Religion Part 2: Christianity And Paganism

In my previous blog I mentioned what exactly was Paganism and to what extent it had influenced the way people lived and used to carve the true aspects of the Nature. As the title suggests this blog will be an approach to reveal the ties between these two religions.

Early Christianity is supposed to exist from the the time of crucifixion of Jesus in 30 AD to the establishment of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This was the era of Roman empire where many religions were practiced under the name of Paganism. In those times,Christians were sneered to be Anti-Judaism and were accused of tampering with the teachings of Jews' holy book Tanakh.
Earliest Christians wished to be considered Jews since the Jewish religion was officially recognized and certain privileges were well-settled for them. But after the Jewish revolts in 66 AD,Christians started to demand for their separateness . This demand widened the gap between the Jews and the Christians. Roman empire which had Jews in majority declared Christians Anti-Judaism and ordered death sentence to them showing loyalty to this religion .

During this tough time, Christianity was greatly supported by the Hellenistic society . Hellenistic society was the fusion of ancient Greek and the west-Asian culture . This pragmatic fusion of cultures supported Christainity in the tough times and helped pave the way for it's success.
Systematic persecution was practiced to the Christians who were intolerable to the pagan beliefs.

It was the Emperor Constantine who was responsible to take out Christianity from the shades of fear,negligence and penalisation and to provide utmost support in making it the religion of that time. In his time he saw Christians and Pagans who were indulged in war together,and this war grew to such a situation that it threatened to rend the Rome into two. Constantine,a great intellectual,watching his empire getting divided into two decided to unify Rome under a single religion----Christianity.His inclination towards Christianity could be seen as his mother's influence on him.
He made a pragmatic decision issuing the Eddict of Milan to promote religious tolerance and to legalise Christianity.He supported the Church financially,promoted Christians to high ranking offices,and most of all he built a new capital at Byzantium namely Bophorus,which later came to be known as Constantinople in his honour.This city emanated excellent Christian architecture and had numerous churches with no pagan temples.

The First Council of Nicaea was formed in 325 AD in order to strengthen the pillars of Christianity.At this council,aspects of Christianity were debated and were voted upon.
Holy dates,the role of Bishops,the administration of sacraments....and most amazingly the divinity of Jesus were the result of debates followed by the votes. You may wonder why the council debated upon the divinity of Jesus...and the most suitable answer i found was that until that time,Jesus was viewed as a mortal Prophet by his followers,which meant a man..a mortal..and not the Sun of God . Therefore there were differing views regarding his divinity.
Constantine was baptized on his deathbed and as it was speculated,soon after his death systematic persecutions resurfaced under the reign of Julian the Apostate.He expropriated the settled priviledges and support to Christians and intended on the re-establishment of old pagan beliefs.
However Christianity retaliated soon under the reign of his successors Jovian,Valentinian I....
Rome was declared a Christian empire by Theodosius in 380 AD.Pagan temples were either destroyed or were converted into Churches.In a retaliatory action Christians began to persecute Pagans and sooner Paganism was decimated.
Indeed we could not refuse to the fact that most of the symbols and signs were simply copied from the Paganism.Fusion of pagan symbols,dates and rituals with Christianity created an acceptable hybrid which was known as Transmogrification.Infact nothing in Christianity is asssumed to be original.Egyptians Sun-disks became the Halos of Catholic Saints;Pictograms of Isis nursing her son Horus was followed in modern images of Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus.The altar(the sacred place where the ceremonies takes place),the miter,the doxology(the hymn of praises to God)...all of these are the vestiges of Pagan religion.

Well this cannot be denied that Early Christians went through many refrainments and hardships in making a count of their religion..well there are still some facts and probably misconceptions among us regarding Christianity which i'll try to focus on my next blog.
Hope you enjoy this blog..will see you soon...Byyeee...!!!!

Religion Part 1 : Paganism

It is the religion that existed right from the Neolithic times (9500 BC) and survived up until Christianity became powerful enough to erase it. It was Polytheistic in nature in which people use to worship various elements of the Nature viz. fire,air,water,trees,sun..Pagans were literally indoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old,rural religions of Nature Worship. The status of a God was determined by the element they belonged to and the extent they helped people. Hence whichever element made them survive and flourish,they worshiped it.

Pagans (followers of Paganism) began to personify the energies of nature,and in this way several Gods and Goddesses got their name and existence.With the development of civilizations Gods grew up in number and marked some change.
As things changed,so were our views and the aspects of Gods. When people were entirely dependent on crops,the God of Agriculture was the prominent one.When war became prominent(due to expansionism) people valued the God of War.
Ancient Roman Religion and the Ancient Greek Religion were the two significant examples of early Paganism.

