Europe's collapse into the Dark Ages

 How Europe fell into the Dark Ages is perplexing and complex. England in the 400s still had houses with glass windows and cities had aqueducts and baths, even though Celts (now Romanized) were running things. Yet by 546, a Welsh monk, St. Gildas, first wrote about how a certain “Arthur” was engaged in a desperate war to “break the heathen and uphold the Christ.” (Such was Camelot?)  In Gaul (France), Visigoths and Franks overran the country but assimilated to Roman ways.  In Spain, first Vandals then Visigoths did the same.  Theodoric the Ostrogoth (who was educated in Constantinople), was encouraged by the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno to invade and take over Italy from the former Hunic tribes led by Odoacer that had taken over with the fall of the Roman emperor in 476.  All these barbarians had lived on the edges of empire and admired the Roman system.  What happened to make civilization fall so far? 

            An answer may lie in the turmoil of the church and the climate.  Emperor Justinian in the East was a very able politician, not a warrior, who spent most days administrating.  He started in behalf of his father Justin, a senator who usurped the throne in 518. Justin was frugal, lowered taxes, and limited government leaving a full treasury for Justinian.  Justinian was a spender with an eye towards restoring the empire, winning the West back from the barbarians, and building up Eastern governance.  His capable general Belasarius was dispatched to fight back Persia, then take back N. Africa from the Vandals, then Italy and Illyria (we’d call it Yugoslavia) from the Ostrogoths. But due to Justinian’s big spending on Constantinople, Belasarius was forever shy of troops and pay.  How could he have conquered so much? He had to let his army loot.

             In 535, Krakatoa erupted.  This volcanic ‘hot spot’ lies between Sumatra and Java. A hot spot is a weak spot in the crust where magma can repeatedly break through.  It exploded with a monstrous eruption in 1883 but chronicles left in Indonesia tell of a much greater eruption in 535. It completely obliterated 50 miles around it separating the two large islands with a crater that blew away enough island to make 30 miles of ocean. It created 120’ tidal waves, and, it has now been verified, put so much ash into the upper atmosphere that for 15 years the mean temperature worldwide got colder by about 10 degrees (compare this with a mere 2.5 degree rise predicted by climate scientists by 2200).  Low temps meant meager crops, famines and pitiful economies.  Thus weakened, the defending kingdoms couldn’t hold off Belasarius’ army which foraged and robbed peasants for food. It was an ironic reverse of the old story of barbarians invading Rome.  Add to this, the genius of Belasarius as a general.  Much of the West was reconquered while Justinian spent severely over budget. The conquered peasants were then plunged into famine and ruin and the Dark Ages began when cities, skills and education died.

            Justinian also fashioned himself a musican, architect, poet, lawyer, and theologian.  He rewrote Roman Law into the Code of Justinian that lasted almost 1000 years. In theology, he decided to favor the Trinitarianism of the Western Pope of Rome (perhaps as a way to force-unify the Arian Goths and Egyptian Monophysites).  Arians denied the complete divinity of Jesus; Monophysites, his humanity (was a ghost spirit).  But Empress Theodora (who had a sort of Hillary Clinton co-President role) sympathized with the Monophysites and softened Justinian into tolerance for that heresy. And thus the later part of their reign was filled with riots over famine, religious clashes, and the 542 plague. The plague is also a derivative of a sudden cold climate change.  [Another sudden cold occurred in 1309 according to Chinese records and this caused an 8 degree drop in European temperatures followed by the Black Death.]  When it gets cold, scavengers like rats thrive, and they carry fleas--vectors for bubonic plague.  It is thought bubonic plague occurred in 542 AD as well.

            So while civilization collapsed, orthodox Christianity not only overruled the heresies of east and west, but became the one sure hope of Europeans.  What survived in the West were not pagan verses of Virgil and Homer but Augustine and Patrick of Ireland. Yet it was a faith confused with superstition and un-Christian practices of the barbarians, and a lifestyle of poverty,malnutrition, pitiful technology and illiteracy. So what would one predict from such an outcome? God, through the Dark Ages, preserved the land from conquest and faith played out  through other Christians still to come.  

