Is there a Christianity?

I teach a course at the university of Guelph/Humber called informatively 'Judaism, Christianity,Islam'. Recently I ended the component on Christianity rather unsatisfactorally. On the drive home that evening I thought about how I should and could have summarized my lectures on christian history. The thought occurred to me that there did not seem to be one religion, but rather many operating under a very loose label called Christianity.

Does anything tie the ultra Calvinist 'everyone but us is going to Hell' churches (plural even here), with the Anglican 'I will give communion to your dog' church?

I suppose a belief in Christ - but none of these many thousands of separate organizations seem to view, or understand Christ in the same way. There is an old saying among Jews that a room with seven Jews will produce eight opinions - but hard history has kept a sense of 'nation' alive in a real sense. Muslims have the Qur'an which is authoritative only in classical Arabic to centre their Ummah or sense of oneness in community. But Christians have thousands of translations of the Bible in thousands of languages. Christians of the main churches also venerate two thousand years of differing interpretations of the main language translations. Orthodox and Catholic Christians also venerate 'Holy Tradition' - the guidance of the third person of the Trinity.

I will leave this here as I certainly do not have the answer, but would love comments!

A Concise history of the Middle East

I am in the process of listening to an audio book version of Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.'s A Concise History of the Middle East  [9th edition].  I won't get it finished as I borrowed it online from the Hamilton Public Library and I am not half way through yet.  But.. I found the 7th edition available as an eBook through the University of Guelph library - so I will either read the remainder, or borrow the audio version again later.

It is a good introduction to the history of Islam in the Middle East - and not as the title suggests, a history of the Middle East.  Generally it is excellent in terms of understanding Islam as it developed [though a bit too much towards political, rather than social or cultural history for  my taste].  The book suffers from the usual flaw in books by Americans on Islam - that is, a lot of time is spent making erroneous or just plain wrong comments about Christianity, or western Christian civilisation in comparison to that of Islam in the Middle East.  But, these flaws are few and far between.  For fun [!!!] I tried reading the Complete Idiots Guide to Understanding Islam - a dreadful book - the entire first section filled with errors of fact and misunderstandings of Christianity - which seems to be the whole thrust - very little talk about Islam until well into the book - mostly just half understood nonsense about Christianity and 'ra ra' cheering about the superiority of Islam.  As they say these days on the net... 'meh'

Music

I just finished reading an article on musicology and Henry VIII.  I always incorporate music and material culture into my History courses - but seldom see good historical research into these.

Here is the official stuff:

Early Music History (2010) Volume 29. 􏰀 Cambridge University Press 

S A C R E D P O L Y P H O N Y 

‘ N O T U N D E R S T A N D I D ’ : M E D I E V A L 

E X E G E S I S , R I T U A L T R A D I T I O N A N D 

H E N R Y V I I I ’ S R E F O R M A T I O N 

For John Caldwell 

This study focuses on the ritual ‘conservatism’ of Henry VIII’s Reformation through a new look at 

biblical exegeses of the period dealing with sacred music. Accordingly, it reconsiders the one extant 

passage of rhetoric to come from the Henrician regime in support of traditional church polyphony, as 

found in A Book of Ceremonies to be Used in the Church of England, c.1540. Examining 

the document’s genesis, editorial history and ultimate suppression by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, it 

is shown that Bishop Richard Sampson, Dean of the Chapel Royal (1522–40), was responsible for 

the original drafting of the musical paragraph. Beginning with Sampson’s printed commentaries on the 

Psalms and on the Epistles of St Paul, the literary precedents and historical continuities upon which 

Sampson’s topos in Ceremonies was founded are traced in detail. Identified through recurring patterns 

of scriptural and patristic citation, and understood via transhistorical shifts in the meaning of certain 

key words (e.g. iubilare), this new perspective clarifies important origins of the English church’s 

musical ‘traditionalism’ on the eve of the Reformation. Moreover, it reveals a precise species of exegetical 

method – anagogy – as the literary vehicle through which influential clergy were able to justify 

expansions and elaborations of musical practice in the Western Church from the high Middle Ages to 

the Reformation. 

It is the term anagogy which particularly caught my eye.  Meaning roughly [read the article to get the nuances explicated] a form of theology dealing with that which draws the Christian from things of this world to those of the unseen reality - principally music, which has the capacity of wordless praise, causing the iubilare - the shout of pure, wordless joy on encountering the divine.  Lots to think about here!

A Super site! better than my religion facebook page!

Came across this link on a friend's facebook - a page that will require exploration!



http://www.facebook.com/Patheos

Reading sacred scriptures as a scholar?

James McGrath looks at how a scholar can read the Bible as a scholar and as a believer.... comments which apply to scholars of Judaism and Islam also..  [just click on the title to get the link]

Ted

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2011/02/approaching-bible-academically-not-just.html

The Copts - forgotten in coverage of the Egyptian furor

The Copts.....


 http://www.getreligion.org/2011/01/where-are-the-copts-in-this/

http://www.copticchurch.net/

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I wonder.... is this gentleman's movement a religion?

look also at the wikipedia article  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti

and there are books by him available in university libraries.....