Yeah, I suppose if you believe Christianity is/was the only thing holding civilization together, then adopting “Liberal hypocrisy” to fill the same role might make sense. Many people would disagree with the premise, though, by pointing to the Dark Ages and such. I don’t really know what to think about this.
Religion was very important to people at least around the time of the Roman Empire’s collapse (4th century onwards). Ordinary people around the Mediterranean used to argue about the nature of God and the doctrine of Trinity while standing in line at a shop!
The ecumenical councils of the day, for example, were massively important political events—the Council of Nicaea certainly held no less significance for the people under their jurisdiction than, say, the Nuremberg trials did for contemporary Europeans; it issued a controversial yet generally accepted verdict on what’s OK to believe and what’s vile heresy. I’m making that comparison because Christianity used to occupy, among other spaces, the niche in public consciousness that nationalism took in the 19th century.
Yeah, I suppose if you believe Christianity is/was the only thing holding civilization together, then adopting “Liberal hypocrisy” to fill the same role might make sense. Many people would disagree with the premise, though, by pointing to the Dark Ages and such. I don’t really know what to think about this.
The Christian religion was adopted much earlier and by a much larger proportion of the population in the Eastern Roman Empire than in the Western Roman Empire. The former outlived the latter by over 1,000 years. Obviously, the degree of Christianization was not the only difference between Rome and Constantinople, but it is an important fact to keep in mind when reasoning about these sorts of things.
Yeah, I suppose if you believe Christianity is/was the only thing holding civilization together, then adopting “Liberal hypocrisy” to fill the same role might make sense. Many people would disagree with the premise, though, by pointing to the Dark Ages and such. I don’t really know what to think about this.
Religion was very important to people at least around the time of the Roman Empire’s collapse (4th century onwards). Ordinary people around the Mediterranean used to argue about the nature of God and the doctrine of Trinity while standing in line at a shop!
The ecumenical councils of the day, for example, were massively important political events—the Council of Nicaea certainly held no less significance for the people under their jurisdiction than, say, the Nuremberg trials did for contemporary Europeans; it issued a controversial yet generally accepted verdict on what’s OK to believe and what’s vile heresy. I’m making that comparison because Christianity used to occupy, among other spaces, the niche in public consciousness that nationalism took in the 19th century.
The Christian religion was adopted much earlier and by a much larger proportion of the population in the Eastern Roman Empire than in the Western Roman Empire. The former outlived the latter by over 1,000 years. Obviously, the degree of Christianization was not the only difference between Rome and Constantinople, but it is an important fact to keep in mind when reasoning about these sorts of things.