By: callum Rae

callum Rae — Sun, 12 Nov 2017 17:55:33 +0000

It is worth noting, that the name “Europe” came from the need to refer to the culturally christian countries collectively during the enlightenment age. The previous term, “Christendom” had many negative connotations and so the European countries were embarrassed by it. While christianity is routed in our culture, it’s hard to say weather a pan-European identity would’ve otherwise developed without christianity, albeit with different cultural values.

By: Joël Landais

Joël Landais — Sun, 12 Nov 2017 10:59:05 +0000

Europe is our common civilisation.
“A fair amount of pan-Europeans would consider Christianity fundamentally unrelated to the construction of the idea of Europe, ”
True, but there are also
“A fair amount” of pro-Europeans who would like to limit the European civilisation to Christianity.
Both are wrong: the European civilisation has two eyes, two arms and two legs; if you make it a one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged “person” it won’t go very far.
There is no denying that christianity played an essential part in building the European civilisation… you only have to see all the churches, chapels, cathedrals that were built on European soil… all the paintings with religious themes…
But it is dishonest dismissing the Greeks and Romans by saying they considered all the others peoples as “barbarians”. In Greek “barbaros” simply meant non-Greek, foreigner (lit. someone who stutters, splutters… that is incapable to speak Greek properly). Barbarian did not mean barbaric.
Without the Greeks, we would have neither democracy, nor philosophy, theatre, music, poetry, history, geography, architecture, mathematics, geometry… etc. (all these are Greek words)… Yes, we would be barbarians.
The Romans may have called the other peoples “barbarians”, but they integrated them into the empire and allowed them to become Roman citizens. Do we do the same with migrants today ?
Christianity may have represented a spiritual unity of Europe in the Middle Ages, but if you had the slightest original idea, you were burnt as a heretic.
Think of the Spanish Inquisition, think of the extermination of the Cathars in France, think of the quarrels between the Pope and the “holy Roman” emperor, the Guelfi and Ghibellini who ravaged medieval Italy, think of the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the so-called “crusaders” (“There never was a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade”, Steven Runciman, a History of the Crusades), think of the wars between catholics and protestants (with the The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre), first in France, then in Germany (with the Thirty Years’ wars)…
Not to mention the massacres of Jews that took place everywhere in Europe.
“Christians” were definitely more barbaric than the Greeks and the Romans had ever been.
The European civilisation stands on two legs: if you cut off one of those legs, you make a cripple of it.
…
But we have to consider that Europe is multi-religious and multi-ethnic, that everybody is free to have the religious and political ideas of his choice: tolerance and freedom, this is what humanism is all about.

Comments on: Has Christianity Got Anything To Do With Pan-European Identity?

By: callum Rae

By: Joël Landais