Pocahontas, the real story

 This is a result of the best research I can muster about, perhaps the most significant person in American history, who made British colonies possible and USA.

Disney made a great movie about her but much of the legend isn’t true at all. The real story is much better! Her real name wasn’t Pocahontas.  That was a nickname which meant “Little Playful One”. Her real names were Amonute and Matoaka. But she liked Pocahontas. Daughter of Chief Powhattan of the Algonquin Indians’, they lived along the Virginia coast.  In 1607 when she was about 12, English settlers landed at Jamestown. She was curious and visited the new people, learning English.

            Why did the English want to settle in Virginia?  Columbus found America and then some other Spanish warriors-of-fortune conquered two huge Indian empires—the Aztecs and the Incas.  They found gold and silver, beans and corn and shipped it back home to Spain making the country very rich.  Other nations wanted to get rich too, so they tried to settle the Caribbean and North, what is now USA and Canada.  In those northern areas, they fished and traded for furs with the Indians. The first time the British tried to settle in America was Roanoke, a small group of people were left in North Carolina in 1584.  But a few years later, their settlement had disappeared.  The Carolina coast is a bad place to choose because a barrier bar reef island off the shore wrecks ships and hides the rivers necessary to find a settlement.  In 1607 the English tried once more, knowing that if they failed, the Spanish would expand into this area.  They settled  63 on the Virginia coast and claimed land from 35 to 45 degrees latitude.  It was named Jamestown after the king, James I.  Here were the Algonquins and Pocahontas.

            Most Indian women had little gardens where they raised vegetables and berries.  That way they didn’t have to go miles to gather these things.  Women did all the “farming”.  Men hunted and fished. There were no farm animals. But the Algonquin men helped a little with planting corn, squash and beans.  They grew these all together with the beans and squash climbing over the corn, called “3 Sisters” agriculture. The English men did the farming.  When they saw a new plant they dreamed of planting a big field. The Englishmen rotated crops, used manure and had iron tools like axes and hoes. This is a big reason why the Europeans succeeded in taking over much of America.

            Pocahontas was thrilled with what she learned.  The new people had cool stuff.  They had interesting food and clothes that would keep you warm in winter.  Algonquins wore nothing above the waist in summer and in winter wrapped themselves in a blanket.  For two years Pocahontas made new friends and learned English.  But Jamestown had troubles.  Most of the settlers were soldiers who guarded the village and they didn’t think they had to work at farming or building.  Only about 20 men and 6 women actually worked to raise crops or hunt.  A year later, Captain John Smith arrived and found the colony starving and idle.  He got tough and told everybody they must work.  He traded for food with the Algonquins, then left.  There is a myth that Pocahontas saved Smith by laying her head on his when the Indians were going to kill him, but it is unlikely, and wasn’t told until over a hundred years later. John Smith kept an official log and never mentioned it.  However, Pocahontas was a spunky girl who served as Smith’s translator.

            Matoaka disappeared from the settlement for 3 years.  The family’s oral story says she was married to another Indian man and had a baby girl.  The baby died and somehow tragically so did her husband.  In 1612 she suddenly appeared at Jamestown again, befriending the women there.  There were some violent disagreements between the Powhattan Algonquins and the English.  Fights broke out and the Indians took several settlers hostage.  In return, the settlers took Pocahantas hostage.  After almost a year, a peace was agreed to and all hostages were released.  But Pocahontas wanted to stay in Jamestown.  While she was under arrest as a hostage, she was guarded by the chaplain of the soldiers, Reverend Whitaker.  When he shared the gospel, that all people sin and that sin gives us a messed-up life, it resonated with the young widow and she deeply wanted to be a Christian, a believer in Jesus.  And on Jan. 14, 1614, she was baptized and took the Christian name of “Rebecca”.  She was the first native American in the lands north of Spanish America to become a Christian, the first Protestant (Anglican is Luther’s theology). Then she met John Rolfe, a young man who had lost his wife and child just as Rebecca had lost spouse and child.   We know that by about the time of Valentine’s Day, 1614, she and John Rolfe decided to get married.  They were married in April of that year.  And in 1615 she had a baby boy, Thomas. 

            Of course everyone knows what happens when a new baby is born.  The grandparents had to come see the new baby! So Powhattan and his two wives came to Jamestown for a visit.  The settlers put on a big feast and other Indians were invited warmly.  Thus began almost 20 years of peace and goodwill between the two peoples.

            But Jamestown still had a problem.  They had no reason to exist since they couldn’t produce anything of value to sell back home.  No gold, no silver were found. Furs and fish were not very valuable.  Rebecca asked John what they could do.  He told her that tobacco was a pricey trade item back in England.  How to grow it? That was a no-brainer for an Algonquin woman! She showed him how to plant, harvest and cure the leaves.  So Rolfe raised a huge amount of tobacco and shipped it back to England where it brought a profit of 12,500%.  Suddenly Jamestown had something to sell and it saved the colony.  In 3 years John Rolfe and Pocahontas grew rich and others started raising tobacco as well.

            The Rolfes grew famous in England. In 1616 they sailed to Britain and were feated as the wonderful people who had made Jamestown profitable.  They met the king. And for the winter, they lived with Rolfe’s family in England.  The English were very interested in how she became Christian and wanted very much to convert the natives of America.  In March 1617, the Rolfes set sail for America but before they even got to the mouth of the Thames River, Pocahontas became very ill.  They stopped and took her ashore where she died of unknown causes.  She was just 21.  Her dying words were, “I am going to heaven but I still have my husband John and Thomas.” It was the tragic story repeated thousands of times as Indians died of Old World diseases when Europeans came.

            Meanwhile, in Jamestown, many things were happening. In 1619, a slave ship which had endured a terrible storm came floating into the bay.  The Jamestown people didn’t like slavery and helped the sailors repair the boat just so they would leave quickly.  As payment, the ship dumped 20 sick slaves for farm labor.  The settlers signed contracts with the Africans to be indentured servants, that is, someone who agrees to work for free for a time period, like a slave.  But things didn’t go well.  The winters were cold and all the Africans died tragically within a few years. 

            That same year, the British crown hit upon the idea that they could exile convicts to Jamestown. Many had mental problems but others were determined to turn their lives around with faith and farming.  A ship of poor women arrived as well, available for the price of 125 pounds of tobacco. Settler-families started to emerge.  And on July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia met in the Jamestown Church.  The colony designed a miniature parliament.  There was nothing like it in all the Americas, the First Popular Legislature.  At a time when kings were thought to have divine rights, this was an important telling of America’s future.  And by the way, proud Rolfe descendants are numerous in Virginia today.  Do we know what Pocahontas looked like?  There were no cameras then and no one painted a picture of her.  But there is a picture painted of her niece with her little boy 50 years later.  Everyone said how much her niece looked like Pocahontas.  Here it is.

 

 

 

Colombus the real story

 Christopher Columbus has been so reviled and lauded over the years—what’s the truth?  He was controversial in his own time and with America’s founding fathers, but for entirely different reasons that are being forwarded today.  Modern critiques are that he brought racism, colonialism, disease and capitalism to the Americas.  The ‘colonial charge’ is correct, but that was practiced by virtually every developed society from China to Europe.  The disease charge is correct but who would allege that Eurasians and Americans would have never met.  They were bound to meet and Eurasian diseases would spread at some time. Some say he brought capitalism. Ironically, neither he nor Spain was capitalist but quite statist.

