Current Traditions Based on Past Racism

[jasoncran]

i have been saved for fifteen years. i'm well aware of the new convenant and i dont push kosher laws. but really the new convenant is what God was trying to do with isreal. if one were to read what the law was for in the torah and why isreal is the light of the nations then take was said in hoshea and then add it all together.we are doing what isreal was supposed to do in the first place.

i read the bible from the jewish angle because god has lead me to do just that. i was told not to read john when i came to christ by the lord but go to genesis. whom taught the gospel for years? the rcc and then protestant breakoffs and depending one whom you were raised from. most churches and christians simply dont understand the tanach and dont bother reading it much. my grandmas tanach is larger then any christian bible. theres a lot to learn from the sages and what they did and do say. and often many of the old and useful(not these dispys of today but the puritans and older who read the bible and reasearched it for years) quote the ancient sages. yet that is somehow missing in the church of today.

i do hear it from time to time but not as often as it should.without the torah theres no way to understand why christ came. so we need to grasp that fully and the culture that wrote it and the arguments of jesus day as he did deal with the arguments of two rabbis and sided with one called hillel for the most part.

[jasoncran]

my church has an elder that lead the prophecy classes and uses the older theologicans and writ of their day to explain the books of prophecy. surprisingly he is very dispy.

[ayin jade]

well what does the book of revalation mean? where does it get all its symbols from for the most part? the tanach! we can thank the rcc for this perversion of the gospel. on the sistine chapel painting the hand reaching for God is moses.But moses isnt alone, he has the all the greek philosphers with him. since when did the faithful jews equate the law with greeks in wisdom? in fact they never did and never would.

the more i read up on the sages and true god-fearing judiasm the more i begin to understand the walk we often talk about and what is often taught in churches.im hebrew and i cant go to my kin and simply ask them what does the tanach say. they wont answer me.they feel that i will distort what i say or lie or what not. we have done that to the jews.

the catholics in the crusades killed jews who werent a threat and in the inquisitions killed them. gee i wonder why the jews dont like jesus!

I recommend you look again at the sistine chapel. The hand reaching towards God is that of adam at creation. The old testament saints are also depicted around the chapel not greek philosophers.

[Guest AndrewCothran]

I grew up in a church in Little Rock, Arkansas in the mid-60's and early 70's. My family (we are white) had moved down from Kansas and we were appalled at the overt racism we saw against our black brethren both in the church and out. My parentrs taught my brothers and sisters that God loved people of all color, and that we should never judge someone by the group. The use of the "N word" would have been grounds for getting our bottoms tanned! Yet, this word was used freely by my white friends and unfortunately by many members of the church we attended... even amoung the church leaders and my Bible class teachers.

My parents tried to "buck" the status quo and were labeled "liberal change agents", "N-lovers", and many other other derogitory terms for their beliefs. My father used to teach Bible classes at a near-by black congregation and one night a young black man asked to be baptized. The black congregation had no baptistry and it was cold outside, so my father took him back to the white congregation and baptized him in the baptistry there. You would have thought he was offering human sacrifice to Satan, by the reaction of many in the church there... It caused quite a fuss and some of the members even rushed in and immediately drained the baptistry and scrubbed the baptistry down! Many were angry at my Dad and he basically told them "You'll get over it."

As the polical climate toward overt segregation across the country changed, people at the church could not overtly say "I don't want n-----'s to go to church with us here" but the bigotry and hatred still remained, so they began a thinnly veiled attempt to make segregation "scriptural" by saying that "hand-clapping, hand raising, and shouting out loud" were abominations to God because the scriptures were silent on these areas. These were common expressions among black churches of scriptual urgings by Jesus and the apostles to "rejoice", "encourage", "affirm", and "edify", but lmuch less common among white churches. By starting this tradition, they could segregate based on the difference in worship styles between black churches and white churches (yes, this is steriotypic) and say "we can't let blacks attend here, or they'll bring in this false doctrine to our assembly!"

