Brian Moynahan The Faith Analysis

I was very apprehensive when I started reading The Faith by Moynahan, which even has “A History of Christianity” pretentiously written on the side binding; as my Christian friend who I often go to for religious advice said when I showed him the book, “I didn’t know that Brian Moynahan wrote the Bible.” Humankind is notorious for interpreting religious texts to their own best interests, which was even explicitly stated in the The Faith; “Men adjudicated on what was true to the faith, and what merited excommunication from it.” (19) With religion as a scapegoat, we have seen century after century of obstruction and growth; from the Crusades to terrorist acts by the ISIS, extremists are often born from the cherry-picking of religious texts and …show more content…
Whether or not God is real was not a main point in this historical text; however, the human Jesus, the martyrs, the popes, and the eventual saints were all recognized as historically accurate beings. In our textbook, it is stated, “[Jesus was] transformed by [his] followers into a God.” (Strayer 211). Similarly, The Faith discussed Jesus as simply a human who sought to spread a point of view, not as a divine being who created and sought to spread a religion, as Christians view him today. While holding decidedly atheist points of view, both the textbook and The Faith gave me a new perspective, and further supported my conclusion that the Bible is interpreted differently by people with varying purposes; some are able to read the Bible and assume that Jesus was the son of God, whilst others support the theory that Jesus was, in fact, not an ethereal …show more content…
With only the Bible as a foolproof reference to guide growing followers such as myself, it is easy to interpret the textual evidences about dietary restraints, sexual restrictions, slavery, etc. to my own best interests. In a growing era of luxury and tolerance, religious standards become less and less enforced as the church bends to popular opinion. Famously, the Catholic Pope Francis openly supports gays and lesbians; imagine what the infamous Pope Alexander VI would say about that! However, I do not decry this granting of religious self-exploration; far from it. It is only when religion is used as a false pretense to obtain money, power, or other selfish objects is it wrong. Personally, I feel ridiculously privileged to be born into a country and century where I am able to discover for myself what role religion will play in my life. And it is in this context of self-fulfilment that I find Christianity holds the most meaning for