            One cannot understand Columbus without understanding the world in his  era.  The Black Death struck Europe in 1347 and returned every generation thereafter.  1/3 the population died.  People had a sense of doom and predicted the end of the world was near.  Europe was locked in a death struggle with Islam’s states and it looked like Islam would obliterate Europe when Constantinople fell in 1453.  Trade with China and India came to a halt, and desperation led to innovation. But had it not been for a newly invented Muslim ship that could turn and tack easier, the caravel, a voyage across the Atlantic would have been nearly impossible.  The later innovation of  stronger stiffer hulls of galleons allowed larger ships.  The Portugese, a small country, envious of rich Italian merchants and Spanish warriors, began to explore for islands offshore of Africa to literally move population if the Islam came. Indeed they found Madeira and Azores, causing Spain to try the same thing and they discovered Canary Islands. Columbus, born in 1451 was of middle class Genoa where he became a master seaman and influenced by Travels of Marco Polo and Travels of John Mandeville (Christian author who wanted the Faith to expand geographically). He was ambitious and wanted a title, the only way to become wealthy in those days. When he heard of Portugal’s exploits, he proposed a daring trip to secure a route to China by sailing west.  Everyone knew the world wasn’t flat (contrary to Washington Irving’s fiction) but two estimates of its size were argued.  Columbus chose the smaller. Sly dog, King Joao II of Portugal, turned him down and used Colombus’ plan to commission his own fleet under Fernao de Ulma.  Columbus would be a footnote in history had not bad weather turned de Ulma back in 1490.  In 1492, Spanish states defeated Muslim Grenada and suddenly after 7 bloody centuries, Christianity controlled the Iberian Peninsula. Ferdinand of Leon married Isabella of Castile and the exultant Spanish then had one country which could turn its interests elsewhere.  Columbus saw his chance to request a voyage.  But Ferdinand rejected him.  Columbus was ready to leave and pitch his plan elsewhere, England or France, but a friend bolstered his case with Isabella and he won upon appeal. Much has been made about how pitiful his ships were; Santa Maria was only 60 feet long and it ran aground in his first voyage.  Yet they were state-of-the-art vessels.  The crew was Spanish and this caused dissention since Columbus was Italian.  Soon they questioned his judgment about going too far west to return safely. Just in time to escape mutiny, Oct. 12, 1492, land was sighted although a reef, probably Watling Island of Bahamas. They continued on guessing at currents and birds until they found San Salvador naming it after our Savior, planted the flag and left a small colony. A second trip brought a flotilla and he planted colonies on several islands. The original settlers had been massacred by natives.

            In his salesmanship, he suggested they would find gold.  They found beans instead. (How would you like to the be the first Spaniard to discover beans?”Oh, Jose, I got all this gas!”) Columbus was a tremendous sailor who used ‘dead reckoning’ of a compass, currents, clouds, and birds to find the new world.  He did not “sail by the stars” as Polynesians did.  Yet his nerve, planning, and ability to sail 4000 miles and return to the same place 4 times make him a premier captain.  He was as bad as governor as he was good at sailing. The Spanish soldiers of fortune he left behind enslaved Indians that Columbus sought to make free subjects of Spain (according to his letters) Today’s secular scholars also misunderstand the strong role religion played.  He was criticized in his day by those who thought the natives should have converted faster.  One of his underlings, Bartolome Las Casas, wanted to claim the credit and wrote at length of his boss’s failure. Moderns like leftist Howard Zinn have used Las Casas to claim Columbus was cruel and evil.  Ironic because Columbus was far less cruel than the cannibal Carib Indians he met, less than the proud Spaniards who conquered the Moors.  Spain lorded it over the Tianos natives for material gain instead of conversion. Columbus tried to reign in the opportunists, but the Spanish encomienda system was a feudal plantation. Then the Tianos began to die of diseases.  Meanwhile, in Spain, Columbus, the outsider didn’t get much of a title or credit in the Spanish court. He always insisted he discovered India and died in 1506 after 4 voyages to the Caribbean, Central and South America. Unwittingly, he postulated that Africans might work well in the islands.

             He is significant, however. His was a dauntless, risky step to connect two worlds.  The Spanish transported a large number of people to America.  The seeds of the West were planted.  And soon everybody in Europe wanted to explore—England, France, Netherlands, Sweden. Many of the statues in this country were emplaced to honor previously discriminated Italians in the 20s and 30s. But there is a larger push to delegitimize Western civilization in academia.

