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Oct. 31 - Nov. 7, 2004 |
16 - Christianity spreads its wings
A soft religious revolution in Europe that would change the face of the world
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2004-09-19
The most visible inheritance that Europe received from Christianity was the Lord’s Prayer that replaced the interested implorations addressed to the pagan gods, the ostentatious religiosity, the complex and often cruel rites. The Lord’s Prayer is a dignified, simple, trusting prayer. Those who utter it recognize the greatness and mercy of the Almighty, and ask Him not for the impossible or the superfluous, but for the indispensable, required for a just life: “Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
The Europeans are shaped through this prayer: they are aware of their limitations, and therefore are rational; their faith is concrete, not superstitious nor fanatical. It was not by chance that the debate on the separation of faith and reason developed in Europe, with reason invigorating faith and vice versa. This is no nonsense, because Christianity, although through winding paths, managed to combine the ideas and movements that characterized, and still characterize, the culture of Europe.
It was also in Europe that Christianity, merging with national realities and needs, took different shapes, all referring to the original matrix. In European encyclopedias, the entry for Christianity reads, “The set of religious confessions that look to Jesus Christ as the Saviour.” A set of religious confessions, indeed.
All along history, these confessions clashed among themselves (e.g., the Protestant Reform vs. the Catholic Counter-Reform), but as we already said, in the past Europeans fought over things that they had in common. However, the millennial thread of history reveals an intellectual richness that can hardly be found anywhere else.
Christianity was a soft revolution. “It immediately declared itself as a monotheistic religion, but that was nothing new,” says Edmondo Lupieri, professor of History of Christianity and the Church at the University of Udine. “What was new was the lack of traumatic transitions from the past. It did not break with either the Jews or the Roman world. It actually presented itself as a Jewish sect, and did not deny the pagan gods; it simply recast them as demonic entities, evil angels. Then, it took a step forward, declaring that who converted became stronger than those evil entities, able to defeat them. It turned believers into the first line of defense against paganism: this became one of Christianity’s strong points.”
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