Watching a History Channel documentary “Mankind: the Story of All of Us”,  I was attracted because it was giving a major place (as most histories do)  to religion.  But the voice they chose to “describe” for us “what Christians believe” was someone I had to look up.  It wasn’t anyone who is a scholar of Christianity that I could see.

She describes Christianity as a religion that says that evil will get what it deserves in an afterlife.  Wow.  My favorite emphasis in theology (sarcasm, rolling eyes) And this is the religion that Empires saw as a threat?  This is an inane description of those attempting to describe it,  and it seems inconceivable that so many smart people can really believe that this is what really threatened empires.  No,  what threatened them was the striving for better living that called into question the ideology and ultimate values of the state and of the “ways of the world”;  of the drive to conquer and dominate and the strategies of the powerful to control the rest.

*I was later to find it was Kara Cooney,  who is described as an “Egyptologist”,  and whose studies are dominated by studies of the Egyptian death rituals.   This helped explain why she chose to focus on the “Christian belief” in the afterlife.  But it has long been an irritation to me that this is perceived  to be a central Christian belief.

Why don’t they get any theologians of any sort  to help them see that these people don’t go to their deaths “for an idea”,  but on behalf of a way of life; a striving for a better life not in som abstract “hereafter”.but in the now,  or in the forseeable future.  Cooney,  it turns out,  is an Egyptologist.   Doesn’t seem  to have any background at all in history /sociology/philosophy/theology to enable her to have credible reasons for “what they believe” or “why they believe it”.  I’m so  tired of the focus on  “life after death thing” as a defining theology.

The idea  that this religion of Christianity spread as “an idea” is a typical dismissal of those unaware of its significance as a way of life that is in contrast to the conquest, domination, materialism, violence-defended empire that forwards its own “religion/theology/ideology” and gleefully accepts “otherworldly” faiths  that can easily be convinced to heed the values of the empire and “keep ideas” as “inward treasures” and “perspectives” that do not challenge them to stand or live in opposition to competing “ways of life”.

I first noticed this in the movie “Peter and Paul”,  which was well done,  but lacked a convincing analaysis of why Paul was seen as a threat.  Their answer was that Caesar was jealous that Paul had a following.  What made him go from “let them have him”  to having him put to death?  We’re never given any credible POLITICAL reason for the perceived threat.  Rome would not care about some sect that harbored “ideas” about “afterlife” and some abstract “challenge” to the might of Rome.   No,  it wasn’t a philosophical/mind challenge of IDEAS,  but a challenge to ways of life.  Challenges to oppression that was “required” by the ruling elite. To question that domination ideology as a “greater good”  was to invite violent reprisal.

So many “scholars of religion” make the mistake of projecting their image of religion gained from “domesticated faiths of established empires”  onto the faith utterings and stories of people who found a way of life that overcame and challenged oppression,  and interpret them as “otherwordly” because this is what empires want them to be;  non-threatening, gnostic opiates of the mind to quell the ambitions of those who want to be free.

Why is it always “AFTER-life” that is seen to be the thing to which we are striving?  Seems more likely that it is more like “OTHER-world”;  “OTHER-realities”;  the mystery.  Perhaps it  is the ultimacy of the experience  of  death;  that which  brings us  to the precipe of the ultimate  mysteries,  that associates death with the “OTHER” thing;  the “NEXT” or “AFTER” since it is at death’s door  that many visions are had.

These “wars or religion” are fought under the rubric of “ideas” and “theology” but are really those of conquest of ways of life.  In the case of the Crusades, the “Western/European” over that of “Nomad/NorthAfrican/Arab”.  It enables the theological demonization of the “foreign” “savage” way of life.

Religion wielded as a tool in the hands of empires has proven to be deadly.  But this is the empire’s toolbox.  It is not the faithful who take up the sword against the evil identified by the empire,  for that is where the empire wins.  The world has successfully forwarded the myth of fighting violence with violence.  Had Jesus raised up an army and fought violence with violence and “God took him to military victory”,  then it we don’t have what we have in the gospel: a rejection of the cycle;  we have yet another iteration of the myth that only endless violence will quell violence;  or that we will have “a war to end all wars” .

Afterthought:  Even with the above theological reflection,  the production and enactments are well done.  It was just some of the narrative assesments where I had some reactions.  I did like the stories of discoveries of various cures,  and the technological enabling of significant stories getting out (as in the Civil Rights movement being violently confronted in Selma)