How Christianity really won in Rome

 

People often say politics and the church should not mix but often there is no choice of involvement.  It is often thought that when Rome turned Christian, Constantine just issued a decree and that was that.  Not true. There are lessons for us.

            Constantine the Great won an epic battle having seen a vision of the Chi-Rho cross and was told to conquer in its image. He had his soldiers paint the chi-rho on their shields and he crossed the Rubicon and won the empire.  His mother was a Christian, but he was a soldier and administrator. Theology was not his thing. So he called a church council at Nicea, 315 AD, to define the faith.  There, the orthodox or ancient Christian beliefs in the Triune God (championed by Athanasius) overrode Arius and Arianism, a heresy that believed Jesus was God’s Son but only a superior being, not divine or coeternal with God. (Trinity doctrine says that the Son and Holy Spirit are “consubstantial” with the Father, loosely meaning, “with Him and equal to Him at the beginning”.)

            But Arianism didn’t die out.  Constantine conferred with Arias after he had banished him. He could find no heresy, and recommended his restoration.  Well, you can’t refuse the Emperor, but on the way to attend mass, Arius died a horrible death where his bowels prolapsed and spilled out.  Constantine then wondered if Arius was indeed a heretic after all.  When the Emperor died, 335, he was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian follower. Arianism continued beyond Roman boundaries until the 600’s.

            Constantine had done a good thing in summoning the Council of Nicea which canonized scripture and adopted our creeds.  But the emperor had a succession problem and anticipated civil war between rival sons.  So he gave each of his 3 sons parts of the empire and 2 cousins as well.  Civil war erupted, his sons and relatives killed one another until Constantius only remained.  Constantius took theology more seriously and adopted Arianism, using puppet church councils to banish Athanasius and ban the Nicene Creed.  Five times Athanasius fled his see, often in peril of his life, wandering in alien lands for 50 years while patiently persuading wherever he could. The Roman “pope” archbishop agreed with Athanasius, but Eastern bishops remained in the sway of the Emperor.  Now while all this was happening, paganism still commanded a diminishing 50% of the empire’s loyalty. It took many forms, chief among which was Neoplatonism.  3 years before Constantine died, a nephew, Julian, was born.  His father and brothers were all assassinated in the succession wars and little Julian was sent to Cappadocia, where his Christian teachers were dour and doctrinal.  But nearby were also banished pagan philosophers with witty, entertaining ideas and Julian secretly converted to paganism. By age 23 he was clever enough to hide his faith views. Summoned by Constantius, he passed muster but was thought to be merely a philosopher by nature. He was sent to Athens, a bastion of philosophy but alsopaganism.  He was summoned again when his brother Gallus proved to be a tyrant and was beheaded.  To his surprise Julian, a shy, celibate thinker  was given administrative duties over Gaul (Celtic forerunner of France).  Gaul was in trouble.  Those dirty, dastardly, barefoot barbarian Germans had taken advantage of civil war and crossed the Rhine to seize territory. Julian, now forced to quickly study how to be a general, routed the German Alemanni and the related tribe called Franks. They were pushed back over the Rhine River.  He then commenced to apply and interpret Roman law in a wise, learned way.  We owe the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” to Julian. In 361, Constantius died and Julian, the secret pagan, became emperor.  He restored the pagan temples and favored their philosophers.  It was an ugly time for many Christians. But the foot soldiers had found a blessed assurance in death of a Savior in the Christian faith.  They named a Christian to succeed Julian when he fell in battle with the Persians, 363 AD, just 2 years after his ascension to the throne.  And yet the war between Christian rulers and pagan ones would go on and on until Theodosius quashed a pagan rebellion in 394. Athanasiua was restored. But the war of faiths broke the political unity and morale of the Western Roman Empire, (perhaps like partisanship split democrats and monarchists in 1917 Russia or America’s present partisanship) soon to be overrun by barbarians.

