Our Traditions, then and now.
It hasn't been very long since most of humanity was living in small tribal groups, and tiny villages.
For most of humanity, things have changed drastically.
Progress can be great. But we seem to forget at times, that it can also be weaponized. Not necessarily against one particular group, or set of beliefs and traditions. Instead it gets weaponized for a profit, against the poor, and nature itself, and our natural instincts. This happened over time, we were convinced that bigger and bigger tribes were better, until villages turned to towns and they were built up into small cities, and eventually the ultimate evolution, the metropolis. Millions of people, all loyal to one of leader, one Mayor. Hundreds of different religious, and non-religious groups, many with dozens of denominations within them, all with very different beliefs on how society, law, and order should be handled. One mayor, residing over all of those different systems makes a law favoring the belief of one group, and the rest feel betrayed. It's impossible to manage long term.
When we look at even a small modern town in comparison, under 2,000 people, we often find they often agree on how all of those things should be handled. Their small town mayor fixes this road, and expands that school, and all the people clap and cheer. The 2 or 3 churches are usually some form of evangelical Christian. They all come together for the local sporting events, and everyone knows what everyone else ate for dinner. This is not that far in societal structure from the ancient tribes of man. It still keeps “most” of the people happy. There are always small exceptions to the rule.
Then we have the State governors, who have to appease as many of the town and city mayors as possible. This is where shit goes sideways, but for that we have a different conversation, for a different time.
What has changed ?
The traditions among people have for the most part always evolved slowly. Religions get broken into denominations, that eventually evolve into whole other religions over time. The people practicing them change their traditions slowly over generations and nobody notices very much change. It remained that way, until just before the industrial revolution, and then the age of information.
Suddenly in the 1700 - 1800’s people begin to drastically change. We see a ramping up of small countries breaking away from the Empire they belonged to. The king or queen half way around the world, was not providing anything in return for the tax they received. Towns and small colonies became the standard again. We went from having royal guard policing, to forming local militias and eventually elections for Sheriffs.
Throughout the hundred years from 1700 - 1800 we also see several churches break away from the Roman Catholic Church, and the Vatican. This happened in Europe, the Americas, and everywhere the Roman, and subsequently the French, Spanish, and English empires had made a claim. The witch hunts, and Inquisitions were still happening. But revolution was underway. The 100 years of religious unrest that changed everything was just beginning.
1701 - Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts officially organized[38]
1701 - Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands splits with Roman Catholicism
1702 - George Keith, returns to America as a missionary of the newly organized Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
1703 - The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts expands to the West Indies[39]
1704 - French missionary priests arrive to evangelize the Chitimacha living along the Mississippi River in what is now the state of Louisiana
1705 - Danish-Halle Mission to India begins with Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Plutschau[40]
1706 - Irish-born Francis Makemie, who has been an itinerant Presbyterian missionary among the colonists of America since 1683, is finally able to organize the first American presbytery
1707 - Italian Capuchin missionaries reach Kathmandu in Nepal. Maillard de Tournon makes public, in Nanjing, the Vatican decisions on rites, including the stipulations against the veneration of ancestors and of Confucius.
1707 - Examen theologicum acroamaticum by David Hollatz: the last great work of the Lutheran doctrine before the Age of Enlightenment
1708 - Jesuit missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti is arrested in Japan. He is taken to Edo (now called Tokyo) to be interrogated by Arai Hakuseki
1709 - Experience Mayhew, missionary to the Martha's Vineyard Indians, translates the Psalms and the Gospel of John into the Massachusett language. It will be a work considered second only to John Eliot's Indian Bible in terms of significant Indian-language translations in colonial New England
1710 - First modern Bible Society founded in Germany by Count Canstein [1]
1711 - Jesuit Eusebio Kino, missionary explorer in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, dies suddenly in northern Mexico. Kino, who has been called "the cowboy missionary", had fought against the exploitation of Indians in Mexican silver mines.
1712 - Using a press sent by The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Tranquebar Mission in India begins printing books in the Portuguese language
1713 - Jesuit Ippolito Desideri goes to Tibet as a missionary
1714 - New Testament translated into Tamil (India);[41] a missionary training college is established in Copenhagen
1715 - Eastern Orthodox Church missionary outreach is renewed in Manchuria and Northern China [2]
1716 - The establishment of the Alamo Mission in San Antonio is authorized by the viceroy of Mexico. The mission was to be an educational center for Native Americans who converted to Christianity.
