Short and Useful - Rated 
Ms. Ellerbe has written a very short book, and has tried to compress a lot of information in it. As a result, one gets only fleeting glimpses of the important events she mentions. This leaves you a bit disappointed.
The book is well referenced. However, this can be a little deceptive, as most of the sources are secondary. Further, some of the writers she relies upon are themselves feminists, or others with a possible grudge against the Church. This makes you uncomfortable - is the information reliable? Or is it merely a case of circular references?
Apart from the above two shortcomings, the book is very well-written Ms. Ellerbe does not repeat herself, and she makes her points in the most concise way imaginable. The text is racy, and you can get a quick overview of the subject without having to crawl through a number of tomes. A bibliography has been added for those who would like to read more.
All in all, a useful book.
A very dark book indeed - Rated 
According to the blurb "The Dark Side of Christian History reveals in painstaking detail the tragedies, sorrows and injustices inflicted upon humanity by the Church." In fact this book is a highly selective collection of insults, insinuations and ignorance that attempts to mock Christianity in all its forms.
The first thing to say, of course, is that people claiming to be Christians, and some who genuinely were Christians, have done some terrible things in the name of Christ and the church. This, of course, is precisely what one would expect if Christian teaching about the fallen and wicked nature of humanity is true! Ellerbe seems to believe that human nature is fundamentally good - which leaves one wondering how she explains all the manifest wickedness she describes in her book!
To some specifics though. Ellerbe tells us that the council of Nicea proclaimed that "Jesus was not considered to be mortal; he was an aspect of God." What she says is entirely correct - orthodox Christians have always considered Christ to be immortal. What Ellerbe does though is subtly shift the definitions. She goes on to imply that Christians have not regarded Jesus as human; whereas Christians have always believed Jesus to be human - though not mortal! Ironically she then spends much time praising the gnostics; who really did not consider Christ to be human!
Next she tells us how the church (apparantly reluctantly) allowed the worship of Mary. This is total nonsense - no orthodox Christian church has ever allowed the worship of anybody other than the persons of the Trinity, however much it might sometimes appear that they do to the casual observer. This whole section is really a reprise of the "sacred feminine" arguments put forward in "The Da Vinci Code".
As we progress through the book we find fundamental misunderstandings of the purpose of Augustine's City of God (p41), the blaming of the church for the collapse of the economies of Europe in the period 500-1000AD (no doubt if space were allowed the blame for rampant capitalism and its consequent transformation of Europe and North America into wealthy but soulless continents would also lie with the church).
When we come to the Protestant Reformation (chapter 7) we suddenly discover all sorts of positive things about the Catholic church that went unmentioned before. Curiously they are the very things (eg the tolerance of superstition) that Protestantism opposed. Thus both sides of the Reformation can be equally condemned by Ellerbe for different things! It is one thing to recognise that wicked deeds were done by Protestants and Catholics but Ellerbe is simply cheap here.
Lastly it seems that Christianity is responsible for Darwinism, atheism and the misuse of antibiotics!
As well as all this there are some frankly inexcusably sloppy uses of quotations, references and remarks about language. One quotation from a book published in 1978 is made to sound like it was a contemporary criticism in the middle ages. All the quotations from Luther, Calvin and other reformers are culled from secondary sources despite the facts that their works are readily available in English both in print and on the internet. And the change from a feminine Hebrew word (ruah) to a neuter Greek work (pneumos) is portrayed as some sort of deliberate rejection of femininity when, in fact, the framers of Christian doctrine were simply operating in the (non-Christian!) lingua franca of the day.
If you want mindless, shoddy critique of the beliefs of billions of people in the world read this book. But if, instead, you want a thoughtful, incisive, sometimes brutal but generally fair critique of monotheism, coupled with its best points, read Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God instead.
This *is* true Christianity - Rated 
Almost inevitably, Christians will say that the horrors recounted in this book are regrettable, but aren't "true" Christianity.
They are wrong. Any dogma, any idea that puts human beings second place in the priority list, after a god or after a political idea - will always result in human misery. The million or so girls accused of witchcraft and murdered by Christians were killed not because Christians weren't following their creed, but precisely because they *were* following it. Exodus 22:18 says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live".
(Read the horrors of the Old Testament with open eyes and you will discover a template for much of the suffering humanity has inflicted since the Bronze Age. Whether it's stoning an old man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, or murdering a girl because she was a victim of rape - the scribes who wrote those stories have blighted the world's history and de-sensitised all of us to horror and violence. After all, the central symbol of the religion is a bloody murder - mythologised into an Iron Age human sacrifice.)
This book exposes the dark, sad history of Christianity eloquently and shows very thorough research. Naturally enough, few Christians will want to face up to this.
Interesting but overrated - Rated 
Quite a few reviews already exist and it is possibly worth restating some of the criticisms which appear elsewhere particularly since, in my opinion, the general ratings of this book are too high.
The final chapter (prior to the conclusion) is weak. There are two major problems. The first is the error of blaming the Christian church for the hierarchical institutions which we find today. Clearly, hierarchical institutions were present long before Christianity reared its ugly head, so it is not really a valid point as it stands.
The second is that it takes a very unusual position with regard to scientists such as Newton and Darwin. Here they are portrayed as being rooted in the Christian tradition and their theories lending support to it. Although there may be some interesting areas to explore here, it would have to be pointed out that Darwinian Evolution (for example) has represented a fairly major challenge to the biblical creation myths! A brief mention of Galileo being persecuted by the Inquisition doesn't really establish a more balanced perspective. Incidentally, there is also some very dubious speculation about modern physics which the book would be better without.
I think anyone reading this book would suspect that there is an agenda which can be discerned. Rather than being objective and dispassionate there are undertones which I would describe as feminist, anti-authoritarian and tree-hugging. This is a great shame as it may lessen the impact this book would have in educating Christians about the appalling history of their religion.
However, for anyone who thinks that Christianity has made a positive contribution to Western Civilization then this book would be a good starting point in redressing that balance. Inevitably in a book only 188 pages long this is going to be something of a `whistle stop tour' but the sustained atrocities which have been committed throughout its 2000 year history make for compelling, if rather sickening, reading.
The Russian/Gr. Orthodox/Quaker Church remain less tainted - Rated
Perhaps there is a lesson here that the Eastern church was relatively untainted compared to its two Western counterparts (barring Quakerism and similar later as more liberal movements). The Eastern church was the Christianity of Gurdjieff when he was a boy, a softer more spiritual and esoteric tradition.
This book is a blood letting and quite excoriating to read. A partially arranged work which verges on becoming too politically correct out of context. I am glad however to have been made aware of mistakes. A little more could have been said as to what occured outside the borders of Europe in S. America and Asia, but this is not a flaw in the work.
|
