Early Chrisitanity Essay Research Paper Cultural Values

Early Chrisitanity Essay, Research Paper

Cultural Values Of Early Christianity

Early Christianity was started with Jesus Christ’s idea on reforming the Jewish faith. He wanted to introduce a loving god. This signifies that an important value wanted to be loved and accepted by god and vice versa. Before this the only views of god was that he was vengeful and ruthless. This new view would make people want to join the Jewish religion. Early Christians were, in some ways, a support group. Giving was an important cultural value at that time. If you gave then you would receive.

Unfortunately education wasn’t an important cultural value. Only the clergy was educated. According to Christians it was only important for them to be educated so you can naturally conclude that the clergy was the most important thing in life, if they were the only ones educated. This meant that their services had to be memorized and books were “expensive treasures.” If you had books and could read and write you were considered to be very lucky.

One of the most important early Christian cultural values was converting someone to your religion. This is the main reason why the crusades occurred. It was important for everyone to be “on the same page.” They also didn’t like Muslim influence. The crusades were

a holy war against the Muslims. This is an example of their lack of tolerance. Either you were with them, or you were against them. So it could be said that they really hated their enemies.

Among other things early Christians held church services that were very important. It was important for everyone to attend, but not for everyone to be able to read and write. In addition the pope was the most powerful man in the world, at the end of the crusades. This further more proves that religion was the number one priority to Christians. Their lives basically revolved around it. God was the main reason they lived and died.

After the revivals the church became the center of education. Which meant that education finally became an important aspect in the lives of early Christians. The teachings focused on what they believed had the most cultural values: philosophy, science and math. Latin grammar later became important as well. This is probably because most masses were held in Latin.

Honor was important because women had to be faithful to their husbands. Thus the chastity belt was invented. Architecture was also important because they were, in a sense, dedicated to god. Cathedrals represented physical prayers so that they would some day be answered. Also, showing their dedication to their faith.