1717 - Chen Mao writes to the Chinese Emperor about his concerns over Catholic missionaries and Western traders. He urgently requested an all-out prohibition of Catholic missionaries in the Qing provinces.
1718 - Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg constructs a church building in India that is still in use today
1718-22 - orthodox Lutheran Valentin Ernst Löscher publishes The Complete Timotheus Verinus against Pietism
1719 - Isaac Watts writes missionary hymn "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun"[42]
1720 - Missionary Johann Ernst Gruendler dies in India. He had arrived there in 1709 with the sponsorship of the Danish Mission Society
1721 - Mission San Juan Bautista Malibat in Baja California is abandoned due to the hostility of the Cochimi Indians, as well as to the decimation of the local population by epidemics and a water shortage. Chinese Kangxi Emperor bans Christian missionaries as a result of the Chinese Rites controversy.
1721 - Peter the Great substituted Moscow Patriarchate with the Holy Synod
1722 - Hans Egede goes to Greenland[43]
1723 - Robert Millar publishes A History of the Propagation of Christianity and the Overthrow of Paganism advocating prayer as the primary means of converting non-Christians[44]
1724 - Yongzheng Emperor bans missionary activities outside the Beijing area
1725 - Knud Leem arrives as a missionary to the Sami people of Finnmark (Norwegian Arctic)
1726 - John Wright, a Quaker missionary to the Native Americans, settles in southeastern Pennsylvania
1728 - Institutum Judaicum founded in Halle as first Protestant mission center for Jewish evangelism[45]
1728 - The Vicar of Bray (song)
1729 - Roman Catholic missionary Du Poisson becomes the first victim in the Natchez massacre. On his way to New Orleans, he had been asked to stop and say Mass at the Natchez post. He was killed in front of the altar
1730 - Lombard, French missionary, founds a Christian village with over 600 Indians at the mouth of Kuru river in French Guiana. A Jesuit, Lombard has been called the most successful of all missionaries in converting the Indians of French Guiana
1730-1749 - First Great Awakening in U.S.
1731 - A missionary movement is born when Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf attends the coronation of King Christian VI of Denmark. By the following year, the movement with which Zinzendorf was associated, the Moravian Church, would launch missionary outreach in the Caribbean.[46]
1732 - Alphonsus Liguori founds the Roman Catholic religious order known as the Redemptorist Fathers with the purpose of doing missionary work among rural people[47]
1734 - A missionary convinces a Groton, Connecticut church to lend its building to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe for Christian worship services.
1735 - John Wesley goes to Indians in Georgia as missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts[49]
1735 - Welsh Methodist revival
1736 - Anti-Christian edicts in China; Moravian missionaries at work among Nenets people of Arkhangelsk
1737 - Rev. Pugh, a missionary in Pennsylvania with The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, writes home to London to say that he had begun ministering to blacks. He noted that the masters of the slaves were prejudiced against them becoming Christian.
1738 - Moravian missionary George Schmidt settles in Baviaan Kloof (Kloof of the Baboons) in the Riviersonderend valley of South Africa. He begins working with the Khoikhoi people, who were practically on the threshold of extinction.
1738 - Methodist movement, led by John Wesley and his hymn-writing brother Charles, begins
1739 - The first missionary to the Mahican (Mohegan) Indians, John Sergeant, builds a home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that is today a museum.
1740 - Moravian David Zeisberger starts work among Creek people of Georgia[50]
1741 - Dutch missionaries start building Christ Church building in Malacca Town, Malaysia. It will take 12 years to complete.
1741 - Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, famous Fire and brimstone sermon
1742 - Moravian Leader Count Zinzendorf visits Shekomeko, New York and baptizes six Indians
1743 - David Brainerd starts ministry to North American Indians[51]
1744 - Thomas Thompson resigns his position as dean at the University of Cambridge to become a missionary. He was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to New Jersey. Taking a special interest in the slave population there, he would later request to begin mission work in Africa. In 1751, Thompson would become the first S.P.G. missionary to the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana)
1745 - David Brainerd, after preaching to Native Americans in December, wrote about the response: "They soon came in, one after another; with tears in their eyes, to know, what they should do to be saved. . . . It was an amazing season of power among them, and seemed as if God had bowed the heavens and come down ... and that God was about to convert the whole world."
1746 - From Boston, Massachusetts a call is issued to the Christians of the New World to enter into a seven-year "Concert of Prayer" for missionary work[52]
1747 - Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayer for world missions; birth of Thomas Coke, the "Father of Methodist Missions"
1748 - Roman Catholic Pedro Sanz and the four other missionaries are executed, together with 14 Chinese Christians. Prior to his death, Sanz reportedly converted some of his prison guards to Christianity.
