Christianity

By Thomas Cloud

Christianity has an odd position in history. Undoubtedly, it has impacted the world several times over, but it has also seemed to fracture with every major movement in the last 2,000 years. Currently, historians recognize 34,000 different denominations. Christianity has changed a lot — or perhaps very little.

Christianity is not a culture-specific religion; instead, it seems to fit into cultures and countries in various ways. Many splits in Christianity are largely cultural or national in nature. For example, Episcopalians were originally Anglicans and they split off because of the American Revolution.

Within America, the Civil War divided the Baptist Church, with Northern Baptists supporting the Union and Southern Baptists supporting the Confederacy. Christianity seems to adapt to whatever culture it’s in.

The uniqueness of Christianity arises from the fact that it is vastly less prescriptive than other religions. Christianity has no diet laws or dress code, instead it prescribes morality and asks Christians to behave morally and respect the traditions of those around them so long as those traditions themselves are not sinful. It really is a matter of the heart.

“One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Romans 14:5-6).

Theological differences cause division as well. The Catholic Church includes 15 books in the Bible commonly called the Apocrypha, which are excluded by Protestants. Though questioning the Apocrypha actually began with Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, this one was exacerbated by Martin Luther. Luther questioned the Apocrypha’s origins since copies of it did not exist in Hebrew and instead came from the Septuagint, or the early Greek version of the Bible. The controversy remains today.

Within the Protestant church, huge divisions exist between Christians who believe that God has predestined every single action and those who believe he has not.

Those who believe God ordered time into a single unalterable chain of events are commonly called Calvinists, after the theologian John Calvin — which is slightly disingenuous, since Augustine believed in complete predestination — those who do not believe in complete predestination are called Arminians.

Arminians point out that love cannot exist without free will while Calvinists reply that since God knows everything, He must predetermine all things. The debate rages on and it will likely continue to rage until the end of time.

When it all boils down, Christianity is the belief that God sent his son Jesus Christ to die in our place for our sins. Jesus could do this because he was perfect and he proved his perfection by rising from the dead. It is ultimately a matter between a person and God if they really believe and if they believe the right things — or if they are just going through the motions.

Reach columnist Thomas Cloud at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Baha'i

By Wade Caves

Perhaps the way my Faith has most changed since its beginnings would be its growth throughout the world. The Baha’i Faith is a new world religion, with 165 years of intricate history and development.

The Baha’i calendar starts in 1844, when a young Persian man known as the Bab — which translates to “the gate” in Arabic — announced that he was the bearer of a long-promised message: that the coming of a second messenger from God — the Promised One of All Religions, “Him Whom God shall make manifest” — was imminently near, and that humanity was at the threshold of a new era. He taught that this person would usher in the age of peace and justice promised in all major world religions.

The Bab’s preaching and teaching inspired believers in the thousands and also aroused powerful enemies. But fervent and fierce persecution has been the spiritual heritage of each manifestation of God; the lives of Muhammad, Christ and Moses are all testaments to this, and the lives of the central figures of my Faith are no different. The Bab was martyred at the age of 29 by a military firing squad in 1850 in a public square in Tabriz, Persia — modern-day Iran. It was a devastating blow to the believers, and much seemed dim at that time.

This period of active persecution resulted in the martyrdom of some 20,000 followers, but remarkably, the Faith did not falter. In 1963, Baha’u’llah — a devout follower of the Bab — made his declaration by publicly stating to all that he was “Him Whom God shall make manifest.” Baha’u’llah wrote, “I am the One Whom the tongue of Isaiah hath extolled, the One with Whose name both the Torah and the Evangel were adorned.”

Even before this message and until the remainder of his days, Baha’u’llah became the object of torture and ridicule, of endless exiles, and of destitute imprisonment because of his growing teaching. But his mission gained momentum and strength, and Baha’u’llah’s hardships only served to help disperse his message.

Growth has changed the face of my religion in ways Baha’is didn’t think possible: resources and abilities are multiplying as we invest in ourselves and as we turn our focus to the only point of actual strength — the unfailing Word of God, as revealed in the Torah, the Sutra, the Qur’an and the Gospel, and in the Writings of Baha’u’llah. Today, the Baha’i Faith has between five and six million adherents in over 100,000 localities around the world and is currently recognized as the second-most geographically widespread religion after Christianity and the second-fastest growing faith after Islam.

Reach columnist Wade Caves at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Judaism

By Natalie Sikavi

It would be very simple for me to say that Judaism has not changed, because in many ways it hasn’t. We still have the same holidays and prayers. We even have tefillin, phylacteries that have been found in archeological digs that were identical to the ones we have today.

Before the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Beit HaMikdash, or the Holy Temple, played a large role in the lives of Jews. Each day the Levites would bring three sacrifices to G-d and sing.

The Kohen would light the menorah every night. All the Jews in Israel would travel to Jerusalem once a year to distribute tithes of fruit and grains to the Kohenites and Levites who resided close to the temple.

Now that the temple is gone, our practices are slightly different. Instead of three sacrifices a day, Jewish people pray three times a day. Instead of lighting candles, we celebrate the miracle of that same menorah lasting eight nights on Hanukah with insufficient oil. We no longer bring tithes, but we do honor the Kohenites and Levites by allowing them to be called up first to the Torah scroll.

That said, Judaism has also evolved differently in different regions around the world.

For example, the Hebrew letter “tet” is pronounced as an “s” sound by Jews from Eastern Europe and as a “t” sound by Jews from the Middle East, Spain and thereabout.

Jews from Eastern Europe are known as Ashkenazi Jews. Jews from Spain, Italy and parts of France are known as Sephardic Jews. “Sepharad” in Hebrew means “Spain.” In Hebrew the word “Mizrahi” means “from the East,” and that is what Middle Eastern Jews are called.

All of these terms are used today not to distinguish different sects of Judaism but to denote different customs.

Of course, Jews learned new ideas from the Christians and Muslims living around them.

That’s why today, when one walks into either an Ashkenazi or Sephardic synagogue, they will hear the same prayers with different tunes. They will see the same books with different decor. The same dress code with different colors.

The religion is the same and always has been. The biggest change is the embellishment of customs from different places around the world.

Reach opinion editor Natalie Sikavi at opinion@dailyuw.com.

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