There are several reasons why the Jews were as hated as they were, are, and will continue to be. The Jews refused to assimilate regardless of which culture, religion, or nation tried to entice or threaten to kill them. It is a pattern in history that regardless of the situation there always seems to be hate for the Jews. In the early years of Christianity the Christians saw The Jewish nation as a threat to their religion. The Czars were afraid of losing power so they created laws to persecute the Jews as well.
Perpetua’s father begs her to renounce her faith and even brings her baby. She refuses all pleas for the sake of her religion, Christianity, and God. In Ignatius’s “Letter to the Romans,” he also shows his detachment from worldly values by claiming he does not need or desire any materialistic things. He looks at martyrdom as a chance for him to strengthen his relationship with God. He views the world as a prison, rather than the actual prison itself.
This was the first sin and is now a part of everyone thus creating the initial need for people to accept Jesus Christ and to repent for their sins. However, most people will agree that newborn infants are innocent and if they were to die at a young age they would not be cast into hell. Puritans also believed that no world ritual or prayer will ensure salvation or God’s response (limited atonement). This is different from today’s view that if you accept Jesus Christ into your heart, pray, and try to follow God’s commandments then you have a good chance of escaping the fires of hell. The last of the three basic tenets was that God has chosen his elect before they are born (predestination).
When Constantine adopted Christianity the unity in Rome disintegrated, different Roman emperors dealt with Christians in a different way some killing some not and the Western Empire adopting Christianity meant that they were even more separated from the thriving Byzantine Empire. “In the fourth century Constantine adopted Christianity” (Source: Newman 208-209) as the religion of the eastern empire he destroyed the unity in Rome. The destruction of unity in Rome meant that there were Romans hating Romans just because of their religious beliefs. When two contradicting religious beliefs coexist so close to each other there will be religious wars and this created a separation between Romans of the east and Romans of the west. Rome’s emperors contradicted each other many times in history, not the least of which on the topic of Christianity.
The Church built stereotypes off of baseless opinions, “For all the Church’s insistence upon the Jew with heretic in its popular propaganda, the logicians of the Church still could not leap the hurdle of inconsistency involved” (Trachtenberg, 177). The accusations the Christians had did not match up with the facts. Even with the fallacies discovered, the Church did not relent on trying to bring the Jews down. Trachtenberg explains that the hate fueled by the Church did not subside over time and the stereotypes lived on. “Protestant reform made no difference so far as the Jew was concerned; its attitude toward him remained fixed in medieval tradition” (Trachtenberg,
Those against it, believe life is given by God, and he decides when to end it. All Christian Variants are opposed to Euthanasia, as they believe the direct and voluntary killing of human life is wrong. They believe Euthanasia violates the fact that humans are created in Gods image (imagio dei) and only God is able to end someones life. No Christian has the right to terminate life, "for everything there is a reason....a time to be born, and a time to die"(Ecclesiastes
For instance, let’s consider what most Christians view of using dead body as experiments would be like. Many Christians consider everyone to be a creation of God, so how would they feel if they only new what people where doing to those bodies that have been created. The majority of Christians would consider this very distasteful because of the fact they are destroying God creation and using it as a sacrificial item. Even in God’s Christian Warrior, many of the Christians were strong believer of God and they knew that this would be very wrong in the sight of God, using the body as a dummy, but just because they considered this to be wrong other’s religion consider this not to be a problem at all. Take for example, the Muslim’s in God Muslim’s warrior they were very sacrificial.
The Puritans wanted to remove all practice and rituals of Catholicism from Europe. John Winthrop and fellow Puritans were frustrated with religious activities in England, “All other Churches of Europe are brought to desolation and or sinnes”. He believed that the Church was corrupted and that the lord “Frowned upon us, doe threatens us fearfully”. Winthrop believed that England was invaded by evil and ran by a corrupted Government, and that the roots for religious learning were being disturbed. They feared to live in such sinful society, because they believed that God predestined people to salvation and others were damned for the rest of time.
The Pharisees and Sadducees accused him of not following the Jewish law because they felt that what he shared with the people was going against the traditional Jewish scripture and they felt that he deserved to be punished. I found this very unfair, just because Jesus had his own way of going about things and it wasn’t “their” way they felt that he was wrong. Now a days we all have our own views and opinions and we definitely would not have been hung on a cross nor would we have been treated as he was. I felt that his punishment was very serious, whether he was the messiah or not, no one deserves to be put to death for something of that matter. When I read that the crucifixion was a punishment that was usually given to people who committed crimes of thievery and other serious cases I became a little more upset.
This predominantly Protestant power base caused disputes with the Catholics who immigrated to America, as the Catholics felt disenfranchised and apathetic due to the politicians in power not being able to relate to their culture. In addition, many of the traditions of that those who immigrated were discordant with those of the WASPs, which generated great amounts of segregation and suspicion around those who immigrated. A prime example of this would be the Russian Jews, as their beliefs about washing their dead were very different to the traditional funeral values instilled in the Protestants. Moreover, the suspicion was in many cases political as well as religious, due to the proliferation of socialist, and later Communist ideals in Europe: both were substantially different to the philosophies set out in the American Constitution. For example many of the Jews escaping the Pogroms in Russia had been influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx and Lenin.