Pagans envisioned their world in two halves--Masculine and Feminine. Their Gods and Goddesses worked to keep a balance of power--Yin and Yang.When male and female were balanced,there was harmony in the world.When they were unbalanced,there was chaos !
Pagans personified planets and instated some attributes in them.Although the inception was not quixotic,they were based on facts.
We can better understand this through an example of Venus--the Goddess of Beauty and Perfection. It was astonishing to ancient observers that Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the elliptic sky every eight years. As a tribute to the Venus,Greeks used her eight-year cycle to organise their Olympics.Although the period was later made as four year ,still denoting the half-cycle of the Venus) . Venus was considered as the symbol of Feminism owing to the fact that the five edges of her pentacle denotes the five stages of a women's life--Birth,Menstruation,Maternity,Menopause,and Death.

In order to placate the Gods,the Romans believed that certain rituals and rites must be performed in appreciation of the God's work.With rituals came Priesthood who managed to perform them and held high status/rank in the society. I think this coud be the start of the division of society on the basis of one's job.
As the Roman empire expanded,new religions were absorbed. Religious tolerance was one of the policy and it became easier for Romans to worship whoever they liked as long as it not interferes with others.

I am enlisting some prevalent Roman's Gods and Goddesses below :-
1. God of War--Mars.
2. God of Agriculture--Ceres.
3. Goddess of beauty and perfection--Venus.

Greeks were similar on most of the beliefs that Romans held,except on their differing views about after-death. Romans considered reincarnation to be the part of after-death scenario,while the Greeks centered on the belief that soul just moves into Hell and Heaven.

Greeks used to bury dead bodies along with the entire necessities he/she would need,moreover the body were well preserved and embalmed so that they are not ruined.

Lets have a look upon the Gods and Goddesses they worshiped :-
1. God of the Underworlds--Hades.
2. Goddess of Love--Aphrodite.
3. God of Light and Purity--Apollo.
4. King of Gods,the God of Thunder and Lightning--Zeus.

In my next blog we will see how Christianity took over the Paganism and how it managed to become the effective religion of that time. Bye for now..

The African Civil Wars

Behind every civil war,there exists its story---the personalities,the social impact,the events that triggered it...and so on. A bird's eye view at Africa reveals the fact that countries with low income and going through economic decline and completely dependent on the natural resources are at the easy prey to a civil war.
Indeed i would like to point out social factors like inequality ,having a majority of ethnical groups and dissatisfaction among people towards govt.(may be due to the existing corruption and negligence) that prepares a well-settled ground for a civil war.
At the time when many nations and continents across the world moved onto public-goods export(exporting finished goods made from the raw materials) from their natural resource,Africa still was stuck with its natural resource without making efforts enough to move onto goods manufacture.
Resources generate rents(profits). Profits trigger a contest for their control.This leads to corruption and a large share of those profits flow through the channel of govt. agencies,who maintain an ignorant view towards the people.This creates indifferences and inequality among the people of the society ( I suppose Nigeria's context can be explained by this view) .
Ignorance peeping out from the govt. side without much respect for the concerns of the people is also due to the rents collected.

There are some geographic factors like the uneven distribution of resources in the area ,which creates secessionist moves and hence privatize those resources.The people who live in these rich areas claims themselves as the sole owner and repudiate any intervention. Most of the times this credo brings lots of violence and disharmony.
These secessionists wage out war with their govt. and for this they need finance of arms and ammunitions. The most easy route to plunge into is the privatized export(an illegal one) they carry out in return for arms (Sierra Leone was such an example) .

One more factor that increases the risk of civil war is the ignorance of non-resource means of trade and economy.Non-resource means starvs and so does the population associated with them.Although natural resources bring in great rents,their volatility in the prices can't be connived. A disbalanced economical phase owing to shrinkage and expansion in the context of volatility creates a trend of low income and poor growth rate.

But i am totally disfavoring the fact that rents and revenues played bad. It was the revenue that
took Botswana onto the path of economic growth. It is really unfortunate that Sierra Leone could not well managed the revenues from the diamonds--and slipped to the bottom of Human Development Index (HDI).

It is the political set-up and not few sociopaths that decides the economical governance of the resources and which further decides the fate of the nation.

I need to focus onto the things which should be done to make things easier :---

1. People should scrutinize the govt. in gaining even distribution of profits.
2. Ignoring ethnical differences,Africans have to generate collective efforts.
3. International community has to get the back of Africans in making them find a stage where they well scrutinize profits disapproving all disloyalities.

You can suggest some more possible options,they are welcomed.