1749 - Spanish Franciscan priest Junipero Serra (1713–1784) arrives in Mexico as a missionary. In 1767 he would go north to what is now California, zealously converting Native Americans.
1750 - Jonathan Edwards, preacher of the First Great Awakening, having been banished from his church at Northampton, Massachusetts goes as a missionary to the nearby Housatonic Indians.[53] Christian Frederic Schwartz goes to India with Danish-Halle Mission[54]
1751 - Samuel Cooke arrives in New Jersey as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
1752 - Thomas Thompson, first Anglican missionary to Africa, arrives in the Gold Coast (now Ghana)[55]
1753 - Searchers in Labrador looking for Moravian Johann Christian Erhardt finds the body of one of his traveling companions. The disappearance of Erhardt and six companions had led to temporary abandonment of Moravian missionary initiatives in Labrador.
1754 - Moravian John Ettwein arrives in America from Germany as a missionary. Preaching to Native Americans and establishing missions, Ettwein will travel as far south as Georgia. Eventually, he will become head of the Moravian Church in what is now the United States.
1755 - The Mahican Indian settlement at Gnadenhutten, Pa. is attacked and destroyed. Moravian missionary Johann Jacob Schmick who pastors a group of Indian converts, will remain with the Mahicans through exile and captivity despite almost constant threats from white neighbors. Schmick will join his Indian congregation as they seek refuge in Bethlehem, follow them as captives to Philadelphia, and remain with them after they settle in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
1756 - Civil unrest forces Gideon Halley away from his missionary work among the Six Nations on the Susquehanna River where he has been working for four years under the supervision of Jonathan Edwards with an appointment from the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians.
1757 - Lutherans begin ministering to Blacks in the Caribbean [3]
1758 - John Wesley baptizes two African-American slaves, thus breaking the skin color barrier for Methodist societies [4]
1759 - Native American Samson Occom, direct descendant of the great Mahican chief Uncas, is ordained by the Presbyterians. Despite poor eyesight, Occom became the first American Indian to publish works in English. These included sermons, hymns and a short autobiography.[56]
1760 - Adam Voelker and Christian Butler arrive in Tranquebar as the first Moravian missionaries to India
1761 - The first Moravian missionary in Ohio, Frederick Post, settles on the north side of the Muskingum in what is now Bethlehem township
1762 - Moravian Missionary John Heckewelder confers with Koquethagacton ("White Eyes") at the mouth of the Beaver River (Pennsylvania)
1763 - The Presbyterian Synod of New York orders that a collection for missions be taken. In 1767 the Synod will ask that this collection be done annually.
1764 - The Moravians make a decision to expand and begin publicizing their missionary activity, particularly in the British colonies; Moravian Jens Haven makes the first of three exploratory missionary journeys to Greenland
1765 - Suriname Governor General Crommelin convinces three Moravian missionaries to work near the head waters of the Gran Rio. They settle among the Saramaka near the Senthea Creek in Granman Abini's village where they are received with mixed feelings.
1766 - Philip Quaque, a Fetu youth from the Cape Coast area of Ghana who spent twelve years studying in England, returns to Africa. Supported as a missionary by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Quaque is first non-European ordained priest in the Church of England
1767 - Spain expels the Jesuits from Spanish colonies in the New World
1767-1815 - Suppression of the Jesuits
1768 - Five United Brethren missionaries from Germany, invited by the Danish Guinea Company, arrive in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), to teach in the Cape Coast Castle schools
1768 - Reimarus dies without publishing his radical critic work distinguishing Historical Jesus versus Christ of Faith
1768 New Smyrna, Florida, Greek Orthodox colony founded
1769 - Junípero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, first of the 21 Alta California missions[57]
1769 - Mission San Diego de Alcala, first California mission
1770 - John Marrant, a free black from New York City, begins ministering cross-culturally, preaching to the American Indians. By 1775 he had carried the gospel to the Cherokee and Creek Indians as well as to groups he called the Catawar and Housaw peoples.[58]
1771 - Francis Asbury arrives in America; David Avery is ordained as missionary to the Oneida tribe
1771 - Emanuel Swedenborg, published his "Universal Theology of the True Christian Religion" which would later be used by others to found Swedenborgianism[59]
1772 - After visiting Scilly Cove in Newfoundland, Canada, missionary James Balfour describes it as a "most Barbarous Lawless Place"
1773 - Pope Clement XIV dissolves the Jesuit Order;[60] two Dominican order missionaries beheaded in Vietnam
1774 - Moravian missionaries Christoph Brasen and Gottfried Lehmann drown when their sloop sinks in a storm off Greenland [5]
1774 - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing starts publishing Reimarus works on historical Jesus as Anonymous Fragments, starting Liberal Theology Era (in Christology)
1775 - John Crook is sent by Liverpool Methodists to the Isle of Man
1776 - Cyril Vasilyevich Suchanov builds first church among Evenks of Transbaikal (or Dauria) in (Siberia); The first baptism of an Eskimo by a Lutheran pastor takes place in Labrador.
