutions have tended to be political rather than religious organisations. There was a quote some years back about how more and more people were leaving the church and turning to christianity.
 
Purple said:
You are missing the point; Christianity preached a sort of communist utopia where every man as your brother and everyone shared and all that good stuff.
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Really? Not in the Bible. Check out Matthew 25:14-30. Invest wisely or you will be cast into the outer darkness. As for the cathedrals, God manifests himself through his greatness, and, as a religious edifice, there is nothing greater than a cathedral.
 
There's all sorts of nonsense in the Bible about all sorts of stuff. The basic message is share and be nice etc. The letters that people wrote afterwards, Peter, Matthew, etc. are not the main deal. The Parable of the gold bags is about using the talents you are given, it's not about making money.

I think most people realise that all that religion stuff is fairytales and nonsense, some more people realise that the stories are allegorical and a sad few think it was all to be taken literally.
 
I take the Bible seriously - as a work of historical importance, and in its translated forms, as literature in its own right.
But I don't take it seriously as a guide to the workings of the cosmos, perhaps more as a guide to human nature.
 
Purple said:
There's all sorts of nonsense in the Bible about all sorts of stuff.
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There's also the whole 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God' thing as well, the church put forward the myth that the eye of a needle was a metaphor for a narrow passage or gateway so they could still sell indulgences and take money off wealthy benefactors.
 
Yep, which brings me back to my original point that religions are human institutions, subject to human frailties and Cathedrals are monuments to that frailty in the form of an inequality built on vanity.
 
All that hand wringing aside, they're also incredible feats of construction and very impressive to look at and it's very sad when some people decide they want to damage them.
 
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