We left that congregation years ago, but I still see this tradition stated in many different congregations, churches and religious groups even today. I've asked many of the members about it, but most do not realize that it has racist roots. They simply follow the tradition. I don't mind that some churches don't clap in their assemblies, as that is the choice of their leadership, but when they condemn other churches that do... they don't seem to realize where this comes from.

Do your religious groups have similar traditions and condemnations that are (in my mind) based in Christianity's racism of the past?

I was born in 1976 but my community was segregated by choice in funeral homes and Churches ..There was an understanding that dating blacks marry or giving birth to half black children was wrong .. My parents and grandparents used the word nigger .

There were racial sentiments galore .. The sad part is that many of the racists were in fact Christians .

[jasoncran]

from wikipedia

what does a sybil have to do with god?

nothing

On the five pendentives along each side and the two at either end, Michelangelo painted the largest figures on the ceiling: twelve people who prophesied or represented some aspect of the Coming of Christ. Of those twelve, seven were Prophets of Israel and were male. The remaining five were prophets of the Classical World, called Sibyls and were female. The prophet Jonah is placed above the altar and Zechariah at the further end. The other male and female figures alternate down each side, each being identified by an inscription on a painted marble panel supported by a putto.

The Libyan Sibyl Jonah (IONAS) – above the altar[Fig 11]

Jeremiah (HIEREMIAS) [Fig 12]

Persian Sibyl (PERSICHA)[Fig 13]

Ezekiel (EZECHIEL)[Fig 14]

Erythraean Sibyl. (ERITHRAEA)[Fig 15]

Joel (IOEL)[Fig 16]

Zechariah (ZACHERIAS) – above the main door of the chapel[Fig 17]

Delphic Sibyl. (DELPHICA)[Fig 18]

Isaiah (ESAIAS)[Fig 19]

Cumaean Sibyl. (CVMAEA)[Fig 20]

Daniel (DANIEL)[Fig 21]

Libyan Sibyl (LIBICA)[Fig 22]

from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling#Michelangelo.27s_scheme_realised

The depiction of Judith and Holofernes has an equally gruesome detail. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket carried by her maid and covers it with a cloth, she looks towards the tent,[42] apparently distracted by the limbs of the decapitated corpse threshing about

not in the tanach

and also this makes my case

Vecchio, the home of Florence's council.[21] The Humanist vision of humanity was one in which people responded to other people, to social responsibility and to God in a direct way, not through intermediaries, such as the Church.[22] This conflicted with the Church's emphasis. While the Church emphasized humanity as essentially sinful and flawed, Humanism emphasized humanity as potentially noble and beautiful.[nb 3] These two views were not necessarily irreconcilable to the Church, but only through a recognition that the unique way to achieve this "elevation of spirit, mind and body" was through the Church as the agent of God. To be outside the Church was to be beyond Salvation. In the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo presented both Catholic and Humanist elements in a way that does not appear visually conflicting. The inclusion of "non-biblical" figures such as the Sibyls or Ignudi is consistent with the rationalising of Humanist and Christian thought of the Renaissance. This rationalisation was to become a target of the Counter Reformation.

The iconography of the ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship[nb 4] and others – such as the identity of the figures in the lunettes and spandrels – continue to defy interpretation.[23] Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the theological program of the ceiling, and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by the artist himself, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and a genius.[24] Also of interest to some modern scholars is the question of how Michelangelo's own spiritual and psychological state is reflected in the iconography and the artistic expression of the ceiling.[nb 5]

In the Church of Rome, where there was an increasing interest in the remains of the city's pagan past, where scholars turned from reading Medieval Church Latin to Classical Latin and the philosophies of the Classical world were studied along with the writings of St Augustine, the presence, in the Sistine Chapel of five pagan prophets is not surprising.[40

i was told of this by a friend and im off on the painting but that is exactly why i call the rcc the roman comprimised church.

what does classic thought have to do with the bible? nothing. its one thing to know the arguments of them but to study them and paint and commision them sybils as equals in prophecy is quite another.

