wfn.org | TV Series Lists 'Top Ten Religion Stories' of the Millennium

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

27-September-1999 
99317 
 
    Television Series Lists 
    'Top Ten Religion Stories' of the Millennium 
 
    East-West Split, Crusades, Luther's 95 Theses Top List 
 
    by Chris Herlinger 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
NEW YORK - Spurred by what it calls "millennial fever," a public television 
series in the United States has compiled a list of what it describes as the 
top ten religion stories of the past 1000 years. 
 
    Among the choices made by "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" are the 
split of Christianity into Eastern and Western branches; the Crusades; and 
Martin Luther's 95 theses, a key event in the 
development of Protestantism. 
 
    The 19th-century questioning of religious ideas by Charles Darwin and 
Karl Marx also made the list. Only one 20th century event, the Holocaust, 
was selected. 
 
    The program's anchor, Bob Abernethy, said the list, made by the staff 
of the series in consultation with scholars, included a heavy emphasis on 
Christianity and Europe. "It was that kind of millennium," he said, adding 
that the audience might very well find the list "arbitrary or just plain 
wrong." 
 
    Viewers were quick to post their suggestions on the series' web site, 
with several wishing the list had included mention of the development of 
the Baha'i faith.  Another viewer added his suggestion that scholastic 
theology and Gregorian chant should have been included; another wondered 
why the Inquisition and the campaigns against Native Americans on the 
American frontier had been omitted. 
 
    Kurt Hendel, who teaches historical and systematic theology at the 
Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, told ENI that it would be 
"difficult to argue with any of the 10 topics that were chosen," though the 
focus on Christianity and the West was an "obvious limitation." 
 
    "I do see some important gaps, even as one focuses on Christian history 
and on the West," he said.  "Perhaps the most important and lasting 
development of the Middle Ages, the great scholastic tradition, is not 
mentioned. Mysticism and particularly humanism are also ignored.  The 
Enlightenment, which literally transformed the world view of the Western 
world, is not part of the list," he added. 
 
    The list, in chronological order, with summaries of each development: 
 
    1. The Great Schism. The split of Christianity in 1054 into Eastern 
Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches, with the former headed by the 
Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and Roman 
Catholicism, headed by the Pope in Rome. 
 
    2. The Crusades, which began in 1095, when Eastern Orthodox leaders 
appealed to the Pope for help in fighting the Muslim forces that had 
invaded the Holy Land.  But the Crusaders turned against the Orthodox as 
well, looting Constantinople.  The Muslims drove  the Crusaders 
out by the end of the 13th century. 
 
    3. The Spread of Islam, to most of India by the 13th century, and its 
consolidation in the Middle East and parts of Europe, culminating in the 
capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the 
Islamic Empire of the Ottomans. 
 
    4. The Gutenberg Bible.  Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing 
press and his publishing the Bible in 1455, which resulted in mass 
distribution of religious teachings and ideas. 
 
    5. Church support of art, music and intellectual life.  This included 
the Vatican's commissioning of Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel, and religious patronage also supported the development of 
universities in cities such as Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
    6. Martin Luther's 95 Theses.  Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses 
in 1517, in which Luther - then a young Catholic monk - accused Catholic 
leaders of corruption and false doctrine, led to the Protestant 
Reformation. 
 
    7. Missionary movements.  These began in the 16th century when early 
European explorers took predominantly Catholic missionaries around the 
world.  By the 18th and 19th centuries, the second wave of  missionary 
movements was being led by Protestants. 
 
    8. Religious Liberty.  The journey by English puritans to seek 
religious freedom in the New World, which led to the founding principles of 
the United States that government should not prohibit the free exercise of 
religious belief. 
 
    9. Challenges to religious ideas in the 19th century, including Charles 
Darwin's theory of the evolution of the species; psychoanalyst Sigmund 
Freud's suggestion that religion is an illusion; and Karl Marx's 
materialistic world view which inspired communist revolutions around the 
world. 
 
    10. The Holocaust.  Centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe 
culminated in the Holocaust, when an estimated six million Jews were killed 
by the Nazis. 

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