JCC 15 years ago, at Columbine...

Christianity isn't defined by your actions or your morals, but merely by your beliefs. Which is why being a Christian and being a good person are two totally different things.

 

The irony being that early in its history, Christianity was rather the reverse: defined by actions rather than the beliefs. But that's another story.

 

Is he about to choke to death, Juliet?

 

Do you see a new thread about it, Jaypes? Then, no.

 

Wait for it. Wait for it...

 

What? A girl can't have a bit of a snack and enjoy the trainwreck?

 

Get stuck in, darling.

 

Well it just clashed with your usually erudite contributions to the discussion Juliet.

 

Saintheart, I would venture to say that while you are correct about the Church as a whole (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) being so deeply involved in the Crusades, I'm not certain if the no distinction between the entire Church and Western/Eastern Churches can be upheld when talking about the Crusades after the Fourth in the early 1200s. Now, I could be wrong on this, but it wouldn't surprised me if the Fifth, Sixth, ect Crusades WERE largely the work of the Western Roman Church with little or no involvment from the Eastern Church because of the Catholics sacking Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade.

 

Is it possible, too, they were a little preoccupied with Temujin and Ogedei? Maybe? Maybe the whole thing on that end of the world proved a distraction and was why those proto-Hungarians etc had to write the pope and say "sorry, can't fight, army crushed. Have a jolly good time. Read the Koran you rewrote - smashing job destroying the narrative to make it more sinister. Oh well, mustn't linger and prattle on."

 

Yes, you are wrong that the Fifth and Sixth Crusades were largely the work of the Western Roman Church, mainly because the Papacy had little to no part in them. The Fourth Crusade was the last to be organised or headed up by the Papacy (and let's not ignore the fact the Papacy lost control of the crusaders, excommunicating them at least once or twice after they went off on a frolic organised by blackmailing Venetians).

5 and 6 were organised by individual monarchs rather than by the Church per se -- while the Papacy had been intimately involved in the organisation of the first to fourth crusades, it had preached the fifth and sixth crusades but left it to monarchs to take military action. By all means be pedantic and say this is the Western Church crusading "in substance", but before you do, consider the following.

The Eastern Orthodox Church -- in this crusading period and after 1204 -- was not a paragon of nonviolent ecumenicism, weaving flowers around spearhandles and reaching out to embrace their pagan and Muslim neighbours as brethren. Far from it. There are substantial records of pogroms and forced conversions across the Eastern Orthodox Church's sphere of influence in Turkey, the Baltic, and the Balkans -- not to mention at least cooperation with the (Catholic) Teutonic Order's crusades into the Lithuanian area against pagans who operated in those areas. Throughout much of Byzantium's existence, centred as it was on Constantinople and Turkey to a lesser extent, it was more or less consistently fighting Muslims on its southern and eastern borders. The Eastern Orthodox Church may not have been as organised about it as the Catholic Church was during the first four crusades, but their notion of the need to convert the infidel, at the point of a sword if necessary, did not substantially change with the result of the Fourth Crusade. It just added another enemy to the Muslims they had to fight: the Latin Church. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 just put the seal on a rift that was already fraying since about 1054 or so. So while your comment that the fifth and sixth crusade had little to no involvement from the Eastern Orthodox Church is correct, you're also being facetious about it, because the Eastern Orthodox Church was no less hostile to religions other than its own than the Western Church was. As I said, there was no significant difference at hand. Whether you happened to come from east or west of Constantinople, the infidel was to be feared, resisted, and converted, if needs be by force. The only real distinction was that Christians in the Byzantine Empire didn't have to travel all the way across to Europe to find nonbelievers to fight; not to mention that, in many cases, the nonbelievers came to them.

The other thing, reading back through my Jonathan Riley-Smith -- as indeed anyone should unless you want to appear like a Runciman-spouting idiot -- I remembered that Martin Luther didn't really believe in an end to crusading, either. He wanted the crusading indulgences ended, just as he wanted the monetary indulgences popularised under the Borgia Popes ended, but at p.283 of The Crusades: A History, Riley-Smith has this to say about the effect of the Reformation on crusading:

Riley-Smith goes on to say that crusading only really died out not as a result of any sweetness and light from the Reformation, but from inner change within the Catholic Church and elsewhere:

In short, as I said before: it's silly in the extreme to point at the Crusades and shout 'THAT'S THEM ROTTEN, PASTA-EATING CATHOLICS, THAT IS, US PROTESTANTS WERE ALL MORALLY PURE IN 1098 AND DIDN'T WANT TO KILL NO MUZZLUMS'. Martin Luther did not object to the concept of crusading in substance, and the Eastern Orthodox Church practiced it in substance if not form. It's not "The Catholic Church" responsible for crusading, it's the Christian Church. Nobody objected, not until much later.

 

Awesome. And where do the Columbine shooters fit in?

 

ASR, you done it again you bad bad man!

 

They didn't fit in. That's why they shot everyone.

 

thread over. lock it up, boys

 

In before the lock!

PS: Excellent trolling MF and ASR.
PPS: terrible bullying of the right wing lunatic Ender Sai.

 

Can't wait to reopen this thread in 5 years!!!

 

This is your best post ever.

 

it probably is, and that's not even a backhanded compliment. its a really good post

 

I'm quite well aware of the context of Ender's comments. At best, though, they only make his first remark defensible. We all get a bit carried away when justified, and may say things that aren't strictly justified. Just as often, we'll get called on it. That's a pretty natural part of how things work around here.

There are lots of ways one can respond. One might simply ignore it, and let the thread die. One might try to defend one's original position using new evidence that responds to people's objections. One might simply admit that some previous statements were in fact incorrect. Any or all of these are valid responses.

Ender chose none of them. Instead, he doubled-down on his original remarks, hurled a bunch of invective at anyone who disagreed, and then repeated exactly the same "evidence" he had used the first time. While that's juvenile, there are a lot of things on this forum that can be described that way--we have a whole thread dedicated to toilet humor. What's worse is that it's simply tiresome and uninteresting to read. While everyone might not participate, an actual discussion about anti-semitism could have had some interesting points. Already, just from reading other's posts, I was able to pick up a few new things I hadn't appreciated before. But we were never able to go forward with that discussion, because one person was intent on disrupting it or at least not participating seriously.

Here's the thing. Saying that because both Hitler and some Christians talked about God and hated Jews, Hitler is somehow an "ideal Christian" isn't a logically defensible argument. It's a hackneyed attack ad. That's stupid when Moviefan does it to whitewash Christianity. It's stupid when Ender does it to defame Christianity. It's stupid when ex-Senate mods parrot Fox News and it's stupid when our liberal posters make a no-comments, link only post to some article in the Huffington Post in the "Derp" thread. No one wants to read that. If they do, there are plenty of mailing lists and blogs they could sign up for instead. Two people hurling invective at each other in ways only tangentially related to the "topic" at hand is not a compelling reason to read. It is, as many people said about this thread, tiresome. Do that stuff somewhere else, and let people enjoy themselves here.

 

Since it appears this is the official dumb theories thread, this is probably a good place to drop this.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/shocking-pictures-that-prove-the-illuminati-is-all-around

 

Wocky, many if not most of us would label many of your actions stupid. Why is this not included in your list?

 

I don't think wocky, or his actions, are stupid.

 

You also never contribute to any substantial debate. So...