            Faith is not just doctrine and scholarship but a walk with God, a wild ride, and a wrestling struggle like Jacob knew.  If a church abandons itself exclusively to doctrine, it shouldn’t be surprised if its children follow pop culture instead, like Julian. Yet we are called to defend the true faith, stand in the gap, like Athanasius. 22 years after Julian’s death, the Roman Emperor Valens lost the battle and half the Roman army at Adrianople, one of the great turning points of history.  From that point forward, the wealthy western empire collapsed rapidly, and being a Christian became a life of oftentimes struggles and terror.  That’s when you need Jesus the most.  

Andrew Jackson

 

Andrew Jackson has been rejected by many moderns, though once a hero of the nation and founder of the Democrats.  He was always a controversial figure. He was a slave owner and advocated for the Indian removal.  He was a booster of Tennessee and a land-seller of Indian territories which he had himself conquered.  But he was also a Christian, an orphan who became a brave and brash war hero, who saved the United States and adopted orphan children to give them a chance in life. Jackson’s childhood was destroyed by the Revolutionary War which pitted not just British regiments against Americans but frontier families against one another.  Jackson’s parents and brother died in this conflict.  After the war, a faction of angry Creek Indians, known as the Red Sticks massacred white settlers.  Jackson organized a group of militia members that fought and overwhelmed the Red Sticks.  Following a bloody battle, some of the homeless children were brought to Jackson and he asked the captured Creeks if they would care for a little orphan boy.  The Creeks refused saying all the child’s relatives were gone and he should just be killed too. The situation struck Jackson, himself an orphan, and he adopted Lyncoya. He instructed his wife Rachel to give Lyncoya every advantage, like their own children. (The Jacksons fostered several children along with Lyncoya.)  He tragically died late in his teen years of tuberculosis. 

            Jackson went on to be America’s hero when he organized a rag-tag group of civilians to successfully defend New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812. He spurred Washington to conquer Florida, then did the job himself. He is also charged with genocide against the Cherokees, but the true story of this is complex.  Throughout history, conquered peoples were either enslaved or killed off by newcomers.  And in Georgia, this was coming to a head in the 1820s.  Jackson preferred the Indians be made American citizens, But most Cherokees resisted.  They wanted to preserve their native culture, language and tribal identity.  DC politicians liked the idea of “protected nations”, an armchair utopia that was forerunner of the reservation system.  But the Cherokees were so many, their state-within-a-state would comprise half of Georgia.  Georgians rejected this, saying they would start a war and take the Cherokee land by force. Jackson liked many Indians but hated the tribal governments, dominated by mixed race opportunists who lorded it over the rest of the tribe and were determined to protect their own privileges. “These leaders,” Jackson wrote, “are like some of our bawling politicians, who loudly exclaim, ‘we are the friends of the people,’ but who, when they obtain their views, care no more for the happiness or welfare of the people than the Devil does.” The Georgia situation was headed for war.  Jackson followed Jefferson in advocating Removal to the newly purchased Louisiana Purchase. This idea wasn’t entirely their own.  Many tribal leaders wanted it because they worried about how to keep autonomy amid the fast-growing American states. 

            The issue landed in Chief Justice John Marshall’s Supreme Court.  Some missionaries had violated Georgia law to go into Cherokee lands to preach the gospel.  Marshall ruled that Georgia’s laws were null and void, and Pres. Jackson negotiated the release of the missionaries from a Georgia jail. Meanwhile the Cherokees were split over the notion of going to an area that would become Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Major Ridge, a Cherokee ally of Jackson’s in the Red Stick wars, got half the Cherokees to sign a treaty to move (Treaty of Eschota),  But Jonathan Ross, a large plantation owner who was only 1/8 Cherokee with no desire to pull up stakes, convinced the other half to resist.  Ridge’s Treaty Party then moved about 30,000 people to the West successfully. The Removal Act was then passed in Washington to also affect 4 other large tribes. But many Cherokees held out and hid for years. Under the Martin Van Buren administration, the federal government demanded those holdouts honor the treaty, rounded them up, and used the US Army to force move the people. This Trail of Tears became one of the worst humanitarian disasters in our history.  Of 35,000 removed, only 18,000 made it to Oklahoma. Thousands died as a result of the harsh conditions, greed and corruption of officials and private people taking advantage along the way. As a final act in this sad fiasco, the Ross followers assassinated Major Ridge and the leaders who had signed the Treaty of Eschota.  Was Jackson to blame? True, he was paternalistic towards the tribes. He had acted under the notion that, if left somewhat alone, the Cherokees and others would grow into Christianity and Western culture and merge with USA. Considering the strides of Oklahoma and the Cherokee heritage, of their present Governor, Jackson might have been quite correct.

