Dear Diana Butler Bass,I heard you speak the other Sunday, but I feel like I've spent the week with you as I've read The People's History of Christianity.
So often, I've looked over my shoulder at the history of Christianity and I snap my gaze around again, quickly, to the future, not because I have great hopes, but because history, as typical history, is such a shame. The chapter titles are so grim and disgraceful. It is not disheartening that Christians were
martyred at the point of swords, but that, so often, they held the swords and ran through the hearts of believers and disbelievers alike. It is not that they were thrown ignominiously to the teeth of lions, but that they were lion hearted. It is not that they were raped and plundered, but that they, with the shield of Christendom emblazoned, deflowered women, children, men, and regions in the name of salvation. 
So, your book turns me round and lets me look with teeth unclenched and reminds me that, throughout the ages, there was another, truer history of faith that played out alongside the narratives of power and prestige recalled by biographers and annalists with credentials impressed upon an authorized version.Betsy
Click on the Dore image - Richard the Lion Heart in Reprisal Massacres Captives - to see this image in sharper detail at artmight.com. Click on the tapestry to see similar works at quaker-tapestry.co.uk
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment