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Religious pluralism as an Asian tradition
Reid, Anthony
Reid, Anthony
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focus174.pdf
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Abstract
Although Christianity was born as a movement apart from the state and persecuted by it, once adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire in 312 AD it quickly became a state orthodoxy, almost coterminous with the fortunes of states. The very concept of an enforceable orthodoxy was born with the Council of Nicea, since there was a mighty state that could outlaw schism as politically divisive and require the theologians to resolve any differences that became politically significant. The concept of heresy was born at a time when states could equate it with subversion, so that first Nestorians and Monophysites, and later Albigensians and Cathars, could be crushed by force except insofar as they managed to establish states of their own that could defend them. Challenges to the religious establishment were seen as challenges also to the state. Longlasting schism, or religious diversity, could only occur when different states supported different sides of the debate. Even after the Roman Empire in the West dissolved before northern invaders, in the eastern Mediterranean it remained closely intertwined with the fortunes of the church, so that the split between Catholic and Orthodox became largely coterminous with that which had occurred within the old Roman Empire. The first world power, Hapsburg Spain, expanded into the Americas in a similar spirit that identified loyalty to Spain with adherence to Catholicism.
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Book chapter
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2014
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9782940428694
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Creative Commons Copyright (CC 2.5)