That’d be news to the Jews, the Muslims, the pagans, and all the atheists who somehow have managed to figure out that slavery is evil w/ out Christ’s, or Cal’s help.

And all those blacks in the South who were enslaved by good ol’ God Fearing Fundamentalist (and Mormon, Methodist, Catholic, etc.) plantation owners.

Odd that it took almost 1800 years before Christians suddenly were struck with the notion that slavery was evil.

The Nag Hammadi discoveries came after the founding of the Fellowship … but there is a definitely gnostic tone to their belief in some ways I think. (been many years since I studied in that playground)

There were Gnostic Manuscripts known before the Nag Hammadi texts were discovered; Carl Jung purchased one that emerged in a Cairo booksellars that was later auctioned off in Europe. He premised much of his “transformed” psychotherapy on Gnostic principles. Alan Watts was also influenced by Gnosticism. There are traditions of Gnostic belief that were passed on covertly down through the ages – it became “elitist” only after Orthodox Christian states cracked down on the many Gnostic factions and sects in the 3rd and 4th centuries. In fact St. Patrick, it’s widely acknowledged, was likely an Arian evangelist. Fear kept it a privileged belief system of a few elites (e.g. Newton wrote many theological texts, never published, which expressed the view; and the Unitarian-Universalist church may have sprung from like groups; Jefferson and Paine were also influenced by these groups). Arianism was the last large-scale Gnostic movement.

I skeptical of any relationship between the “Family” and either early Gnosticism or its later revivals.

Buddhism often has the same claim…that it is a ethic of life and not a religion, and thus one can be Buddhist without giving up ones other faiths. Of course that IS a problem when those faiths assert ethos that are in contradiction to Buddhist thought.

Many groups in North Africa were gnostic (indeed St. Augustine was a member of one just prior to coming back into the Orthodox (”correct or True”) and Catholic (”Universal”) faith that was passed on through specialists presumably descended from the original disciples and “authentic” scriptures. Another branch were the followers of Arius who spread his belief-system into the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe (and who spread Westward). After the Feudal leaders of thiese groups converted back into the Orthodox Church, the Arians (not to be confused with the ARYANS) may have spawned groups like the Bogomils, and other heretical sects in Southern France and Germany (like the Wallensians) during the Dark Ages. In fact the First Crusade was an “internal war” against the essentially gnostic Cathari priests in the Pyrenees.

Thus the Orthodox church was far more authoritarian and heirarchal, and far less diverse by its very nature. Ritual, scripture and roles were tightly regulated. And they were the ones that sought alliances with leaders like Constantine and became part-and-parcel a parallel state-within-a-state (or beyond the state).

Has everyone seen this little “gem” yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYpkvcmog0

Spit.

Which was, for all practical purposes, a white wash.

The impractical ones too.