How does/did religion spread?

[Ecthy]

I like your way of posting and you provide loads of good stuff, so don't worry. Just saying it isn't my version of history

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy


I like your way of posting and you provide loads of good stuff, so don't worry. Just saying it isn't my version of history

Splitter!


(molly regrets inadvertently providing Ecthy with evidence that he values Ecthy's views. molly will read Hayek as a penance)

[Dis]

I have a theory that most religious people actually don't truelly and fully believe in the religion they worship.

I think most people go to church for peer pressure and comformity reasons.

It's the best explanation why people sin so much despite being religious.

[Ecthy]

Originally posted by molly bloom
I'm not sure which 'essence' you're asking for; even amongst the three monotheistic faiths, missionary work and conversion differed.

If we're discussing the spread of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, especially over an extended period of time, then the reasons for conversion and the processes are all going to be different, prompted by different movements (Muslim traders and Sufi mystics in South and South East Asia versus Muslim militaristic brotherhoods in North Africa and Spain) within the faiths or different rulers.

Charlemagne's reasons for converting Saxons and Avars had as much to do with territorial aggrandizement and security as with spreading the light of Christianity.

His armed crusade against the Saxons earned him just criticism from Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and his secretary.

But then Charlemagne's Frankish empire was also run on a booty system, with his warlords and government officials being rewarded with the spoils of campaigns against the pagans.

I agree there are different ways how religion spreads. I just think any analytical approahc should be top-down, not bottom-up

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy


I agree there are different ways how religion spreads. I just think any analytical approahc should be top-down, not bottom-up

Please explain...

I prefer not to start with a theory, but looking at how religion was spread, then proceed from there.

We see that in early Mediaeval Western Europe, for instance, the Celtic Church, Anglo-Saxon Church and Charlemagne's Frankish empire all had different ways of spreading just the one faith.

Admittedly this may be in part explained by the association of individual church figures, abbots or nuns with whatever local state or ruler offered support, but Alcuin disagreed vehemently with Charlemagne's methods despite being his secretary and director of education and religious adviser :

Our Lord commanded us to teach the Christian faith and then, after it had been accepted, to baptise.

How can the wretched Saxons be forced to believe what they do not believe ?

Of course you have mass conversions for reasons of politics (Bulgars, Saxons, Visigoths) and real religious fervour (the early Caliphate, early Christianity).

And of course the two can blur... I suppose the real answer would be if every convert to every new faith had left us a questionnaire obligingly filled out and answered scrupulously correctly...

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Dis
I have a theory that most religious people actually don't truelly and fully believe in the religion they worship.

I think most people go to church for peer pressure and comformity reasons.

It's the best explanation why people sin so much despite being religious.

It's hard not to sin... Especially if you don't live like a monk.

JM

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
As BeBro said, force is one tool, but one should not discount that people want to believe in something bigger than themselves. They want to know why they are here, etc. Religion fits that need to feel a part of something greater than themselves and that their lives aren't been lived in vain (especially those of the lower classes who spend much of their lives in toil).

Every culture has their own set of philosophies. The question is how do these philosphies spread to overtake other cultures.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by General Ludd
The question is how do these philosphies spread to overtake other cultures.

They build more temples and other cultural improvements to accumulate culture points.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


It's hard not to sin... Especially if you don't live like a monk.

JM

I do it, and I'm not even religious.

of course, I have no life.

lusting is my major one, using gods name in vain another

[Dr Strangelove]

Another bonus for early Christianity is that it strongly encouraged literacy, so its followers infiltrated the Roman bureaucracy and became increasingly more important for the administration of the empire.