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The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

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Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#71

Post by pstuart »

whall6 wrote: post #4

What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?

Way back when I heard someone state that the reason Christianity spread so wildly was because it was foundational to proselytize and convert non-Christians to the faith. That makes complete sense to me.

It's not like it was this passive meme that spread because people who encountered it loved it so much they wanted to join.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#72

Post by joemazerino »

sourcinnamon wrote: post #39
Curosinono wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? There is a clear phase in our history which was long and no progress was made "Dark age". In that time religion already existed right? So what was the speciality of christianity apparently bootstrapping everything else? You could only be religious if you had resources to do so. Could have been filled with something else instead. Napoleon wrote somewere (i read that in a museum) that education is nce…

The allegedly lack of progress during the "Dark ages" is a narrative constructed later on, during the Illustration/Enlightenment era. Just to mention an example, alchemical research was verly prolific in that time, and it was the basis for what we now call chemistry and pharmacology.

And agricultural practices which enabled the future flourishing of Europe.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#73

Post by aerodexis »

pstuart wrote: post #67
aerodexis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> religion is primarily for control of the people. Thats why you see a lot of rules in the bible. thank God the world has moved past this kind of 2010s New Atheism.

Oh, the irony. Yes, it does feed a spiritual need but is's absolutely about control. The current US administration is guided by Project 2025 which wants God to govern (so to speak). I spend a lot of time thinking about religion, and most of that is anger/fear over the religious zealots who want to control everybody else.

There is a control dimension, because humans require some degree of limitations in order to thrive. Ultra-individualism breaks down entirely the moment you think about actual society (like actually considering children) rather than utopian fantasies about how some people want society to work.

That being said, the way anti-religion ppl talk about "control" is so profoundly sloppy and underdefined that it's entirely meaningless. If I try to stop someone from shooting me, am I trying to control them? If I change the the youtube algorithm, did I control them? If I spread a bunch of malaria-resistent mosquitos around, did I control them?

Christianity is evangelical because it believes what it's doing is good and should be shared. If you can only conceptualize this as "control", then I feel sorry that you've internalized the worst and most misery-inducing parts of the last 100 years of western philosophy.

This evangelical quality is a feature of many world religions, including the ones that don't normally get called religion, like the New Atheism movement.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#74

Post by ecshafer »

Guestmodinfo wrote: post #3

It is not fully correct because St Thomas, who was one of the twelve disciples landed in India and martyred here in India and that's why we have A large autonomous branch, known as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church), tracing its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle and has its headquarters in Kottayam, Kerala. We in India just call it Syrian Orthodox church. That part is not shown in the vide…

They show dots eventually, but those Indian dots should be there by 100AD, same with Ethiopia. Some of the dates they use the official kingdom conversion dates, and not the presence of a church.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#75

Post by gedy »

dghf wrote: post #37
gedy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is correct afaik, though there were serious disputes in Anglo Saxon Britain about these and other issues (mostly about 'leadership' of the church as in any human organization). I'm not sure if it warrants another color, etc though per this video.

Yes, it seems to be promoting the idea, popular in New Age writings, that Celtic Christianity was a separate denomination (or what Rome would have considered a heresy); and that just doesn’t seem to have been the case.

Ah I see thanks, wasn't familiar with that. That sounds like a stretch, as it wasn't that long a period from St Patrick until the reunification back into the Latin church

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#76

Post by gausswho »

Curosinono wrote: post #11
gobdovan wrote: post #6

It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns. Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergenc…

[flagged]

Critical thinking, by some boundaries of how you define it, was a threat to power that led to the many schisms the video demonstrates. Suppression of it I find to be endemic in monotheistic organized religions. As an outsider to Christianity, it's always seemed odd to me the fluid boundaries of what you can critique and what you can't while remaining faithful. Most Christians would argue you cannot reason your way to the will of God due to the inherent flaws of humanity. I find that a convenient way of saying 'don't rock the boat'.

As a separate aside, you may be interested to learn about the Manichean faith, which for a short period rivaled Christianity as a kind of syncretic mix of faiths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

I suspect (but am not expert enough to claim) that Christianity's suppression of reasoning-your-way-to-God is a historical artifact of this rivalry. Manichean faith borrowed the ancient Greek concept of the Great Nous and the concept of the "Five Limbs": Reason, Mind, Intelligence, Thought, Understanding.

Many recovering Christians that remain pious, in my experience, retreat to a kind of uber-faith that is not unlike this concept. "I see truth in all religions".

The Christian churches that retained power said: you don't get to determine that.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#77

Post by ecshafer »

Curosinono wrote: post #11
gobdovan wrote: post #6

It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns. Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergenc…

[flagged]

Newton, Tolkien, Aquinas, Descarte, Pascal, CS Lewis, Lemaitre, Bach. All famously uncritical humans.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#78

Post by achierius »

mistrial9 wrote: post #13
dsign wrote: post #8

During the last few years, I’ve been exploring Svealand, the central part of Sweden that contains Stockholm and some other provinces. The region contains many historical places, but I walk the countryside, away from the main tourist attractions. What has impressed me the most is the amount of ancient piles of ruble with vigilant, almost hostile churches next to them. There are rock paintings from prehistoric times st…

the reason you do not find them is that they were purposefully destroyed in "iconoclasm" -- the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered but also destroyed all traces of their cultural practices. Just south of there is the famous tree of Boniface ?

First of all, you're confusing different events: iconoclasm was the destruction of Christian icons, by Christians who thought that practice was idolatrous.

> the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered

Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#79

Post by senkora »

pstuart wrote: post #71
whall6 wrote: post #4

What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?

Way back when I heard someone state that the reason Christianity spread so wildly was because it was foundational to proselytize and convert non-Christians to the faith. That makes complete sense to me. It's not like it was this passive meme that spread because people who encountered it loved it so much they wanted to join.

This is called being a “universalizing” religion.

The big three universalizing religions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.

You can understand a lot of religious history as just those three religions expanding and displacing other belief systems.

Contrast with non-universalizing religions like Judaism, Hinduism, and Shinto.

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