Vatican II was the 21st ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic church, which became the symbol of the church’s openness to the modern world. The council was announced by Pope John XXIII on January 25, 1959, and held 178 meetings in the autumn of each of four successive years. The first gathering was on…
William Hutchinson, later changed to Tyndale, was born around the date of 1494 AD. Tyndale had an exceptional gift of speaking over seven known languages. Tyndale attended Oxford University and in 1512 he received his Bachelors Degree. After another three years at Oxford University Tyndale graduated with a Masters Degree. In order to support his…
“Whales provide us with the food for our bodies, bones for our tools and implements and spirits for our souls.” “We haven’t hunted the whale for 70 years but have hunted them in our hearts and in our minds.” “Whales are a central focus of our culture today as they have been from the beginning…
Throughout history there has been numerous religions and theologies that men and women have entrusted their lives and ways of living to. One of the most intriguing is that of Buddhism. The great Buddha referred to his way as the middle way, and he, as the “Enlightened One” began the teachings of the religion with…
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”Albert Einstein Director Agnieszka Holland has produced a thoughtful and thought-provoking film in The Third Miracle. It centers on the complicated character, Father Frank Moore. This troubled priest recently found…
Carl Jung’s explanation for the archetypes that surface in cultural and religious literature is that they are the product of what he calls the collective unconsciousness. That thread of consciousness connects all human beings and cultures around the world. Yet it is not visible to the naked eye, one must look for the signs of…
The word “Witchcraft” dates back many hundreds of years and means literally “The craft of the wise”. This is because the Witches of the old were the wise ones of their village, knowledgeable in the art of healing, legal matters and spiritual fulfillment. A Witch had to not only is a religious leader, but also…
In telling the story of Isaac it is very important to tell about his father Abram. Once Lord ordered Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s household and to go to the land that God was going to show him. After that God made promises which were fulfilled in the rest of…
Scientology is a fairly new religion. Founded in the twentieth-century by a man by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. He began his studies long ago and wrote a book in 1950 called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. He claimed that this book was one of the first tools used to solve the…
The New Testament is mainly based on the life of Jesus and the early church. He is known as the son of God though his parents were Mary and Joseph. Jesus was born in a stable in city of Bethlehem as there was no room in the inns. Once he was born, Mary had no…
As a boy, David was a shepherd. He took care of his father’s sheep. He was a very courageous boy. When a wolf tried to steal a sheep, he didn’t run, he stood his ground and killed the wolf. One day his father told him to go to the land where his brothers were fighting…
The two extremes in which the Buddha speaks of are: that conjoined with the passions and luxury, low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless. The second is: that conjoined with self-torture, painful, ignoble, and useless. The avoidance of these two extremes is the path to enlightenment of the middle path as the Buddha had. The middle…
The Egyptians had a very influential religion that can be analyzed using the five elements of religion. The characteristics of the Ancient Egyptian religion can be divided into the five elements of religion: authority, faith, rituals, moral code, and concept of the deity. First, the authority of the Egyptian religion. The main authority of the…
The Greek Orthodox Church is one of the three major branches of Christianity, which “stands in today’s society as one of the communities created by the apostles of Jesus in the region of the eastern Mediterranean, and which spread by missionary activity throughout Eastern Europe” (Meyendorff 5).The word orthodox comes from Greek, meaning right-believing. Currently…
The Byzantine Empire, the survivor of the Roman Empire, flourished into the oldest and longest lasting empire in our history. It began with Constantine the Great’s triumph of Christianity. He then transferred his capital from Rome to the refounded Byzantium in the early 4th century, year 330 AD, and named it Constantinople after himself. This…
MARK’S THEOLOGY REFLECTED IN WRITING Mark and the other evangelists used basically five ways to change, edit or enhance Jesus’ sayings to reflect their own views of Christianity. According to the Five Gospels Book, plagiarism and changing of writing was not a crime, but actually very common Mark’s time. Besides, Mark never knew Jesus first-…
After the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the wandering Jews lived in tents or booths, called Sukkots. They were pitched wherever they happened to stop for the night. Today it is called the Sukkot the festival of booths remembering both the ancient agricultural booths and those of the Exodus. The harvest festival of thanksgiving, Sukkot,…
Sufism, otherwise known as Islamic Mysticism, is a branch of Islam. It deals with special powers that are contained in the Qur’an. It is a more philosophical approach, where a person tries to become one with nature, and feel the power of God. The term mysticism can be defined as the consciousness of the One…
Siddhartha Gautama was born about 563 BC in what is now modern Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was the ruler of the Sakya people and Siddhartha grew up living the extravagant life of a young prince. According to custom, he married at the young age of sixteen to a girl named Yasodhara. His father had ordered…
The Shinto religion was started in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) of Japanese history. The Tokugawa Enlightenment inspired a group of people who studied kokugaku, which roughly translated means nativism, Japanese Studies, or Native Studies. Kokugakus intent was to recover Japanese character to what it was before the early influences of foreigners, especially the Chinese. Some…