CH 15 CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS- RELIGION AND SCIENCES (1450-1750)
- Today Christians from Asia, Africa, and Latin America conduct missionary work in Europe and North America.
- this marks a remarkable reversal of an earlier pattern
- today more than 60% of Christians live outside of Europe and North America
- out of Europe came two developments during the early modern period
- Christianity became a global presence
- the Scientific Revolution fostered a different approach to the world
- Europeans were central players in these developments but did not act alone
- peoples who converted shaped Christianity
- science also met with varying receptions in other regions of the globe
- In 1500, Christianity was mostly limited to Europe.
- small communities in Egypt, Ethiopia, southern India, and Central Asia
- serious divisions within Christianity (Roman Catholic vs. Eastern Orthodox)
- on the defensive against Islam
- loss of the Holy Land by 1300
- fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453
- Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529
- Conversion and Adaptation in Spanish America
- process of population collapse, conquest, and resettlement made Native Americans receptive to the conquering religion
- Europeans claimed exclusive religious truth, tried to destroy traditional religions instead of accommodating them
- occasional campaigns of destruction against the old religions
- some overt resistance movements
- blending of two religious traditions was more common
- local gods (huacas) remained influential
- immigrant Christianity took on patterns of pre-Christian life
- Christian saints took on functions of pre-colonial gods
- leader of the church staff (fiscal) was a prestigious native who carried on the role of earlier religious specialists
- Catholic Church strenuously opposed much of this thinking
- burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 for proclaiming an infinite universe
- Galileo was forced to renounce his belief that the earth moved around an orbit and rotated on its axis
- but no early scientists rejected Christianity
- Ideas shape peoples’ mental or cultural worlds and influence behavior
- The development of early modern ideas took place in an environment of great cultural borrowing.