Thomas_More
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Before 1660 the Quakers were not pacifists. They urged a belligerent foreign policy and demanded to know why Cromwell had not attacked Rome. (Hill, The English Bible).
https://tass.com/politics/2125543
War with Russia inevitable is EU/NATO conviction.
It was considered a duty in the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern era for farmers to leave a measure of the harvest for wild birds.
Google: “… enclosure of common land and open fields continued during the Interregnum (1649–1660). While the period was marked by political instability, the underlying economic pressures and the trend towards consolidating land into private ownership persisted throughout the 17th century.Key details regarding enclosure during this time include:Continued Momentum: The decades surrounding 1640, including the 1650s, saw ongoing enclosure, with significant portions of counties like Leicestershire and Durham being enclosed, alongside 90% of Welsh lowlands.Shift in Power: Following 1640, government attempts to prevent enclosures or make money by fining enclosers—a practice previously used by the Stuart kings to control the gentry—ceased.Capitalist Development: Landlords and developers continued to drain fens and enclose common lands, often facing resistance from locals who relied on those lands for grazing and foraging.Regional Differences: In some areas, particularly in parts of central England, the conversion of arable land to pasture continued, driven by the profitability of sheep rearing.”
29 Apr, 13:18Updated at: 14:41
Zelensky provoking nuclear conflict, not seeking peace — Zakharova
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman pointed to Vladimir Zelensky’s earlier remarks that Ukraine should be given both NATO membership and nuclear weapons as security guarantees
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova Sofya Sandurskaya/TASS
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
© Sofya Sandurskaya/TASS
MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky is sabotaging any and all peace initiatives and is now creating conditions for a potential nuclear conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.The diplomat drew attention to Zelensky’s earlier remarks that Ukraine should be given both NATO membership and nuclear weapons as security guarantees.
“He, in fact, continues to provoke a nuclear conflict with such statements. Moreover, Western Europe risks becoming the first victim of this very nuclear blackmail,” she told a news conference.
“Zelensky clearly does not want peace. He seeks to prolong the fighting indefinitely and is ready to risk a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
“The Europeans need to understand that if they don’t stop him, their protege, to whom they allocate millions of euros every day, and he doesn’t stop in this frenzy, they probably won’t be able to avoid the consequences.”
The diplomat noted that Zelensky extended martial law in Ukraine again, “this time until August 2. This is how he conducts this violent campaign that is now not just a mobilization, but the snuffing out of the Ukrainian people.”
In 1644 the English parliament, purely for political reasons, promised to adopt Presbyterianism as the state religion, so the Scots would join them in fighting the King. The Presbyterians immediately demanded an end to all religious toleration and urged the suppression of Independency in religion, even though the Independents were also Calvinists.
Needless to say, they failed to persuade the English, although Thomas Fairfax, commander-in-chief of parliament’s army, resigned in protest at parliament’s suspicion of the Scots.
(Hill, The English Bible).The numbers of Englishmen who fled the colonies of New England to join the native Americans were huge! If recaptured by the New England authorities they faced burning, hanging and breaking on the wheel. Yet still more fled to live with the native people and get away from the repressive Biblemania of their fellows.
(Ref: Stannard; Hill).Yes. The fact that everyone was rushing to buy the cheapest pocket Bibles and reading tracts produced by both sides in the English Civil War shows they could either read themselves or knew someone who could read.
Private reading is a recent phenomenon. Reading was a social activity in the medieval and Early Modern periods.I think we know things now about the history that Engels didn’t have to hand. There are many interesting books written by modern materialists and experts on religious history. We don’t have to rely on just 19th century sources any more.
Even Kautsky’s is much more detailed and researched than Engels, and I think his Foundations of Christianity still holds true.
Marx and Engels would have been thrilled with discoveries made since, including in the realm of religious history.
The Hebrew of Genesis opens with “In the beginning the Gods made the Heavens and the Earth.”
Elohim is plural of El, the king of the gods.
Because we use the Anglo-Saxon Goden (Wodin) i.e. “God” in the Germanic languages, we lack the plurality of the Hebrew. Similarly, so do the Latin tongues, which use the Celtic name Teu (Deus, Dieu, Dios).
The Gods are also physical, material beings. As Kautsky says, this was true in Jewish Christianity too: Heaven is to be made on Earth, it is not a “spiritual” kingdom in the sky. The religious idea today of “spirit” is inherited from Plato and the Greek idealists; it was unknown to the Hebrews and the Jewish Christians. When Christians today tell us God is “not a white-bearded man” that is in fact precisely what he was to the Jews and Judaeo-Christians: a material being who looks like us.
A vestige of this original physicality of Heaven and its inhabitants remains in Eastern Orthodoxy, in which the dead are asleep in their graves waiting to physically rise and ascend, as bodies, upon Christ’s command.
