Gnostics, Cathars, and ?Liberals? [View All]

Jeez, maybe I'll have to change my handle to "Jefferson" :-).

arendt

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Gnostics, Cathars, and ?Liberals?
by arendt


..."Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth,
...for as a rule they make many others die with them, often
...before them, at times instead of them."
...
...-- Brother William in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco


1. Amnesia

Unfortunately, there is no political equivalent of vaccines for childhood
diseases. Instead, each new generation of democracy-loving Americans
falls prey to common varieties of authoritarian certainty and its
concomitant intolerance. Each generations' parents can only stand at the
bedside, offer comfort and support, and hope the youngsters can survive
the illness - thereby gaining immunity.

Once again, beginning around 1990, a Fundamentalist Holy War has been
declared on American democracy - on the free and public education
that underpins a politically aware population, on the separation of Church
and State, even on the historical fact that the founders of the country were
Deists.

In the name of "American" values, Fundamentalists attacks those things about
our democracy and its Constitution which make America unique in the world.
They would replace our democracy with yet another squalid, ayatollah-ridden
theocracy.

Each new generation must face the "offer you can't refuse" nature of
Fundamentalism. If you join them, they will change from persecuting you
to ordering you around in the name of God; but if you resist them, they
feel free to resort to any tactic. Genghis Khan offered besieged cities the
same deal. Jesus would be appalled at what is done in his name.

Yet, America should be uniquely resistant to this kind of bad deal. This is
the country of "Live Free or Die", and "Don't Tread on Me". Beyond slogans,
America was founded by Enlightenment Deists, descended from militant
Protestants. The whole point of Protestantism was rebellion against an
overbearing "universal" (Roman) church, marked by demands for personal
access to spiritual communion unmediated by church hierarchy and for
an end to corruption.

After 120 years of "no quarter" religious warfare culminating in the bloodbath
of the 30 Years War, everyone in Europe finally agreed that tolerance and
private spiritual communion had much to recommend it. And, finally,
everyone knew who the Catholic Church was:

..."The Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting
...crowned upon the grave thereof"
...
...-- Leviathan, Part 4, Chapter 47 Thomas Hobbes


America's founders, especially Jefferson, were at great pains to exclude
religion from power in the state. Jefferson knew who democracy's enemies
were:

..."In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
...He is always in alliance with the despot... they have perverted the purest
...religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to
...all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."

-- Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Spafford, 1814


These lessons are all in the history books, yet Fundamentalists call
ever more loudly for a return to this primitive and brutal system of
tyranny. How can American Fundamentalists (and that includes Jewish
fundies and Catholics like Opus Dei) denounce Moslem theocracy but agitate
for their own? How can they advocate second-class citizenship for
non-Fundamentalists when religious discrimination is what America was
founded to escape from?

The answer is ignorance plus religious delusion, with a political program
that uses the one to reinforce the other. Most important to the enthrone-
ment of ignorance is the Fundamentalist trope that "thinking is the snare
of the devil", that faith must trump reason. This is the basic disconnect
of "patriotic" Fundamentalists: they refuse to see that willful ignorance
(i.e., blind faith) is incompatible with democracy.

..."If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never
...was and never will be."
...
...-- Thomas Jefferson

It is sad that a whole generation seems to be unaware of just how
dangerous religious fundamentalism has been throughout Western
history. I am appalled that, while lunatic religious websites, radio shows,
and publications are a glut on the market, the voices of Constitutional
democracy, the Bill of Rights, and the history of religious mania are
barely heard. Its like America has a case of amnesia.

What follows are some historical facts for people who found the standard
high school and college history courses, understandably, boring and
irrelevant. (If you went to Catholic school, some of this stuff might even
be news to you.) Yes, history may have been about "dead white men",
but those guys killed a whole lot of other white (and colored) folk before
they went. So, if you don't want to go the same way, it behooves you to
study history.


2. Squabbling Schemers

Since the groundbreaking work of German Biblical scholars in the 1850s,
we have assembled a validated body of documents about the early history
of the Christian (catholic) church. With the mid-20th century discovery of
the first century Qumran scrolls and Nag Hammadi Gospels, we finally
have access to the other side of the theological debate that raged between
Christ's death in 33 AD and the conversion of the Roman Emperor
Constantine around 320 AD.

And, guess what? The Gnostics who lost that debate despised the Catholic
bishops as much as the Protestants; they called the bishops "waterless
canals". They claimed that the bishops had perverted Jesus' teachings for
worldly power. This charge has been known for a long time

..."But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
...Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
...professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
...enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
...
...-- Thomas Jefferson to S. Kercheval, 1810

but now, the evidence is there to back it up. These documents show that
early Christianity was as eclectic as the Democratic Party. The bishops called
this eclecticism "heresy", and named the specific (and hair-splitting) varieties:
Manicheanism, Arianism, Montanism, and so on.

