Chapter 16 Reflections

Religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had an interesting contribution to society in that in consumed near entirety of the people's lives. In regards to the early forms of one particular religion, that of Christianity, the desire for a return to simpler times in large groups of people appears logical due to the amount of influence the God, the Bible, but mostly religious heads had on the lives of the individual. In modern times, groups still practice the art of conversion through missionaries to various third world countries (in my current understanding I have not heard of a missionary travelling to a more prosperous place), as well as internal conversions through works such as pamphlets, street preaching, door-to-door speeches, and other activities to proliferate the religion. However, nothing compares to the widespread devotion of the early sixteenth century spread of Christendom across Europe into the far east of Russia as well as the more southern areas such as Egypt and Ethiopia. 

Arguably, the spread of Christianity derived from devious reactions towards other groups of people, and can therefore be thought of in spite rather than for prosperity. Therefore, the actual spread of the religion, the expansion of the good word and the morals to be upheld, came from malicious desires to compete against the Islamic people for the greater majority of power and control throughout Europe. Proof stands in the expansion of Christianity occurring after the Ottoman’s began advancing through the Holy Lands and their seizure of Constantinople. Once they infiltrated the region of Central Europe, the Christian reign was threatened by the dominant Muslim culture into sparking its growth. It had nothing to do with the word of Jesus Christ or the good will of God among people. It had no roots in morality in a world of injustice. The reason for the spread of Christianity was in the Christian desire for power and control. The religion itself supported these values of dominance through the ideology that fueled it. A glance at early sixteenth century Christianity and all the years preceded it reveals a Catholicism the suppressed women, numerous ethnicities, the illiterate, and the poor in favor of white aristocracy determined to remain white aristocracy regardless of human justice and the rights of man. Christianity preached words of control through a single person’s interpretation, the pope, and therefore limited the minds and the consciousness of those who followed and believed it. Women were taught that it was God’s will to suppress them due to their ability to bear children, and they therefore should not argue with the good will of the Lord. Europeans were favored as God’s children since they were created in his image, and they had the painstaking labor of caring for the rest of the ethnicities of the world to teach them civility. The illiterate and the poor were taught to accept their fate for it was unchangeable and conceived for the proper function of the world. People were fed the key to their own chain around their ankles, and they willing swallowed it for they knew no better. Their naivety and ignorance could not be helped for the control of Christianity. That is, until Protestantism. Regardless if Protestantism bolstered similar morals as Catholicism, it offered freedom of interpretation which in turn fostered the growth of religion in the individual life for the individual reader. This option would have never existed with the perpetuation of the Catholic ways.