1776 - Mission Dolores, San Francisco
1776-1788 Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, critical of Christianity
1777 - Portuguese missionaries build a church at Hashnabad, Bangladesh
1778 - Theodore Sladich is martyred while doing missionary work to counter Islamic influence in the western Balkans
1779 - Charles Simeon is converted while a student at King's College, Cambridge. Twenty years later he helped found what became the Church Missionary Society.
1779 - Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, "Jesus never coerced anyone to follow him, and the imposition of a religion by government officials is impious"
1780 - August Gottlieb Spangenberg writes An Account of the Manner in Which the Protestant Church of the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren, Preach the Gospel, and Carry On Their Missions Among the Heathen. Originally written in the German language, the book will be translated into English in 1788.
1780 - Robert Raikes begins Sunday schools to reach poor and uneducated children in England
1781 - In the midst of the American Revolutionary War, the British so feared Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and his influence among the Lenape (also called Delaware) and other Native Americans that they arrested him and his assistant, John Heckewelder, charging them with treason,
1782 - Freed slave George Lisle goes to Jamaica as missionary[61]
1783 - Moses Baker and George Gibbions, both former slaves, leave the U.S. to become missionaries in the West Indies
1784 - Thomas Coke (Methodist) submits his Plan for the Society for the Establishment of Missions Among the Heathen. Methodist missions among the "heathen" will begin in 1786 when Coke, destined for Nova Scotia, is driven off course by a storm and lands at Antigua in the British West Indies.[62]
1784 - American Methodists form Methodist Episcopal Church at so-called "Christmas Conference", led by bishops Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury
1784 - Roman Catholicism is re-introduced in Korea and disseminates after almost 200 years since its first introduction in 1593.
1785 - Joseph White's sermon titled "On the Duty of Attempting the Propagation of the Gospel among our Mahometan and Gentoo Subjects in India" is published in the second edition of his book Sermons Containing a View of Christianity and Mahometanism, in their History, their Evidence, and their Effects. The sermon was first preached at the University of Oxford.
1786 - John Marrant, a free black from New York City, writes in his journal that he preached to "a great number of Indians and white people" at Green's Harbor, Newfoundland. [6] Marrant's cross-cultural ministry led him to take the Gospel to the Cherokee, Creek, Catawba (he called them the Catawar, and Housaw Indians.
1787 - William Carey is ordained in England by the Particular Baptists and soon begins to urge that worldwide missions be undertaken.
1788 - Dutch missionaries begin preaching the Gospel among fishermen in Bangladesh
1788 - Richard Johnson accompanies First Fleet as first Christian minister in Australia.
1789 - The Jesuits establish Georgetown University as the first US Catholic college[63]
1789-1801 - Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
1789-1815 - John Carroll, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, first Roman Catholic US bishop
1790 - Prince Williams, a freed slave from South Carolina, goes to Nassau, Bahamas, where he will start Bethel Meeting House[58]
1791 - One hundred and twenty Korean Christians are tortured and killed for their faith. It began when Paul Yun Ji-Chung, a noble who had become a Christian, decided not to bury his mother according to traditional Confucian custom.
1792 - William Carey writes An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen and forms the Baptist Missionary Society to support him in establishing missionary work in India[64]
1792 - William Carey writes An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen and forms the Baptist Missionary Society to support him in establishing missionary work in India[64]
1793 - Stephen Badin ordained in U.S. Although much of Badin's ministry was pastoral work among his own countrymen, he did some outreach among the Potawatomi Indians [7]
1793 Herman of Alaska brings Orthodoxy to Alaska
1794 - Eight Russian Orthodox missionaries arrive on Kodiak Island in Alaska. Within a few months several thousand people have been baptized[65]
1795 - The London Missionary Society is formed to send missionaries to Tahiti[66]
1795 - The Age of Reason written by Thomas Paine, advocated Deism
1796 - Scottish and Glasgow Missionary Societies established;[67] In India, Johann Philipp Fabricius' translation of the Bible into Tamil is revised and published [8]
1796 - Treaty with Tripoli (1796), article 11: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"
1797 - Netherlands Missionary Society formed;[68] The Duff, carrying 36 lay and pastoral missionaries, sails to three islands of the South Pacific;[69] The first Christian missionary (from the London Missionary Society) visits Hiva on the Pacific island of Tahuata; he is not well received.