Early Christianity was also progressive. It included women in positions of
power (even treated Mary Magdalen as an apostle the equal of Peter); it
allowed meditation and other body-oriented practices akin to yoga; and it
hated hierarchies. These are practices that were mentioned and carried out
by Jesus himself.

But, in the end, the touchy-feely Gnostic Christians were out-shouted and out-
maneuvered by the ideologues. And, these were the same kind of extremist
ideologues we have today. The church "father" Augustine led a wild, younger
life and espoused one of the heresies until switching into the bishop's camp.
(Sort of a David Horowitz or neocon of his time.)

Constantine wanted internal unity and loyal subjects. Contrary to propaganda,
he worshipped Sol Invictus all his life, and was baptized on his death bed. He
called the Council of Nicea to knock some Christian heads together, not for
any specific theological reasons. He wanted order. The bishops wanted
legitimacy and power to deal with the Gnostics. The deal was done, and the
Roman Army enforced the bishops' definition of who was a heretic.

Now, students, if you didn't catch that, let me break it down. State religion
means using the Army to enforce it. Also note, the list of bad guys for
hierarchical, macho religions has not changed in millenia: feminists, new age
types, homosexuals, freethinkers.


3. Religion is Politics in your head and in your bed

Once you have an army behind you, you soon have a secret police that
eliminates any high-profile dissenters. With military and ideological
dominance, society becomes a laboratory for experimenting with theology
in service of political power. It follows that holding the wrong political
position can get you dead very quickly. This threat fuels the seemingly inane
theological debates ("not worth an iota"), which mutate into elaborate,
deniable cover stories for political positions.

But in the end, theology is a form of government that goes beyond
fixing the potholes and collecting the taxes (called "tithes", "pences", etc.).
It wants to dictate how people think and behave at the most personal level. Here are some examples:

1. Closet Sexuality for the Clergy

...Until about 1100 AD, Roman clergy could marry. Greek Orthodox clergy still
...can. Priestly celibacy was a political victory by anchorite monks and other
...ideological fruitcakes over the everyday humble dignity of wedlock. The
...clergy were deemed holy and above the married people. The resulting
...homosocial isolation caused clergy who already had been driven to
...monasticism by sexual temptation to take their sexuality into the closet.
...The problem remains with us today, in the Catholic pederasty scandals
...around the world, in the adulteries of Jimmy Swaggert and other preachers.

2. Other-worldly-ness

...Medieval Christianity couldn't deliver earthly goods. Life was dirty and
...short. The church even declared that sex was only for procreation, not
...pleasure. So, all they had to offer was the next world, the afterlife; or
...the Second Coming. The propaganda campaign was that dying early
...meant you got out of this awful world sooner and got your reward in
...heaven. Nice racket. Remember, the Catholic Church invented the
...word "propaganda".

3. Ignorance

...Medieval Catholicism and modern Fundamentalisms all see thinking
...and reasoning as the devil's work. When you have a doubt, praying
...is religiously correct; thinking is not. Convenient if your monasteries
...are the only centers of learning to be had. Inconvenient for democracy.

4. Persecution - like the Inquisition

...The slave makes a poor master. The ideologues in power are the same
...stiff-necked people who were martyred by Romans. Power has not made
...them less truculent. They will enforce religious purity by torture if
...need be. And, if such purity happens to result in political aggrandizement,
...well, that must be God's will.

The ultimate cynical combination of points 2 and 4 was the infamous
statement of Simon de Montfort during the Albigensian Crusade to "Kill
them all. God will know his own."

So much for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And many
Fundamentalists will tell you so openly, calling the Enlightenment
heresy. These four points ought to begin to make you, dear pupil,
understand the stakes in the theocracy vs democracy choice. To
drive home the point of how theocracies treat religious dissenters,
the Albigensian Crusade is the clearest historical reference.


4. The Cathars: Tolerant, pious, productive, non-violent, and D-E-A-D

Most Americans will be unable to identify the Cathars, and their awareness
of the Inquisition is probably via Monty Python. But, the so-called
Albigensian Crusade of the 13th century showed ideological (or Legalistic,
to use Bruce Bawer's terminology) Christianity at its most theocratic and
horrific. The very idea that one bunch of Christians is given license
to collectively punish another bunch of Christians, by looting and murder,
blasphemes the name of Jesus.

