FUA History of Christianity Fall 2011 Professor Julia Bolton Holloway Questionnaire Syllabus http://www.umilta.net/Histo

1. FUA History of Christianity Fall 2011 • Professor Julia Bolton Holloway • Questionnaire • Syllabus • http://www.umilta.net/HistoryChristianity.html • Field Trips, Tickets, Donations €15,00 • Payable next week to Marina, FUA Librarian

2. This course will survey Christianity, emphasizing the role Florence has played in its history, literature and art • This lecture will be in two parts. • The first section is an Introduction to Christianity • After the break, the second will discuss Christianity and its spread through various forms of IT/ Information Technology

3. Introductory Lesson 1) Christian Beliefs 2) Types of Christians 3) Christians in the World Today 4) Christianity and Morality

4. Part 1 Christian Beliefs

5. Why do we have religious beliefs? • When do we have religious beliefs?

6. Julian Jaynes sees culture as changing the functioning of the human brain. When both lobes function equally in earlier cultures there are hallucinations of the gods. When we become literate and left-hemisphere dominant this ceases. He studied this in Babylonian and Homeric materials before Christianity. We are thus created/wired with the gods/God within us.

7. We are most likely to need religious support in times of trauma and death. Egypt built up a culture centered on preserving the dead, caring for their continuity, with its gods, Osiris, Isis and Horus. • The Greek world celebrated the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, the agriculture and cuisine of bread: ‘Unless the grain die’. They also celebrated Dionysus, the god of wine and unreason. • African slaves in America, forbidden literacy and Christianity, found the greatest consolation and beauty in it, identifying with Moses and Jesus. • Karl Marx said ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people’. Communism instead enforced atheism.

8. Religion thrives on the opposite of what is coldly rational and scientific, instead being in the world of mystery and poetry, of paradox and contradiction, whether in ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, or today. It is in tune with paradigms in our brains and its chemistry that heal trauma and give a framework of hope, in which temples like the Parthenon and cathedrals like Santa Maria del Fiore are built for the people, by the people and of the people. It conveys within that religious setting a code of conduct, laws for human living, which are the same for the ancients and the moderns.

9. 1.1: Christian Beliefs Who is a Christian?

10. 1.1: Christian Beliefs [‘Messiah’ in Hebrew, ‘Christ’ in Greek, mean ‘anointed with oil’] A Christian follows, imitates, Jesus Christ and his precursor, John the Baptist, living the Gospel. A Christian believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour, and that He died to save us from sin and death. A Christian is baptised, ‘christened’, with water (and sometimes with oil), in the sign of the cross, with the words ‘in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’. (Not all Christians use Baptism.)

11. Christian sects can range in a spectrum between accepting mystery, contradiction and paradox to taking the words of the Bible as literally true, the latter being Fundamentalists. • In early Christianity the literalists were from Antioch, those who harmonized different systems of belief, from Alexandria.

12. 1.1: Christian Beliefs Name some key Christian beliefs?

13. 1.1: Christian Beliefs Some of the most important are the following 1) God as Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit 2) Jesus’ Birth from Mary 3) Christ’s Baptism by John 4) Jesus Christ established the blessing of bread and wine as His body and blood 5) Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ 6) The Last Judgment Friday and Sunday special days because of Christ’s Crucifixion and the Resurrection

14. 1.1: Christian Beliefs 1) What is the Trinity?

15. 1.1: Christian Beliefs • The Trinity is the Father [the Hebrew God], the Son [Jesus Christ], and the Holy Spirit [the Spirit of God], combined as one God. • This is a theological mystery. Arians did not and Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity.

16. 1.1: Christian Beliefs Three Persons, One Godhead.

17. Massaccio, Trinity Santa Maria Novella ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’

18. 1.2: Christian Beliefs 2) Jesus’ Nativity: Christians believe that Jesus was conceived and born of Mary, and that God, not Joseph, was His father. Thus he is God become Man, become one of us, to live and die like us. This paradox derives from the Prophet Isaiah who wrote in Hebrew that a ‘young woman’ (which is translated in the Greek as ‘virgin’), will bear a son, ‘Emmanuel’, ‘God with us’. Jesus in the Gospel only calls himself ‘Son of Man’, in Hebrew, ‘Ben-Adam’, in Aramaic, ‘Bar-Adam’. Extreme Protestants do not believe in Mary.