1798 - The Missionary Society of Connecticut is organized by the Congregationalists to take the gospel to the "heathen lands" of Vermont and Ohio. Its missionaries evangelized both European settlers and Native Americans.[70]
1799 - The Church Missionary Society (Church of England) is formed;[67] John Vanderkemp, Dutch physician goes to Cape Colony, Africa[71]
1800 - New York Missionary Society formed; Johann Janicke founds a school in Berlin to train young people for missionary service[72]
1800 - Friedrich Schleiermacher publishes his first book, beginning Liberal Christianity movement
1800 - James Dixon and two other Irish convicts the first Catholic priests in Australia.
Then we come to the 1800’s
Sorry for the long list up there, but it was an eventful hundred years. Traditions, beliefs and loyalties had taken extreme changes. Religions had been completely reformed, and new communities built. Then between 1800 - 1900 we see another explosion. The pendulum was swinging hard in the opposite direction, one of rebuilding national identities, and eventually forming new empires. Politics once again took precedent over faith and community. Through this century we see the birth an death of political systems.
The 1800’s were the death of the small community, and the birth of a trend in national patriotism. This era birthed the National Socialist movement, Europe, and Asia were struck with Communism on a Continental scale, and a whole new Chinese empire was born in the east.
The wholesale slaughter of Native American, and any other Non-Christian Pagan people was starting to wind down a bit in the Americas. The traditions of people who had come from Europe, Asia, and most other countries with different faiths had been snuffed out, or forced into hiding. This was the century where global alliances were formed, and the American people were identifying as a unified “Christian” nation once again. The separation of church and state became an increasingly blurred line, until evangelical Christianity eventually became the law of the land. All other traditions had been banned, or made illegal. Even the ancient tradition of funeral pyres among native Europeans had been legally replaced by the Roman Catholic Burial.
These traditions are still practiced all over the world, but in what is allegedly the free country, America, where people have the Right to freedom of religion, the funeral practices are outlawed. The traditions carried on by thousands, to tens of thousands of years of European, Indian, and Asian ancestors is banned. Pardon my French, when I say that is absolute and utter horse s#it, these bureaucratic fu¢k wits, should have absolutely no say in how I want my last rights carried out. They can eat a 25 pound pack of severed goat co¢ks, and choke on each and every one of them if they think I'm not going to fight for a proper funeral.
My Traditions.
I'm an American, and I support your right to religious freedom, just so long as you don't step on mine. Once you make that choice, a holy war begins. A logistical, and legal battle with millions of American Pagans, the AU, and the ACLU kicks off. Fund raisers get started, laws get challenged, and the Media is made aware of the American Religious Freedom hypocrisy.
I'm not a Wiccan, I'm a Germanic Pagan, a Bructeri and Suebian descended Teutonic warrior. My family comes from the Elbe, and Rhine villages of ancient Germania. Woden/ Odin, and Tiw/ Tyr were the Gods of our people. Our ancestors had funeral pyres, and mounds of remembrance were built on top of them afterwards. The groves where this happened were sacred.
The Pagan faiths in America Deserve to have proper funerals, as were tradition among their ancestors. No human sacrifices, no crazy shit. Just an open cremation.
Why does that violate State and Federal Laws, if the First Amendment holds true?
🇺🇲👇 Help me save the First Amendment ! 👇🇺🇲
Thank you for reading, and just remember this. Your ancestors carried down their traditions for thousands of years, throwing that away is a huge dishonor to them and their traditions.
🤘 Keep Your Ancestral Traditions Alive. 🤘
Smash the LIKE 💚 button below to honor their memory. Share this with a family member, to remind them of where they came from.
Links and Sources :
https://www.sciencenordic.com/archaeology-denmark-history/high-flames-gave-status-to-ancient-funeral-pyres/1443438
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_18th_century#:~:text=Across%20Europe%20the%20Catholic%20Church,was%20given%20very%20little%20support.
https://getordained.org/blog/are-funeral-pyres-still-a-thing