In my first note, I maintained that the sociohistorical argument fails by an excess of zeal, which leads its supporters to the conscientious “silencing” of the moral and intellectual history of Christendom [1]. I have suggested that such an argument is only possible in and through the confusion it maintains between the Christian faith in its “quintessence” and the tumultuous part of the history of the unfolding of Christianity.

The rejection of Christendom, in this perspective, starts from an initial amalgam. It is as if, to take an example from the history of political ideas, the idea of ​​democracy was outright discredited because of the unfortunate historical experiences of certain democratic regimes. Such a reaction undoubtedly has some value. Nonetheless, it creates in us the same feeling that we experience when, applying a form of “selective blindness” to the complexity of a situation, we arrive at a desired but unsatisfactory solution.

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I return to the charge in this note to touch a little on this blindness. I will do it from the double point of view of the history of Christianity at its beginnings and of the revolutionary overthrow that it seals in its contribution to universal history (Part 3) [2].

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Appropriating a worldview or belief system is always a matter of common sense. It takes shape in the confrontation with his own reality of the one (or that) who makes this vision of the world his own. Concretely, this means that such an appropriation always takes place in the intermediate space between the knowledge of the "scientist" too imbued with his certainty and the blind ignorance which is ignored as such. This space is the place of common sense. In other words, the adoption of a belief is never a clandestine operation that would storm the cognitive structure of individuals. We do not become a believer - and we remain even less so - because it has been imposed on us. The believer, under this gaze, maintains a double reflexive and pragmatic relationship to his belief. This allows him to order the real and give it meaning. It also guides its attitudes and behavior by providing it with a normative framework that it shares with others. She finally makes him promises about the fulfillment of unfulfilled desires here and now.

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Moreover, from a sociological point of view, religious belief has the characteristic of being both a personal and a collective process. Personal, because belief is not authorized from the outside. I can believe (or not believe) against all odds. Collective, because you never believe alone. Once endorsed, the belief is lived and energized in the community of other believers. There is quite a mystery in the fact that two individuals who have “roughly” the same life course respond differently to the same belief system. The same social origins, the same families, the same pains and disappointments, the same questions, the same sensitivities thus produce different consciousnesses on a spectrum ranging from the “religious” stricto sensu to the most revolted “combat outsider”. The mystery undoubtedly lies in this "roughly". We do not know anything. Nevertheless, the insidious supposition that one would come to "free himself", while the other would remain the eternal victim of an imposition from which he was never able to get rid of, is fanciful to say the least.

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The sociohistorical argument is however rooted in this framework. From this perspective, the Christian of African descent is an "insane" who embraces the "white" belief system. After all, how can you be African / Haitian, aware of your history, culture, colonial and slavery heritage and still believe in the "god of white"? This questioning of good thinking seems unstoppable. It is even at the base of a form of "outdatedness" of the Christian faith among certain believers and in certain "prestigious spaces", including "knowledge". Except that it is based on fallacious and ill-informed reasoning of what the Christian faith is. At least that's what I intend to show here, avoiding, as much as possible, getting lost in the corridors of history.

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Brief overview of the history of Christendom

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Contrary to what is often suggested, the history of Christianity did not begin with colonialism or slavery. Likewise, the hegemonic dynamic of Christendom did not originate with the conversion of the Roman Empire. When Emperor Constantine converted to Christendom, what was considered a dissident Jewish sect of little enlightened people and cannibals of Palestine had already dragged behind it for more than 300 years [3].

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The spiritual explosion of Christendom begins in the 1st century with “The Event”, that is to say the physical presence of Jesus among those who would become his first disciples. This Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a town in Judea, a region located in the south of Palestine. Fleeing persecution, her parents settled in Nazareth (after a short stay in Egypt), a small town in the northern Galilee region. It was there that he grew up (Matthew chapter 2).

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It would not be trivial to recall that at the time the inhabitants of Palestine had, according to a consensus now established among researchers, dark skin (a variety of café au lait) with dark, curly hair. This implies that, unlike the image we imprinted in our fond memory of childhood, Jesus probably had nothing to do, in his physical features, with the Hollywood actor with long hair, eyes bruises, and elongated nose from "The Passion of Christ" [4]. In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

After an active public life of about three years, Jesus the Galilean dispatched his first disciples to spread the good news of “salvation” and of the kingdom of God throughout the world. At the time the Roman Empire dominates over the entire Mediterranean basin which today includes countries from southern Europe (such as Spain, France, Greece, Italy, etc.) from North Africa (like Egypt, Morocco, Libya…), from the Middle East (like Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel / Palestine where the Jewish people resided). Christendom therefore originated in a sort of geographical roundabout (the Mediterranean basin) which links at least three different continents.

The world of the early Christians was a melting pot of Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures (to name only the most dominant). From a political and legal point of view, the Roman Empire ensured the unity and cohesion of the whole Mediterranean basin where it had dominated since the disintegration of ancient Greece. From an intellectual and cultural point of view, Greek ideas and Hellenist culture in general constituted an inescapable framework of thought from which Romans and Jews developed their own ideas, understood each other and explained the world. Moreover, Greek was the lingua franca of the whole of the Roman Empire [5]. From a moral and religious point of view, the early Christians directly inherited the worldview of Judaism. This consists in particular in the belief in a unique God, creator of the universe, both transcendent (he is not to be confused with his creation) and immanent (he is also in his creation); holding the moral law (it defines good and evil) and revealing itself to humans through nature and in a personal way to the prophets, judges, kings of the Old Testament (book of Judaism). It is this God who is incarnated, according to Christians, in the person of his son Jesus and who gives “salvation” to everyone who believes in him.

