October 3, 2010

We began today by sharing our joys and concerns regarding the past week. These included: Katie's success in winning soccer games, Johannah's award-winning marching band, and the quality time Nathan spent with his dog. The main discussion focused around two major topics: the history of Christianity and the historical relationships between church and state.

Erika talked about the birth of Christianity as a cult religion during the time of Jesus, and traced its chronological path until Patriarch Constantine popularized the religion in the 1000s A.D. The earliest form of Christianity was most similar to modern Catholicism, so we say that the earliest Christians were Catholics. The Catholic Church was around for a long time until corruption began to appear. In summary, Catholics believed that one could enter heaven if one performed a series of holy rituals each day. If one failed or sinned, one could pay the church, repent, and be forgiven. This was known as indulgence. By following these "beliefs", some Christians were not true believers in Christ and only participated in religious activity for the sake of entering heaven. In 1517, Martin Luther proposed his Ninety-Five Theses to combat these faults of the Catholic Church and to suggest that a true Christian must believe in their heart that Jesus Christ is their savior. During the 1600s, different sects began to split off from mainstream Catholic Christianity, among them Anabaptism. Early Anabaptists distinguished themselves as those who actively lived the word of Jesus in everyday life.

Others in the group brought up the point that religion, especially Christianity, seemed to be very involved in everyday public life in the twentieth century, from a historical standpoint. For example, Nathan's high school basketball coach would always require that everyone pray in unison before each game, even though the games were being held by public schools. It seemed as if the majority of 20th century religious Americans were Christians and associated Christianity with American patriotism/nationalism. This is still evident today, such as the time when Nathan and Erika visited a conservative church on Memorial Day to witness the American flag hanging behind the pulpit and the main theme of the service was to honor military service. However, we are seeing much more separation of church and state nowadays, as students recognize that there are students from many different religions and backgrounds in every public school and Christianity is no longer the mainstream American religion. A teacher can get sued nowadays if he requires a student to participate in religious activity in a public school, while that was not the case fifty years ago. This was mainly due to various supreme court cases which supported and welcomed other cultures and backgrounds into the American "melting pot". Erika mentioned that church and state were not always closely related in the past. It seemed to have started during World War II, when the federal government inserted the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance to distinguish patriotic Americans from Soviet Russians who did not believe in God. The original 19th century version of the Pledge of Allegiance actually did not contain the words "under God."

These are among the many in-depth things that were discussed today.