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The Long Waves of Time

	Long Waves of Time
	Chapter I Rise of Christianity
	Chapter II Saeculum Obscurum
	Chapter III Carolingian Reformation
	Chapter IV Age of Byzantium
	Chapter V Crusades
	Chapter VI Renaissance
	Chapter VII Reformation
	Chapter VIII Age of Enlightenment
	Chapter IX Resurgence of Religion
	References

Resurgence of Religion

The balance of power, the result of WW II, was disturbed with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. History suggests that imbalance of power leads initially to a series of small wars, an escalation of violence, and the increased probability of a major military conflict. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the world has destabilized. The threat of mutual annihilation that kept the superpowers at bay for the last half century has receded. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, in the Summer of 1993, there appeared in Foreign Affairs a study by Harvard University Professor Samuel P. Huntington called the Clash of the Civilizations. According to Huntington, the next major conflict is likely to be conflict where the West will face the Islamic world and confront the Confucian states of the Far East. To alter this course of events, envisioned by Huntington, would involve concerted effort of those who prefer a global community where peaceful conflict resolutions have precedence over the violent ones.

Shortly after the Fall of the New York Twin Towers on November 11, 2001, there appeared in Pacific News (March 6, 2002) a sequel to Huntington's Clash of the Civilizations by Yu Bin, Professor of political science at Ohio's Wittenberg University. Called the Clash of the Uncivilized, the Yu Bin's article is excerpted as follows:

September 11, 2001 unleashed the most uncivilized part of every major religion in the world. Islamic fundamentalists, Jewish hard-liners and Christian right-wingers are plunging themselves into holy wars of their own definition and making. President Bush determined to settle unfinished business with Saddam Hussein, regardless of disagreement with allies, guaranteed backlash against the United States. This, coupled with the widely held perception of American indifference toward Palestinian suffering, has made America morally hypocritical in the eyes of many. This is strategically destabilizing for a highly interdependent, fragile world system. In Europe, this global surge of uncivilized clashes has given rise to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic momentum. Extremist conservative forces are running the show in much of the world, and the silence, impotence and disappearance of moderate forces globally has contributed to the current malaise

It is still possible to tame this uncivilized beast before it consumes us all. The world needs to address this increasingly dangerous situation not just with smart bombs, but also with political wisdom, meaningful diplomacy, patience, fairness and generosity. Such an effort would make the United States a power to be respected, not just feared.

 

The end of the world

Thomas Long (2000) in his Medieval New England Apocalypse relates the story of the runaway bestseller The Day of Doom (1662) by a Puritan preacher, Michael Wigglesworth. The Day of Doom is a description of Judgment Day. The book (a lengthy poem) begins:

Still was the night, serene and bright,

when all men sleeping lay;

Calm was the season, and carnal reason

thought so it would last for ay.

The depiction of a nocturnal serenity is interrupted by a gigantic earthquake followed by a tsunami. All the living and the dead are assembled before the Judge for their ultimate trial. The damned are dispatched to their punishments of endless misery in a fiery lake filled with sulfur, including the unbaptized infants. This Wigglesworth justifies by the Puritan notions (inherited from St. Augustine) of predestination and the necessity of grace. The trial reflects the prevalence of legal imagery in a dream vision that inspired Wigglesworth book. Puritans believed that they were living on the cusp between the Old Age and the New, between the City of Man and the City of God and imagined that the institution of the New Jerusalem would bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

A similar argument was advanced by Pope Urban II when instigating the First Crusade. An eye witness, abbot of Nogent, Guilbert, recorded that Urban

'emphasized the sanctity of the Holy Land, which must be in Christian possession
 so that prophecies about the end of the world could be fulfilled.'

 As George Monbiot observes,

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion: Jesus will return to Earth when the Third Temple will be rebuilt. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth. The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. American pollsters estimate that about 33% of Republicans belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war.

They think that they can step on us as on insect...
It happened some time after that fateful September 11, 2001. The movie theatres were showing The Lord of the Rings where at one point the main characters travel through underground caverns. At the same time the American warplanes were shattering the caves high in the mountains of Afghanistan. I was thinking how the people who took the refuge in a cavern had to feel when the entrance to the bombed cave collapsed and they found themselves buried alive. I mentioned this thought, in passim, to my class attended at that time by about 35 students. When I arrived to the next class meeting, I found an empty classroom. In the back there was a small group of students; two black girls, a foreign student from the Turkey, one white student, and a Pakistani girl which used to be a flight attendant for the Pakistani Airlines. After the lecture I walked across the campus to my car. It was a beautiful evening and I was humming a song about the U ye wei fong I used to listen to during the better days on an island lost in the Northern Pacific. The Pakistani girl emerged from the darkness. Her black hair was swaying in the evening wind and her eyes were sparkling as black diamonds.

Surprised? she asked.

I should have known better, I replied.

You'll get used to it, she said. They think that they can step on us as on insect.

 

 

...and beyond

A reader on the Amazon's Internet site recently wrote:

No religion is responsible for more bloodshed and suffering than the monotheistic religions. The ascendancy of Christianity and Judaism ushered in a dark Age for the West./ Both religions have given birth to a society based primarily upon lies and ignorance where the independent thinking is under relentless attacks. Christianity and Judaism are now poised to deliver humanity back to the age of the Crusades.

The onset of the contemporary era is indelibly marked by the collusion of secular and religious powers, something our founding fathers feared the most. As observed above, the closest parallel to this era seems to be the age of crusades. At that time, the military superior West invested significant effort to alter the religious character of the Middle East. After the initial military victories, crusaders embattled themselves on a strip of land bordered by in a chain of fortresses called the Outremer.

 As most invaders throughout the history who did not merge with the local population, they were ultimately forced out. Killed one by one, they left in 1291. This military adventure lasted 195 years and its cost was about 20 million lives.