• Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Newsletter
Faithfully Magazine
Saturday, June 3, 2023
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
    John Blake photo by John Nowak for CNN

    CNN Reporter Talks Race, Faith and Reconciliation in Powerful Memoir ‘More Than I Imagined’

    Brown Baby Jesus author Dorena Williamson

    Author Celebrates Jesus’ Messy, Multiethnic Family Tree in ‘Brown Baby Jesus’

    KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage in an interview with Faithfully Magazine.

    Interview: KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage Talk Sex, Therapy, and Why ‘Marriage Be Hard’ (Video)

    Christina Edmondson and Ekemini Uwan on Truth's Table book

    ‘Truth’s Table’ Authors Talk Early Beginnings, Centering Black Women, and Inspiring One Another

  • Exclusives
    Karen Abercrombie

    After Award-Winning Role in Top-Grossing Christian Movie, Karen Abercrombie Is Leading Change From Within

    black women group

    ‘Righteous and Ratchet’ Black Women of Faith Embraced on Jemele Hill’s ‘Sanctified’ Podcast

    Josh McDowell

    Apologist Josh McDowell Backtracks After Claiming Black Families Don’t Value Education

    Christian author and preacher Dr. Voddie Baucham

    ‘Fault Lines’ Author Voddie Baucham Confused or Making Things Up, Richard Delgado Says in Response to Misquote on ‘Righteous Actions’ of Whites

  • Profiled
    Chris Broussard

    Sports Analyst Chris Broussard Uses Hoops and Christianity to Address Needs of Young Men

    Bishop Noel Jones

    Bishop Noel Jones: Engagement, Life, Family and Ministry (Profiled)

    nadine raphael

    From Prison to the Pulpit: Nadine Raphael on God’s ‘Greater Plan’ for Her Life (Profiled)

    lisa sharon harper

    Lisa Sharon Harper Is Her ‘Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams’ (Profiled)

  • Remember
    Rev. Dr. William Hiram Bentley

    Black Evangelicalism and the Reforming Influence of William H. Bentley

    Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Knitting Together the Community of Love: Lessons From Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Rev. Sutton E. Griggs

    The Complex Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs: From Respected Leader to Race Traitor?

    fannie lou hamer

    Fannie Lou Hamer: Forerunner of Faith-Driven, Pro-Life Democrats (Remember)

  • Opinion & Analysis
    migrants

    When Faith Says to Help Migrants — and the Law Says Don’t

    couple with child

    Missionary System That Brought US Man Accused of Abusing African ‘Orphans’ Was Always Deeply Flawed

    Civil Rights March 1963

    The Women Who Stood With Martin Luther King Jr. and Sustained a Movement for Social Change

    pile of books

    In New Jersey, School Segregation Didn’t End; It Evolved

  • Specials
    • All
    • Growing a Green Church
    clean energy

    Can Money-Making Microgrids Empower Black Churches to Close the Clean Energy Gap?

    laudato trees earthbeat

    Laudato Trees Planting Program Enlists Catholic Properties to Help Increase DC’s Canopy

SUBSCRIBE
  • Login
  • Register
No Result
View All Result
Faithfully Magazine
No Result
View All Result

Is the Roman Catholic Church What Jesus Intended?

FM Editors by FM Editors
September 23, 2018
Reading Time: 8 mins read
Is the Roman Catholic Church What Jesus Intended?
63
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

By Mike Sosteric, Athabasca University

I’m a typical sociologist, meaning I am skeptical about religion and human spirituality. Although I attended Catholic Church as a small child, I could see the hypocrisy, even as a child. I rejected that religion at an early age.

My undergraduate sociological training reinforced my atheism. My sociological lectures and sociological canons all decried and denounced the irrationality of human religion.

I dutifully read Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and dismissed religion as an opiate delusion. I understood from Max Weber that religion was pure ideology, and made an oath not to get fooled again. I agreed with Peter Berger that religions were superstitions “beyond the pale” of respectable discussions.

At one point, I’d even have gone go so far as to call myself a devotee of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who sees religion as — among other more negative things — a crime against childhood.

Like a lot of my sociological colleagues, I heaped derision on the faithful. However, one day I decided to put aside my sociological roots and take a closer look myself.

RELATED POSTS

NJ Faith Leaders Want Community-Led Solutions Not Police-Led Responses

When Faith Says to Help Migrants — and the Law Says Don’t

Missionary System That Brought US Man Accused of Abusing African ‘Orphans’ Was Always Deeply Flawed

Religion is the problem

As a researcher who looks at religions, I dug around and I was surprised by what I found.

I looked at the Western Tarot and found it was created as a propaganda tool.

Hand-drawn, grungy, textured Tarot cards depicting the concept of Death and Judgement.
Shutterstock

I discovered the remarkable story of Bartolomé de Las Casas, a brutal colonizer who one day saw the light and decided to fight for the slaves instead of immolating them.

I read the research of psychology professor Abraham Harold Maslow, who said everyone has a mystical experience. I examined the origins of global beliefs and found that although our beliefs are different, they seem to originate from the same place.

After this research, I wondered why the sociological “founders” had mostly ignored these mystical experiences. I decided to pick up the Bible and read; I was surprised by what I learned.

Jesus was a revolutionary leader

I expected to find either a passive shepherd who had died for our sins or a shady street corner dealer waiting for the next addict.

What I found instead was a modest, egalitarian but charismatic and revolutionary leader. The text I read showed that he was a leader who thought of women as equals, didn’t like commercial activity, didn’t think the rich could be authentic and absolutely hated the wealthy local elites.

