Conspiracy Theories, Ethnicity, and the New Gnosticism

No matter who you are, you might be swayed these days by a new kind of Gnosticism.

Ancient Gnosticism was this whacko offshoot from Christianity that was all about secret knowing. At the base of all that Gnosticism taught was this idea that the world had a secret, underlying truth that only the knowers could know. And if you don’t know what the knowers know, you’re not participating in the divine. You’re like a non-playable character, a rube. Gnosticism had no evidence to base itself on. You just had to know. You just had to connect the invisible dots with even more invisible lines. Continue reading

Is Christianity a Western Religion? (Full series)

Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.”
-Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West”

Is Christianity a Western religion? That may not strike us as a significant question, may not register as something necessary to establish as true or false.  But there are two reasons why it is important to dispel the illusion that Christianity is a “Western” religion.

Continue reading