Religion and tolerance in Rome

[Kosmo]

Polytheists were as interested as monotheists in fostering unity and bashing religious dissent. Intolerance as such it's a political act. Romans had their religion as a "national" branch of a loosely defined Hellenic religion and were tolerant with the other brunches. But if a religion did not fit the mold of identifying local gods with the roman ones the romans were nasty. Druids, Dacians, Jews and Christians were persecuted while Carthaginian and Egyptian gods were despised.

Between Septimius Sever and Constantine the roman emperors actively attempted to give religious unity to the empire around the cult of Sol Invictus, a religion that blended monotheism and polytheism.

Constantine decided that he had better chances of religious unity around the empire with Christianity so he helped define Christianity, create an "universal church" and fight heresy.

There is nothing in Christianity that violently refutes other religions or splinter groups like in Islam. Before becoming an official religion Christianity was not monolithic and various groups showed a large variation in language, in holy texts, in doctrine and in practice. It was the need of religious unity of the roman state and of his instrument, the Church, that created the pressure for conformity and standardization. The role of Constantine and of later emperors was paramount in fostering unity. Many who were persecuted as Christians were now persecuted as heretics like the donatists of North Africa.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Amici

Edited December 3, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Minerva]

What religion had the people that created tolerance, science, secularism and human rights?

Where they Pagans, Buddhists or Muslims?

 

They were assuredly pagans, and almost all Greeks. Did you really think that Christians invented science? Archimedes would be shocked. And the invention of secularism? As far as we can tell, it's Thales, though secularism spread like wildfire among the philosophers in Athens. Tolerance? Long before Jesus was throwing hissy-fits against money-changers, Stoics taught that reason--the birthright of all humans--was what made men free, happy, and gave them their rights.

 

I think Europe is being focussed on too much. tolerance, science, secularism and human rights definitely existed in India in 6th century B.C ( I don't presume to say the whole of India abided by them). I 'll leave the Muslims out because Islam developed even later than Christianity and the pagans have already been dealt with. That leaves Buddhism: Tolerence is a fundamental in it ( but then again don't all religions preach it?). It's proscience ( or at least Einstein thinks so.) It preaches human rights condenming the cast system and the treatment of women in Ancient India . But I'm not trying to make a case for any religion. How can tolerance, science, secularism and human rights be created? Don't they exist any way? Dont they simply have to be cultivated and practiced?

[Ursus]

Excellent! I knew the Aztecs were not all bad! To wander totally off topic one last time - I wonder can anyone think of a polytheistic religion that was not tolerant of other gods? (using Ingsoc

[ASCLEPIADES]

And let's qualify persecution: the Bacchanants were allowed to exist, their cult was merely severely restricted.

Salve U.

 

Strictly speaking, the Bacchanalia were completely forbidden, at least in Italy (the legal prevision for a "Senate's approval" was mostly hypothetical).

Edited December 3, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Ursus]

There is nothing in Christianity that violently refutes other religions or splinter groups like in Islam.

 

 

I'm sure this particular line of argument will spiral out of control and become its own thread, but ...

 

I've heard the argument presented many times before that Christ himself was all sweetness and light, and only when his religion was organized and codified under the auspices of the Roman state did it become an instrument of sectarian violence.

 

I don't believe it, myself.

 

"He who is not with me is against me ... I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" etc. He wasn't a pacifist. He was a heretical zealot with a serious axe to grind, and a rabble rouser preparing for the perceived end of the world.

[Ursus]

Strictly speaking, the Bacchanalia were completely forbidden, at least in Italy (the legal prevision for a "Senate's approval" was mostly hypothetical).

 

*nods* True.