He told his students to be cautious of elites because “they are corrupt” and lead people astray.

He said “they do not practise what they preach” and called them wicked, blind, self-indulgent, hypocrite fools; pretty on the outside but rotten and unclean deep within.

After reading the Gospels, it seemed to me that in the story, Jesus was a charismatic and popular revolutionary who had angered local elites and was assassinated as a result.

The big lie

The elites were afraid that should the people crown this new leader king, as they seemed ready to do, they would lose their control of power.

To head off the threat, the top male elites, the “chief priests and the Pharisees”), convened their version of the Supreme Court (the Sanhedrin) and plotted an untimely death for Jesus.

To accomplish their goal, the elites told lies to turn the people against him. Once the lie spread as truth, Jesus went into hiding but was arrested by local elites who threatened Roman leaders into a public shaming and brutal execution.

To my sociologically trained eye, the assassination was a clear attempt to suppress teachings that awakened the public to elite corruption. It was designed to put the public back to sleep.

Unfortunately for the elites, their first suppression attempt didn’t work. The assassination turned Jesus into a martyr, as he himself knew it would.

After his death, the word spread fast, with thousands and thousands of Jews and gentiles being converted at once.

We see the conversion of Roman centurions, traditional priests, foreign state officials and top-level elites (e.g., Saul’s Conversion in Acts 9). There is conversion “through the whole region” — Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Syria, Philippi,Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth and Ephesus.

Christ’s martyrdom created a steamroller that spread throughout the whole world. It enraged local elites and lead to pogroms (Acts 8: 1-4), mass deportation and pervasive persecution.

Early Christians were socialists

Why put so much effort into assassination and suppression? The answer is that Jesus wasn’t just an anti-authoritarian, he was a socialist revolutionary leader. He told wealthy folks to redistribute their wealth and his followers did the same.

Jesus and the early Christians were about equality and freedom from the “yoke of slavery.” They dismissed political, ethnic and gender hierarchies and said we should all help the weak, not destroy them.

In 2 Corinthians 8: 13-15, the apostle Paul admonishes the Corinthians and tells them to “strive for equality” by redistributing their wealth. In a passage prescient of Karl Marx’s famous quote: “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” Paul reminds the Corinthians to share. “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

All of the above was rooted in Christ and his followers’ dismissal of authoritarian spirituality in favour of a radical “we are all God” cosmology. Jesus claimed to be God but “so are you,” he said (John 10:24,Corinthians 6:19 Colossians 3:11).

In other words: Don’t listen to authority. Don’t listen to tradition. Don’t follow their rules. Give your possessions away. Help the weak. Live in peace with all people. Redistribute wealth. I am God. You are God. We are God.

Why were my expectations so out of line with the actual story told in the Bible?

The Church is a rich male collective

The Catholic priests I listened to as a child didn’t talk about Jesus the revolutionary; they told me the same big lie the elites in the Bible told. They made me recite that same lie every Sunday. By the time I was 10, the Catholic Church had burned the lie deep into my mind.

If you believe the Church is a continuation of Christ’s teachings, this is confusing.

However, once you learn the Catholic Church is a collection of elite patriarchs brought into formal power by edicts and actions of the Roman Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, it begins to become clear. When you realize the Church is one of the richest and most powerful male collectives in the world, it comes into clear focus.The Conversation

Editor’s note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


Mike Sosteric, Associate Professor, Sociology, Athabasca University


Share This Post

Share via

Share This Post

  • Digg
  • Tumblr
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
More
  • Report
63
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It
Tags: OpinionRoman Catholic ChurchThe Conversation
FM Editors

FM Editors

Faithfully Magazine is a fresh, bold and exciting news and culture publication that covers issues, conversations and events impacting Christian communities of color.

Related Posts

police
Opinion

NJ Faith Leaders Want Community-Led Solutions Not Police-Led Responses

June 2, 2023
A business at 314 Broad Street in Leland, Mississippi, as seen on January 1, 1939
Opinion

The Real ‘Great Replacement’: When Resentful Whites Recruited Foreigners to Undermine Black Progress

June 1, 2022

Recommended Stories

Why Are Christians So Fake?

Why Are Christians So Fake?

May 5, 2017
Christmas Mass

When A Protestant Goes to Mass: Finding Christ at Midnight

December 24, 2019

Four Christians Shot to Death Amid Family Easter Celebration in Pakistan

April 2, 2018

Popular Stories

  • stream movies laptop

    Free Christian Movies: How and Where to Watch Free Christian Movies Online

    462 shares
    Share 184 Tweet 115
  • Are Jesus and John the Baptist Cousins or Related in Anyway?

    417 shares
    Share 166 Tweet 104
  • Paige Hilken, Wife of North Coast Church Pastor Christopher Hilken, Dies by Suicide

    407 shares
    Share 163 Tweet 102
  • After 20 Years, Bishop Noel Jones Says He’s Finally Ready to Marry Partner Loretta Jones

    364 shares
    Share 146 Tweet 91
  • NYC Megachurch Pastor A.R. Bernard’s Son Dies After Losing Battle With Alcoholism

    285 shares
    Share 114 Tweet 71

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

No Result
View All Result
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
  • Exclusives
  • Profiled
  • Remember
  • Opinion & Analysis
  • Specials

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Share via

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Copy Link
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Flipboard
  • SMS

Add New Playlist

Add to Collection

  • Public collection title

  • Private collection title

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?
Send this to a friend