By the way, the concept of salvation can be quite barbaric for one who is just introducing it to the Christian faith. Nevertheless, it is inescapable if one wants to understand the basis of Christendom. It marks a radical reversal from the Greek notion of salvation through wisdom (or philosophy). This is what makes Luc Ferry say that "the Christian doctrine of salvation will compete with Greek philosophy" [6]. The “great philosophical doctrines” being, according to the French philosopher, “doctrines of salvation by oneself without the help of God”.

But back on topic. The period between 70 and 312, that is to say between the death of the apostles and the emergence of "the Christianity of the emperors", can be considered as the age of the authentic blossoming of Christendom. I say "authentic" insofar as this period corresponds historically to the first direct confrontation, that is to say without supervision, of Christianity with the world. During this period, people claimed to be Christians at their own risk. Historian Bruce L. Shelley provides a very informative account of these times. He writes: “As long as the Roman authorities regarded the Christians as just another Jewish sect, the followers of Jesus enjoyed the same immunity from imperial pressures. But when the Jews made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they had no connection with the new movement, the situation changed dramatically ”[7].

The change Shelley talks about happened very early on. Already in the year 64 of our era, under the reign of the emperor Nero, Christians were the object of a gratuitous and hideous retribution. A fire breaks out in Rome. For six days the fire wreaked havoc and reduced much of the city to ashes. Rumors have it that the Emperor himself set fire to one of those schizophrenic schemes he knew nothing about. The event triggers the indignation of the population. To deflect popular anger from his person, Nero accuses the Christians of having set on fire. He couldn't have found better scapegoats. Christians are thrown into prison in large numbers. Some are crucified. Others are forced to clothe themselves in the skins of wild beasts and dogs were released against them which tore them to pieces, under the amused gaze of the crowd (Op. Cit.).

Hatred, often overt, against the early Christians was a norm. Several factors can explain it. But they all converge in the same direction: the way of being Christians in the world. By the way, Christendom went down in history as a confrontation. To resist was the first report of Christendom to the world [8]. This caused the early Christians to endure multiple forms of persecution, both official and unofficial. This point is important. Because if you want to lead a peaceful life, nothing more effective than to conform to the crowd, to follow the mainstream. This is precisely what the early Christians refused to do. Their first contact with the outside world, once they left the immediate fold of Judaism, was nonconformity.

It was not until the beginning of the fourth century to witness a turnaround for Christians. In 312, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Some say by political calculation. Others maintain that he was sincere. What is certain is that the Roman emperors, headed by Constantine, understood that nothing and no one could resist the power of the message of Christians and their conviction in the truth of their belief. The innovative message they carried and the commitment to spread it at the risk of their lives made them a force to be reconciled with, sincerely or otherwise.

Having become imperial, Christendom was to attract a motley crowd of people with no less motley agendas under its arms. Before Constantine's conversion, only staunch believers were willing to identify themselves as Christians. After his conversion, the crowd now numbered people with political, economic and social (re) positioning ambitions, without necessarily having any interest in the Christian faith as such. A pandora's box was thus opened. And we are entitled to think that it has never been closed since.

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However, this pandora's box also participates in a positive dynamic of the Christian faith which leads the believer to discernment and to the renewal of his spirit in the living word and by the Spirit of God in him. For the tares and the wheat must grow together "lest by pulling up the tares they uproot the wheat at the same time" (Matthew 13: 24-30). All this also contributes, in fine, to the power of the message of salvation, which refuses to divide the world into “good” on the one hand, and “bad” on the other, because they all participate in the same economy of peace. thanks.

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Dr. Jean Abel Pierre

Pastor / Sociologist

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Bibliographical references

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[1] The term literally means "silencement" is borrowed from Trouillot in his book "Silencing the past. Power and the production of history ”, Beacon Press, Boston, 1995.

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[2] I realized while writing this second note that it was going to be too long for the light format that I intend to keep. I decided, therefore, to divide it into two parts.

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[3] For a review of the history of Christendom, see, for example, Paul R. Spickard and Kevin M. Cragg, “A Global History of Christians”, Baker Academic, 1994.

[4] I admit that it is a bit funny to devote a whole paragraph to the physical features of Jesus. But, this participates in a necessary historical and symbolic deconstruction. In reality, the scriptures say almost nothing about the physical features of Jesus. I believe with others that this silence is part of the universal call to salvation, regardless of origin or “race”. For those interested in this debate, however, the following article will save you time and energy: “Insisting Jesus was white is bad history and bad theology”: https: //www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/ 2013/12 / insisting-jesus-was-white-is-bad-history-and-bad-theology / 282310 / Accessed 11/29/2019.

[5] A sort of vehicular language serving as an instrument of communication and exchange between natives of different mother tongues. This explains why the books of the New Testament are written in Greek; some in refined Greek and others in more accessible and popular Greek.

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[6] Ferry Luc, “Learning to live. Philosophy Treatises for the Use of Young Generations ”, Paris, Plon, 2006, p. 71.

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[7] My translation of Bruce L. Shelley, "Church History in Plain Language", Nashville, Word, Publishing, 1995, p. 41.

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[8] Under this gaze precisely and because of our history, I have always thought that we Haitians have something eminently Christian in us. Resisting was our first relationship with the world, and perhaps the only one. Unlike other peoples, our very existence as an independent and sovereign people has been and continues to be an act of resistance. But this is another story !