The Cathars lived in Languedoc, a part of Southwestern France that had
never really been brought under Papal authority since the fall of Rome.
Instead, it lived on the shifting border between Islam in Spain and
Catholicism in Italy and what-would-become Northern France. It is
an anachronism to think of Languedoc as a rebellious province.
Rather, it was an independent state with as much legitimacy as any
early medieval kingdom founded by invading barbarians.

The Cathar population was descended from one of the innumerable
early heretical Christian groupings, but as mentioned above, a group
that had avoided Rome's grasp. Their theology was inclusive, with a
strong feminist streak. But, they were Manicheans who believed that the
world was sinful, and the prince of this world was a devil as powerful
as God.

But because only the few, non-hierarchical clergy obeyed the most
strict rules of Catharism, the population at large was merely pious,
hard-working, and tolerant. The Cathar domain had a large Jewish
community due to Mediterranean trade that had flourished since the
early Roman Empire. They also traded both merchandise and ideas
with the advanced Islamic civilizations. As a result of trade they were
wealthy, educated, and cultured.

When they encountered priests and representatives of the Roman
church, they found them ignorant, corrupt, vulgar, and obnoxious.
The Roman Church was wrestling with its perennial problem of wordly
goods and, as usual, losing. (Contemporaneously, Francis of Assisi
was barely able to found his monastic order to help the poor, because
that order was thought to be an open admission of the failure to minister
to the needy.)

The Cathars were an even more open affront to the Church. In a
direct comparison, the people of Languedoc chose Catharism. The
Catholic Church could not compete spiritually.

So, the Church fabricated a causus belli. A Catholic was murdered in
Languedoc. His murder was blamed on the Cathars, even though that was
not true. The Pope proclaimed a Crusade, and the crude Northern
French Catholic barons, who had long coveted the rich land of Languedoc,
descended en masse on a peaceful people.

Along with their armies, the Church brought the Inquisition. The
Inquisition invented the "thought crime" and the whole secret police
apparatus of ratting out others to save your own skin. This was Legalistic
Christianity at its most muscular.

The entire culture of Languedoc was liquidated, along with much of the
population. Their history and cities were snuffed out. It is no wonder most
Americans have never heard of them. Nevertheless, Americans should take
the trouble to educate themselves on this matter.


5. Is there a pattern to Legalistic Christian behavior?

Let's see: legalistic bishops use someone else's army to rub out
their spiritual competitors. Item one: the Gnostics. Item two: the
Cathars. Being "touchy-feely" is a bad idea when religious ideologues
are in the vicinity.

Later, Protestants decided the Catholics were corrupt. Again, the Legalistic
response was to call out the army. Only this time, the Protestants were
strong enough to beat the Catholics. You can hardly call John
Calvin "touchy feely".

Where do we see the Legalistic pattern in the world today? That was a
rhetorical question, of course.

American Fundamentalism is hot-house Legalistic Christianity, fueled by huge
donations from super-rich political reactionaries that have conveniently
arranged for Legalistic Christian radio and TV stations to broadcast a sort of
God-plus-Mammon capitalist Chrstianity that is on the verge of
overthrowing the U.S. Constitution and instigating a theocracy.

As throughout history, a corrupt Church and the bazaar can get along
quite well, unlike Jesus and the moneychangers. And, who will be persecuted
for incorrect thinking in the coming hellish hi-tech reincarnation of the Dark
Ages? Why, the liberals, of course. Isn't that a surprise?


6. Liberals, cluephone calling!

After twenty years of stand-offishness, a deal has been worked out
between cosmopolitan capitalists and backwoods evangelists. They
intend to bury the hatchet - in the urban, liberal middle class.

Here is the deal. The Capitalists get to loot the U.S. treasury, the U.S.
middle class, and all the extractable raw materials on U.S territory.
They get to take the money and run to whatever guarded community
they choose. Look around you, grasshopper, its happening right now.

The Fundamentalists get to inherit the third world basket-case that will be the
remains of the U.S. after this grand ripoff. Fundamentalism will thrive in its
natural soil - poverty and ignorance. Corporations will have the rights of
feudal lords. Fundamentalists will blame the fall of America on those wishy-
washy liberals, and the Capitalists will give them all the propagandists they
need to convince the new Legalistic Christian American peasantry that
"thinking too much", "tolerating diversity", and "letting women and gays vote"
were the reasons for the downfall of America.

Any liberal relying on the good sense of the American people to reject this
ought to look at the recent hijacking of the Southern Baptist Convention(SBC)
by Legalistic ideologues. The "stealth" tactics that fundamentalist GOPers use
to get elected (up to and including "compassionate conservative" G.W.Bush)
were developed first to take over the SBC. (Say anything to get elected,
then govern as you please.) Good sense and fair play won't get you far
against a knife in the back. Today, the SBC says "women should submit
to their husbands".