Salem witch trials and Wenatchee

 

The propensity of people to be gripped by self-righteous panic has been extensively studied.  Salem witch trials, Red Scare of 1920, McCarthyism, Watergate hysteria, have all been implicated.  A major television network is running a documentary of the Wenatchee, Washington child molestation scandal that came at the conclusion of 17 day-care scandals of the 1980s and early 90s --all proven baseless. These hysterias prove an important point.  Neither science, nor politicians, nor media brought an end to the false charges.  Christians, speaking in faith did.

            In the Salem Witch trials of the summer of 1692, two young girls began acting erratically—screaming, hysterical behavior, and rolling on the floor.  Two local women were implicated as witches by the children’s screams. Subsequently, accusations of over 150 people being involved in witchcraft ensued.  The Massachusetts authorities responded with an investigative court that implicated many of them. The newspapers spurred on the hysteria and 19 people were convicted, hung or drowned.  One man who refused to plead guilty was pressed to death with heavy stones--the old English peine forte et dure, contempt of court—the only time it has been used in American history. Cotton Mather, son of Harvard College’s President, was strongly involved with the prosecution. Where was the new thing called science?  Many scientists of the day believed that indeed, witchcraft might be happening. But when Increase Mather, Cotton’s father and President of the Harvard Seminary arrived home from a trip to England, he observed the trials and was appalled that Christians would treat others this way.  He called for an end.  Thereupon, even the Governor’s wife was implicated and that caused the authorities to come to their senses, disband the inquiry, and release those awaiting trial. This was the only ‘witch hunt in American history.  In 17^th century Europe, there were 160,000 witch trials. The anxiety of the local government in MA to confess wrongdoing, make reparations, and search for truth was the singular bright spot in the affair.

            At Wenatchee, like the McMartin daycare and many others in the 80s and 90s, investigators used anatomically correct dolls and ‘dream memory’ to draw out stories from children.  Interviewer bias also influenced child testimony. When an interviewer has a preconceived notion of the truth of the matter being investigated, the questioning is often performed in a manner to extract statements that evidence these beliefs. As a result, evidence that could disprove the belief is overlooked by the interviewer. Records also reveal, that many stories were coerced.  Wenatchee filed 29,726 charges against several dozen people after a mentally disturbed foster child of a policeman said she had been raped. One case worker, Paul Glassen, criticized methodology only to find himself charged with molestation. He fled with his family to Canada.  When Pastor Robert Robertson criticized the prosecution and evidence-gathering in a town hall, he found himself immediately charged with 8 counts of molestation of his church’s children.  He was tried but found not-guilty of all counts and jurors were incensed with the prosecution’s handling saying it should never have gone to trial. Yet the state of Washington steadfastly praised the investigation.  So some Christians from Pastor Robertson’s church formed Concerned Citizens for Legal Accountability and joined by others, filed complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.  Governor Mike Lowry’s hand was then forced to investigate the investigators. But when he asked US Attorney General Janet Reno for help, it was flatly refused. Eventually all those implicated, who fought in court, won.  Wall Street Journal had an expose and a 2001 jury found Wenatchee and Douglass County negligent in “record keeping” and were ordered to pay damages to falsely accused citizens.  However, many of the accused had plea-bargained and were poor or had mental disability.  Some had to fight for years to recover custody of their children.