19. San Marco Annunciation

20. Nativity Luke 2.1-20 Fra Angelico San Marco Armadio degli Argenti

21. 3) Christ is Baptised by John the Baptist, his cousin, in the Jordan River • Our initiation as Christians, as becoming like Christ, is through baptism (Greek=dipped)

22. Piero della Francesca Baptism of Christ Florence’s Baptistery was the site of every Florentine Baptism until recently

23. 4) The Lord’s Supper • Christ blesses the bread and wine, the traditional Sabbath Eve Jewish blessing carried out in the homes and families, as His body and blood, before His Crucifixion. There is a spectrum of belief concerning the bread and wine and the use of Communion in the Christian churches.

24. Fra Angelico San Marco Lord’s Supper Luke 22.1-38

25. Introductory Lesson: (1.5) Christian Beliefs 5) Resurrection: Christians believe that Christ, having been crucified, rose from the dead after three days. Friday and Sunday are special days because of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

26. 6) The Last Judgment • Christians believe that at the end of time the living and the dead shall be judged as to whether they shall enter Paradise or Hell. • In Catholicism, by way of the Irish, a third possibility became that of Purgatory.

27. Fra Angelico, The Last Judgment

28. Part 2 Types of Christians

29. Christianity’s Context, Family Judaism is influenced by Chaldean/Babylonian and Egyptian religious beliefs, which it also rejects Christianity is descended from Judaism. It is influenced in turn by Greco-Roman religious practices Islam is descended from Judaeo-Christianity, believes Jesus is a prophet, reveres Mary [One could say Judaism is the Father, Christianity the Son, Islam the grandchild, each parent in turn disowning their Prodigal Sons]

30. Judaism reveres Saturday, of God’s Creation • Christianity reveres Sunday, of Christ’s Resurrection • Islam reveres Friday • Judaism, much Protestantism, and Islam reject images, while Orthodoxy and Catholicism use images • Dietary laws, fasts and pilgrimages, are or were important in all these religions • Animal sacrifices were made in Judaism and are in Islam. Christ rejected these, establishing simple Sacraments, e.g. Baptism, Communion. • Women in all these religions, to uphold families, to dress modestly

31. 1.2: Types of Christian There are five types of Christians in the world today: can you name them?

32. 1.2: Types of Christian 1) Eastern 2) Orthodox 3) Catholic 4) Protestant And, semi-detached from Christianity, 5) Revivalist

33. 1.2: Types of Christian 1) Eastern Christians Eastern Christians are the traditional Christians of the Eastern Mediterranean: they belong to several federated churches. Almost all live in now Muslim countries: these are ancient Christian communities that survived the Arab invasions. There is no single leader. They are closer to Christ’s Judaism than is Catholicism.

35. 1.2: Types of Christian 2) Orthodox Christians Orthodox Christians are the traditional Christians of Eastern Europe (Greece, Russia, etc.): they belong to several federated churches (patriarchates). Their leader is the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, though he does not have power over the Orthodox Churches in the way that the Pope has over the Catholic Church. Orthodoxy is closer to Christ’s Judaism than is Catholicism.

37. 1.2: Types of Christian 3) Catholic Catholicism is the traditional church of southern Europe and south America. It is ruled by Popes (who are the Bishops of Rome, claiming descent from St Peter); now Pope Benedict XVI Until recently (Vatican II), it kept the Laity from the Bible which it only permitted in Latin.

39. 1.2: Types of Christian 4) Protestants Protestants dominate in Northern Europe and North America. They have many different churches. They mainly separated from Catholics through Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in Switzerland. They use the Bible in their vernacular languages.

41. 1.2: Types of Christian 5) ‘Revivalists’ is a term given to religious groups that have grown out of Christianity, some leaving their Christian origins behind. Most are American and many are founded by women. They can carry out energetic missionary practices. There are important religious groupings that are commonly defined in this way: can you name them?

42. 1.2: Types of Christian Unitarians Christian Scientists Salvation Army Seventh Day Adventists Jehovah’s Witnesses Mormons/Latter Day Saints

43. 1.2: Types of Christian Try and identify what types of Christians we are seeing in the following pictures

46. The Singing and Praying Bands, Chesapeake Bay, Maryland