Edited February 25, 2012 by jasoncran

[OneLight]

It is sad to still see such division today. Unfortunately, race is not the only factor the South has a hard time overcoming. When I was climbing in NC a few years back, the "homeboys" in Brevard made it very clear what they would do to Yankee's if they found them in the woods. I guess I should consider myself lucky they don't climb.

[Guest AndrewCothran]

It is sad to still see such division today. Unfortunately, race is not the only factor the South has a hard time overcoming. When I was climbing in NC a few years back, the "homeboys" in Brevard made it very clear what they would do to Yankee's if they found them in the woods. I guess I should consider myself lucky they don't climb.

As a north carolinian allow me to apologize for idiots ..

[OnetrueGod]

It is sad to still see such division today. Unfortunately, race is not the only factor the South has a hard time overcoming. When I was climbing in NC a few years back, the "homeboys" in Brevard made it very clear what they would do to Yankee's if they found them in the woods. I guess I should consider myself lucky they don't climb.

As a north carolinian allow me to apologize for idiots ..

There are idiots of every color, race, and location on earth. I wasn't trying to paint southerners as racists, every culture has its faults. I was trying to get us all to think about "traditions" and where they come from. We follow many today "just because" it is what our parents, grandparents etc... followed and rarely look at where they come from.

The traditions themselves may not be bad in and of themselves (I could care less whether a church hand claps or not), but rather we need to look at binding them on others or condemning others just because they don't follow our traditions. Especially when some of these traditions actually had evil intentions when they were first employed... Such as the ban on hand clapping, hand raising, or shouting out loud. I don't believe the people trying to enforce this today are racist. I believe they are just ignorant of why this ban was placed in the first place and simply follow it blindly.

The thread kind of got a little off track on the Jew-Christian racism issue, but Christians should NEVER hate... Jews, blacks, or even Muslums, but be ready to share the love of Christ... not use Jesus as an excuse to hate or oppress others. Many Christians in the 1700-1800's condoned slavery as a way of bringing the "heathen" Africans to find Jesus, by enslaving and forcing Christianity upon them. Isn't that as foreign to the heart and love of Jesus Christ as you can get? The ends does NOT justify the means!

[OneLight]

It is sad to still see such division today. Unfortunately, race is not the only factor the South has a hard time overcoming. When I was climbing in NC a few years back, the "homeboys" in Brevard made it very clear what they would do to Yankee's if they found them in the woods. I guess I should consider myself lucky they don't climb.

As a north carolinian allow me to apologize for idiots ..

Sorry Andrew. I was not trying to imply all are this way. It was just an experience I had, nothing more. Please forgive me if you took this personally.

[winsomebulldog]

I just don't know if I could agree that the "tradition" of not practicing open and overt methods of praise is based on a racist ban originally intended to keep people of color out of "white" churches. Especially considering that I have seen more than one "white" church that does and always has routinely clapped, shouted, and raised hands. I was a teen in the 80's and attended an all white church that "shouted the roof down" every service. And this was in the heart of the South in Mississippi. Then again, I was born after the years of true segregation and the civil rights struggles. I just know what my experience is. And ultimately, I'm not sure it really matters how, when or where our current traditions got their start. Times and people change. December 25th may have once been a Pagan holiday, but somewhere along the way it was co-opted by Christians as the date to celebrate the birth of Jesus. None of us thinks it was His actual date of birth. Most of us now know the season's original origins. But we don't observe the traditions of Christmas because of their pagan origins. We do so because it's the traditional time when Christians celebrate Christ's birth. I think the whole clapping or not thing is less about racism - especially today - than about the man-created divisions between different denominations. Of course, one of those "shouting" churches I attended was Pentecostal and the other one is Southern Baptist. Basically, it really just varies from one individual church to the next. There are huge variances even within individual denominations.