            Science, stonewalling authorities, even judges proved to not bring down these hysteria scandals.  Christians acting in faith did.  None of the abusive authorities went to trial over their mishandling.  No journalist did a mea culpa of a false story.  Nor did any imaginative case worker or psychologist who coerced improper testimony of a child.  Nobody went to jail over that either.  The same was true for the McMartin daycare, Country Walk daycare, Fells Acres daycare or the other 14 implicated daycare centers in the 1980s. What would the world be without Christians to stand in the gap?

Women's treatment in Islam

 

Much has been noted about Muslim harsh treatment of women. Some of it derives from various and old tribal cultures and is not specified in the Quran or Haditha.  But close study by historians say it derives principally from Arabia, Persia and the Prophet himself.  Arab life before Mohammad was tribal and mostly nomadic.  90% of Arabs were nomadic (Bedouins) and the other 10% settled, raising primarily spices, dates and other fruits. The Red Sea is a tectonic boundary which spawns volcanoes which are a souce for gold near Mecca. Desert clans are small and close-knit, defending resources.  But they fight over more than waterholes and camels.  The Arabs took great pride in their women’s beauty.  Their language is close to Hebrew and gained alphabetic writing early, but most Bedouins had little use for reading and disdained it.  Thus poetry and eloquent stories, especially about their women and war was their passion.  The desert winds made beauty fleeting, however, and the constant struggle for survival made for a lot of drudgery in women’s work.  10 minutes of romance and a lifetime of drudgery. Women’s prime value was in having children and thus men fought to the death for their wives.  Yet women were not partners but chattels.  When a man died, his estate contained his wives for the heir. 

            In this culture, Mohammad was not unusual.  He arranged marriages to gain allies, took in a couple widows of loyal followers as an act of mercy, and engaged in betrothal to Aisha who was 6 years old. He was wealthy so he had 10 wives.  But they quarreled and were demanding of him and Mohammad seems to have soured on his harem, saying in the Haditha that he had seen heaven and few women were there, maybe one in 1000 makes it.  The Quran allowed 4 women in polygamy, and has advice about beatings and other treatment.  His first wife, Khadija, was Jewish, who faithfully recorded the visions of the illiterate Prophet, but her fellow Jews poked fun of him and his strange new religion.  Hence his distrust of women’s faith. Mohammad died in Medina and accomplished some astounding things.  Where Arabs had been idolatrous and worshipped sacred stones—like the Black stone of Mecca’s Kaaba—Mohammad had created a new religion from visions, borrowed heavily from Judaism and linked to Jesus.  Before Mohammad, other Arabs had noted that their cruel feuds and culture seemed low-life compared to Greco-Romans and Persians, and seemingly needed a new faith, but what? This religion was simple and stressed its spread by any means possible, though we don’t think he had designs of world conquest during his life. Yet under his faith,  Arabia went from tribes to a nation.  He left no successor except Abu Bekr who led prayers in his place in the mosque.  The leaders voted Abu Bekr Caliph of Islam over the protest of Ali, Mohammad’s cousin, leading to the major Sunni-Shiite split in Islam to this day. 

            Some Syrian Arabs were resisting Byzantium and another Arab tribe wanted to invade Persia.  The two empires had exhausted one another with war the previous century, and the Arabs found the looting easy. There are a host of reasons why the Arabs kept winning, but soon they had overrun the Persian empire. [Understand Persian Empire to extend from the Indus Valley of Pakistan and Afghanistan through Iraq to Syria and then north to the Caucus Mtns.] Persians were a former nomadic people too. Leaders had mistresses they used as public escorts while wives stayed home and were required facial coverings when they went out in public.  The Arabs adopted a lot of Persian government and culture in order to rule and seem to have adopted this regime with the wives as well. Proof that headcoverings were adopted from Persia is that Muslim women didn't wear them until about 100 years after Mohammad.

    While this follows fundamentalist Islamic rules, modernists have vacated the escorting of women outside the home and even head covering. Apart from the Persian Gulf and 3rd world areas like Afghanistan, most Muslims are monogamous.