Christendom

Christendom

I often get annoyed at the book because it gives me too many details when I want it to give me something easy to memorize instead: a trend. I like trends because they make things easier for me to read. Since we already have to learn about different countries and time periods, it would really be easier on my brain if the book focused on the countries’ one unifying trait. This chapter did not do that at all. It talked about Christianity contracting and expanding in different parts of the world, but it was very specific. For example, it was specific of why Christianity was still alive in some nations, but still very diminished. It went into what kind of form it took in that nation, and how long it lasted, with a time period included. The book is very meticulous about which facts it includes.

In this chapter, pg.420 was one of the pages that stood out to me because of the quote that I read: Westerners “tore children from their mothers...and defiled virgins in the holy chapels” of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I have to admit that sometimes when I’m reading the chapter, I try to skip parts that refer to small cases, or skip the individual stories that are mentioned. I feel that it’s not likely we’ll be tested on them because they are only small cases that can easily be overlooked. But thinking about it in a different way, I remember these kinds of stories the most over the facts that I try to memorize. I still remember Ishi and Maodun from the previous chapters; from their stories, I can bring back more memories than if I tried to think of a lecture we had in class. These individual stories and quotes are important because they are easier to relate to. Images of little kids being pulled away from their mothers by soldiers flooded my mind while I read the quote. And I started to think of the young girls getting raped, pregnant, and having to take care of their babies at such a young age. Maybe they even died on the streets with their hungry babies because they couldn’t provide for them. And when I think “Why?”, I remember that it’s because of the divide between eastern and western Christianity. Now that there’s some feeling attached to it, the fact is easier to bring back.

Reading facts line by line in a detached fashion doesn’t seem very effective. So even if I complain about these small details and individual stories a lot, they really are important if we want to keep the book more realistic and alive. Because, as the book said chapters ago, we don’t want the trends to overshadow the unique experiences of individuals, because the trends don’t represent the whole population. We also want to have clear visuals of what happened for that emotional connection with the past.