Legalism is all about twisting and violating the existing rules to gain
leadership, and then changing the rules to eliminate your enemies.
Legalistic tactics strongly resemble the CIA playbook of "use the part
of the government you control to take over the part that you don't".
So, it should be no surprise that Korean CIA-trained Rev Moon is the
sugar-daddy for Jerry Falwell and a host of fundamentalist followers;
and no surprise that ex-CIA head G.H.W. Bush received $500,000 for
a curiously under-reported speech in South America praising Rev. Moon.

We are one staged "terrorist" incident away from martial law, if General
Tommy Franks (whose loyalty to his oath to defend the Constitution is
suspect) is to be believed. What the Confederacy and Hitler couldn't do,
a few rag-tag terrorists can. Sure! Where is the Kool Aid, Rev. Jones?

Under the illegitimate G.W. Bush, the U.S. is already experiencing
the hallmarks of Legalistic religious rule - massive corruption, the
willful destruction of rational, objective science, direct Federal grants
to religious groups, and the establishment of an inquisition.

The first clear signal of the Bush science policy was the refusal to sign the
Climate Change Treaty. Then, after 911, outright lies were told about the air
quality in NYC. Throughout the government, fundamentalist kooks and
corporate apparatchiks are being appointed to scientific oversight positions,
and fundamentalist Congressman are black-listing religiously-incorrect
science.

The inquisition has been created by the Patriot Act, which allows massive
suspension of civil rights, down to habeus corpus, as long as the magic
words "suspicion of terrorism" are spoken. As John Kerry said, "Hold
until cleared" is just a nice way of saying "Guilty until proven innocent."

But, wait, you may say. Fundamentalists don't have a Pope; they
aren't hierarchical. The analogy is flawed.

The correct response, students, is "not yet". Hierarchy is in the genes
of fundamentalists. They don't feel safe unless someone is telling
them what to do, how to think. And, there are plenty of rich sociopaths
willing to pander to this need.

One need look no farther than the secretive Council for National Policy,
before whom G.W. Bush gave a speech whose contents remain undisclosed.
The CNP is a clearinghouse for the behind-the-scenes planners and
funders of the Fundamentalist takeover. Sort of like the murderous,
ultra-Catholic Guise family in Reformation-era France, these people are
scheming away to eliminate the secular/non-fundamentalist opposition
by any means fair or foul; and it would appear they have placed their
pretender, G.W. Bush, on the throne. The CNP also resembles the
Council of Nicea, where a lot of log-rolling goes on in a heavily political
environment to solidify a "religiously inerrant" dogma.

Look at the national GOP, a party with thought control more rigorous
than any mainstream political party in American history. Tom Delay
is a perfect example of the kind of blind faith and violence approach
to governing that Fundamentalists will take.

If they weren't so dangerous, the Fundamentalists would be laughable.
They are out to eliminate the government; but the rural States where
the fundies live are net receivers of Federal dollars, while the urban
states they so despise are net givers.


7. They hate us for our freedom

I am not a touchy-feeely liberal. I am a hard-headed liberal. Fundamentalists
are dangerous and devious. The knife is already an inch into our backs, and
Tom Daschle is making nice with these people.

If liberals don't want to end up like Gnostics and Cathars, they better
defend themselves like the decent liberal Protestants who were their
forebearers. For surely their opponents are as determined as the Catholic
Inquisitors that their cause is just and violence is permitted. Failure to
grasp the seriousness of this kind of threat is how Jews wound up in
boxcars - because they simply couldn't believe that mindless genocide could
happen in a "civilized" country.

Liberals today, like Cathars before them, find Fundamentalists "ignorant,
corrupt, vulgar, and obnoxious". My advice to them is not to turn up their
noses too far, as they are likely to be cut off. Fundamentalists are human
sharks with minimal brains, very sharp teeth, and a nose for blood. They are
primitive, brutal, and above all, dangerous.

In closing, I offer the following pop psychological insight:

When G.W. Bush said "they hate us for our freedom", he was unconsciously
expressing his own views about liberal America. The motivation which he
assigned to questionably-identified Moslem Fundamentalists made sense to
him and to his followers because it is a motivation that American
Fundamentalists also have.

American fundamentalists hate American liberals for their freedom. They
hate our urbanity, our education, our rationality, our tolerance, our respect
for women, gays, and people of color as equals. Fundamentalism thrives in
rural areas, and just as barbarism from the hinterlands eventually submerged
the Roman Empire, it now threatens to do the same to the American Republic.

The urban middle class should remember the words of our founders:

..."Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
...
...-- Thomas Jefferson