A home for Bible Geekery
A home for Bible Geekery
16th century missionaries to China Ruggieri & Ricci learned Chinese, wore Chinese robes, and did not insist that western cultural values were a part of learning the Gospel.
The ancient gods blamed humanity for their own failings and problems. If humanity didn’t soothe them, they were struck down. Abusers treat their victims the same way.
The history of translation and transmission of the Bible was complex, contentious, and sometimes violent.
Catholics took their Lord’s Prayer from one preferred by Henry the VIII in 1545; Protestants, perhaps, from Martin Bucer from 1539.
Desmond Tutu was still trying to bring down Apartheid in the mid-eighties. The powers that be hired protestors to try to smear Tutu, but he ended up sharing a tea party with them.
They called it “the war to end all wars,” but even before it ended, a British politician remarked: “This war, like the next war, is a war to end [all] war.”
In the War of 1812, British officer Isaac Brock tricked American General William Hull into thinking that Brock had huge amounts of troops. Brock took Fort Detroit with minimal casualties and a fighting force of half the size.
Only gentiles called Jesus “King of the Jews.” The Herods and the Caesars claimed many titles for themselves, but they perpetually felt their power threatened.
Christian Nationalism means one group’s notion of Christianity holds power regardless of what the majority want. It can even mean a dictatorship.
Visiting a concentration camp means feeling the suffering that calls out from the ground. It means remembering that so many Christians chose to wait passively and that we must make different choices.