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But I think the answer lay later in history, circa 5th Century AD, when the "synoptic" gospels were assembled and all other gospels and Christian beliefs were suppressed, in the context of creation of a monolithic and decidedly patriarchal church structure wedded to state power. The "authorized" scriptures were highly selective, as well as subjected to editing then and later, to serve monolithic power (including creating a historical narrative that served the powerful).
I do think that there is a core of brilliant enlightenment in the 4 selected gospels--very simple, "love they neighbor"--that real Christians today identify with, and that survived almost miraculously, given the history of these documents, not to mention the horrendous behavior of those who claimed to believe in that message. I'm not sure that I would say, "Yes, I am Christian," because of this horrendous legacy and its rancid impacts even today. I believe I am but I would hesitate to say so--because, to so many people--especially to powermongers--it means repression, hatred of women, hatred of the Earth, killing Arabs, "We're No. 1!," greed, selfishness, predatory capitalism and brainwashing. And as to brainwashing, "Paul," whoever he was, is the first of a very long list of woman-haters and powermongers who have forced their views on others in the name of Jesus.
I don't know about Zoastrianism or Manicheism. I tend to sympathize with the Pelagians--Christian lovers of nature, who were likely the models for the ancient folk tradition of wizards and healers who lived among the people in England, Ireland and Wales. (They were in other places, too, initially, but were pushed into, and fled to, those islands when the powermongers began to build a monolithic institution in Rome.) I believe that Pelagius and others like him saw no conflict between "love thy neighbor" and the neo-platonic "Pagan" beliefs current in the late Roman Empire, embodied by teachers such as Hypatia, and I think in fact that a synthesis of "Pagan" and Christian beliefs was in the works. There were Christian bishops during Hypatia's time (5th century) who revered Hypatia, the last neoplatonic philosopher and head of the Alexandria Library. They were her pupils. I've read the letters of one of them--Sinesius--to Hypatia. Her letters and all of her works and even her name were very nearly obliterated from history. She was a mathematician, and, above all, a believer in education. She was, in a sense, the best of the Roman Empire (which had a widespread educational system).
The Alexandria Library was the center of learning in the ancient world, and home to scholars of all religions. It was an extraordinarily tolerant city. Jews, for instance--who had scholars at the Library--were protected in Alexandria. As one of the most important citizens of Alexandria, Hypatia would quite naturally be open-minded about religion and highly tolerant. And she had Christians, including Christian bishops, as her students. I think she was personally raised in the hybrid Greek/Roman/Egyptian worship of Serapis but she would have been well-educated about and well aware of ancient Goddess and Nature worship, and likely had some religious practices in that vein. It is also very likely that she was an initiate in Eleusinian Mysteries.
The awful fate that Hypatia suffered, and other events, pointed me to this guess: that a synthesis of Christian and "Pagan" beliefs was in the works, among Hypatia and her students and admirers, and including tolerant, open-minded Christians like the Pelagians (and also the Gnostics). The contrary strain among Christians, of a militant and monolithic religion, that anathematized dissent and variety of thought and that sought state power, was simultaneously active, at that time, in Alexandria. Its leader, Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, was into mob rule. Mobs of Nitrian monks under his control attacked the Roman Prefect of Alexandria (a friend of Hypatia), conducted pogroms against the Jews and set upon Hypatia, and skinned her alive. (It was a belief at that time that flaying prevented the soul from going to Heaven.) In short, they FEARED Hypatia. Why?
Another thing that was occurring in Alexandria at that time was suppression of the Gnostic gospels, and general suppressions and book-burnings against all alternative views. A cache of these alternative gospels was preserved in sealed jars in a cave Alexandria and not discovered until the mid-20th Century. Shepherds had burned a lot of them for fuel. Among those that survived is a gospel that clearly presents Mary Magdalen as the head of the Apostles and the closest, most knowledgeable friend of Jesus. (It is the oldest gospel.) In general, the Gnostics worshiped both God the Mother and God the Father.
It was this more balanced view--of women, of Nature, of God--that was the specific target of the new "patriarchs" (a title coined by Cyril) who were gripped by a mania having to do with their own importance. And this was the poison infused into Christianity that is with us to this day. Male self-importance. This leads directly to the enforcement--often violent enforcement--of monolithic ideas by state power. State power requires a uniform set of beliefs by which people, land, resources and wealth are controlled.
So here is my answer to your question, as to labels anyway. I guess that what I am a Christian Pagan. I think there is no conflict between "love thy neighbor" and loving Nature. Indeed, the two have great affinity. To "love they neighbor" you must love diversity--all kinds of people. The great lesson of Nature is multiplicity--billions of species, innumerable plants, animals and insects here on earth alone, billions of galaxies, many kinds of humans. And that is the best practice in the intellectual world as well--love of diversity. Many ideas. Why should there be "one God," and "one 'authentic' Doctrine," and "one, 'Universal' Church"? This monolithic idea creates religious wars. ("We're No.1!") Could anything be more opposite to what Jesus said?
It's a very, very, VERY odd pairing--Christianity and war. It is a very great puzzle. I don't think it's easy to understand it. And I don't think that the powermongers and warmongers are all there is to it. There have been good Christians, including good churchmen. And there have been confused souls with mixed motives, like "Paul." Early on, there was quite a passion for EQUALITY--that is, opposing the late Roman Empire's hierarchical society and wealth-based power, and--most important--slavery. The earliest Christians were definitely inspired as to human rights and our brotherhood and sisterhood with each other. And there has most certainly been growth on this matter over the centuries. It was largely Christian-inspired people who eventually abolished slavery in our pre-modern era. But the poison also got infused, early on, that it is okay to kill and oppress and lie--and create a vast empire--to enforce this view. We see this TODAY--in the utter hypocrisy of our leaders when they claim to be bringing "freedom and democracy" to other people, by slaughtering a hundred thousand of them with "shock and awe" bombing. The Romans didn't engage in that kind of sophistry. Our leaders can't tell the truth, though, because too many of our people are actually the better kind of Christian and wouldn't approve of pure secular greed and "might makes right." They want our country, as a collective entity, to be better than that. Why? Because somehow--despite everything--they have gotten the message that what we, as human beings, should be doing, is "love thy neighbor"--and somehow that message survived "Paul"'s wrongness and all the wrongness that came after him.
It moves me now. "Love they neighbor as thyself." Has a better thing ever been spoken?
There are also Buddhists, and Jews, and Hindus, and Islamists, and many Indigenous worshipers of Mother Nature, and atheists and all sorts of people who believe in and act upon "love thy neighbor." I don't mean at all to claim that it is a unique teaching. But Christianity--the conveyor of this message to us-- is characteristic of the society that we inherited from England and Europe--by far the predominant religion there, and it still is here. It's part of our language, our history and our political discourse. And we have powermongers today claiming that, as a "Christian nation," we must do this and that. (Kill Arabs. Support corporate greed. Worship the wealthy. End Social Security.) (I mean it's just mindboggling how they use this word--"Christian.") What I'm saying is that I'm GLAD that there are still Christians around--real ones. There is something truly beautiful about the core message and about people who try to live it, for real. I'm glad that that message has survived its awful history at the hands of people who didn't really believe it. And I think it's time for the synthesis of the philosophies of "love they neighbor" that the truest of the early Christians dreamed of, that all real Christians have always dreamt of, that the early Alexandrian Pagans dreamt of, with their tolerance and their scholarly religious studies and their belief in education, and that ALL PEOPLE have dreamt of: a world infused with love, one for another.
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