Purity and power: missionary strategy for social engineering. By: Thomas Wilkinson. One of my fave writers contributes an exclusive essay to Seek Truth From Facts.
Click on the link below to read the essay and access all the resources...
You have said that The establishment a universal deity was the product of global imperial expansion. One thing to note is that pagan "religions" were not at all unified. They were all subject to local practice and local interpretation. Furthermore, they didn't really BELIEVE-IN any doctrine, but were just superstitious preventatives against imagined bad luck and misfortunes. Therefore they were always going to be fractured, and never could have a unified power to make bold moves. You said it; "they had no ideologically uniform command structures".
I am hearing you say this Latin Church had the power to grasp hold of people's emotionality so that they would throw themselves into a conquest such as the Crusades, and worse. (By the way, 80% of the crusaders died along the way and never made it to Jerusalem. And at most, 10% came back.)
Other researchers say that it was just the opposite. That in the birth and rise of every civilization, individual passions rise so high that they eventually become self-destructive. These passions feed upon each other. Because this excess energy was already the case in Europe of the 10th century, the pope made up the story of infidels to send all of these crazy people away, never to return. It pretty well worked, and Europe turned toward a productive stability. (Taking more than 100 years to calm down.)
You infer that charismatic preachers were able to tell stories of saints, replete with accounts of wonders that led to conversion of princes and nations to the Holy Church.
I don't know if people resisted changing religions, maybe that was before the period of the "Great Migration". When Goths migrated south at the end of the 2nd century, things changed. They were raiders, and sacked and plundered peaceful villages. (Really for 1,000 years), the main business in Europe was WAR, which allowed the continual capture of children to sell into the slave trade.
Therefore all peasant villages had a burning need for a central power to protect them. If that central prince said now we are changing faith, well, maybe half-hearted, but it got done.
Faith was for the most part not chosen individually because of charismatic preachers. Faith was changed by the rulers for political reasons, not for religious preference. All rulers and princes had opposition. Often the opposition tried to rally the population against the king with the old pagan faith. The sovereign may have chosen another faith to curtail the power of the opposing oligarchs.
In Tibet, after the 4th try they were able to install Buddhism to replace the BON religion. This gave more power to the king.
When the Mongols divided into Hordes some Hordes converted to Islam, to differentiate themselves politically. Same with other Steppe tribes, politically, to attract new allies. In Rome they chose Christianity. In Russia (Kiev) the Princes chose Orthodox, and they resisted the Polish, Germans and Lithuanians who had chosen Catholicism, (in many armed conflicts). The English Reformation began as more of a political affair than a theological dispute, when King Henry disavowed the Latin Church.
There's more of interest that you wrote, but I'll stop here for now.
You have said that The establishment a universal deity was the product of global imperial expansion. One thing to note is that pagan "religions" were not at all unified. They were all subject to local practice and local interpretation. Furthermore, they didn't really BELIEVE-IN any doctrine, but were just superstitious preventatives against imagined bad luck and misfortunes. Therefore they were always going to be fractured, and never could have a unified power to make bold moves. You said it; "they had no ideologically uniform command structures".
I am hearing you say this Latin Church had the power to grasp hold of people's emotionality so that they would throw themselves into a conquest such as the Crusades, and worse. (By the way, 80% of the crusaders died along the way and never made it to Jerusalem. And at most, 10% came back.)
Other researchers say that it was just the opposite. That in the birth and rise of every civilization, individual passions rise so high that they eventually become self-destructive. These passions feed upon each other. Because this excess energy was already the case in Europe of the 10th century, the pope made up the story of infidels to send all of these crazy people away, never to return. It pretty well worked, and Europe turned toward a productive stability. (Taking more than 100 years to calm down.)
You infer that charismatic preachers were able to tell stories of saints, replete with accounts of wonders that led to conversion of princes and nations to the Holy Church.
I don't know if people resisted changing religions, maybe that was before the period of the "Great Migration". When Goths migrated south at the end of the 2nd century, things changed. They were raiders, and sacked and plundered peaceful villages. (Really for 1,000 years), the main business in Europe was WAR, which allowed the continual capture of children to sell into the slave trade.
Therefore all peasant villages had a burning need for a central power to protect them. If that central prince said now we are changing faith, well, maybe half-hearted, but it got done.
Faith was for the most part not chosen individually because of charismatic preachers. Faith was changed by the rulers for political reasons, not for religious preference. All rulers and princes had opposition. Often the opposition tried to rally the population against the king with the old pagan faith. The sovereign may have chosen another faith to curtail the power of the opposing oligarchs.
In Tibet, after the 4th try they were able to install Buddhism to replace the BON religion. This gave more power to the king.
When the Mongols divided into Hordes some Hordes converted to Islam, to differentiate themselves politically. Same with other Steppe tribes, politically, to attract new allies. In Rome they chose Christianity. In Russia (Kiev) the Princes chose Orthodox, and they resisted the Polish, Germans and Lithuanians who had chosen Catholicism, (in many armed conflicts). The English Reformation began as more of a political affair than a theological dispute, when King Henry disavowed the Latin Church.
There's more of interest that you wrote, but I'll stop here for now.
Librarian at library4conciliation.substack.com
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This article blew my mind! I suspect I will have to read it several more times to get a better grasp of all that has been presented here.