Tag: religion

"Intelligent, scientifically trained people no longer believe (or can no longer believe) in God."

In A History of Young People in the West, Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt posit that, in the West, adolescence is first and foremost a social-cultural construction, and therefore a cultural product. They considered it at most subsidiarily as a stage in the physiological process of growing up.

Thousands of street names changed because they referred to Christian saints, Catholic priests forced to marry, Jesus Christ described as a revolutionary—these are some of the stupefying details of the French Revolution.

The idea that religion is harmful to the process of human development has no scientific support, but religious conviction has been associated with a number of tragic experiences within families.

In the early decades of the 18th century, America was in the throes of an identity crisis. The new American lifestyle had earned New England the nickname of “the new English Sodom.”

“The newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street...and the devotees of the weird doctrine... work themselves into a state of mad excitement...They claim to have the ‘gift of tongues’ and to be able to understand the babel”.

“Jerusalem crucified the Lord, Rome beheaded and crucified his chief apostles and plunged the whole Roman church into a baptism of blood. Rome became, for good and for evil, the Jerusalem of Christendom, and the Vatican hill the Golgotha of the West. The cross was substituted for the sword as the symbol of conquest and power” [1].

The troubled centuries that followed the Great Schism of 1054 and the corresponding climate inside the Christian church gradually gave way to profound shifts in the thinking and spirituality of Europeans.

In the face of the hundreds of Christian confessions that exist today, the ecumenical efforts of the last decades have invariably raised some complementary and equally legitimate questions: Is Jesus' desire "that all of them may be one" (John 17:21) possible?

One of the surprises of the twentieth century when it comes to religious freedom was Dignitatis Humanae Persona, the first declaration of religious freedom officially promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1965, at the end of the Second Vatican Council.

The Baptist Church has made significant contributions to religious life by embracing the principle of separation of church and state and the principle of religious freedom.

The book “Proofs of God's Existence” describes Richard Wurmbrand’s experience, who, in the dungeons of communist horrors, turned suffering into a very successful teacher of character and well-balanced words.

On November 13, the Orthodox Church celebrates one of the most famous church fathers—John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, whose name is linked to the oldest and most widely used liturgy of the Eastern Church.

When I read how a non-religious mother felt she needed to calm herself down at the thought that her child might begin to believe in God, I was surprised and almost offended.

"Scripture" is a Latin word that means "writings", while "Bible" is a neutral Greek plural meaning "books" (from biblíon = book, document, scroll). Today, however, in all languages, the word "Bible" is understood as a feminine singular, meaning Holy Scripture.