The Dark Side of Christian History

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Summary: A must read for those trying to understand the truth!!
Review: I was blown away by this book. You think that you know the truth and you find out that you have been lied to all of your life! Half the things that you think you know, aren't true. We forget that men wrote the bible, not God. A must read for everyone!!

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Summary: The Dark Side of Christian History
Review: This is an essential work. I would recommend this concise but informative book very highly. People just simply need to know this stuff. The human race has been repeatedly raped by orthodox Christianity. The relentless violent indoctrination of this spiritually impotent farce has bred nothing but ignorance, hatred, separatism & bloodshed. Although it is the general consensus of opinion that the Bible is a truly profound source of spiritual inspiration, orthodox Christianity has continually used this phenomenal creation as the 'backbone' to its' horrific dissemination of terror. In this day & age, how can anyone who is remotely educated take orthodox Christianity seriously?!

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Summary: A shameful perpetuation of myths and lies
Review: Ms. Ellerbe proclaims to give us an unbiased look at Christian history. However she does this in the most one sided approach possibly; by looking only at the negative she sees a very small portion of the great history of Christianity. Not only does she look at the negative, but she looks at the bottom of the barrel where the darkest stuff is liberally mixed with lies and myths that have originated through history

Ms. Ellerbe's book seems well researched, however if you look at her references, not only are some of them made up, but the vast majority are secondary or tertiary sources, Ms. Ellerbe uses hardly any primary sources to make her argument.

Overall I found this book quite shameful, and I'm sorry I wasted my time in reading it. At least I can say this...it was short.

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Summary: Interesting overview, not a scholarly work
Review: I would very much like to see a second edition of this. It's good as far as it goes, but every chapter could use further elaboration.

Footnotes are at the back of the book. With modern word processors, it is not that difficult to put footnotes where they belong. But then it would be more obvious that this book relies on few original sources, but second and third hand accounts and hearsay, and books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which are cryptohistory at best.

Ms. Ellerby makes some interesting points, and I think that most, if not all, of them can be supported by original sources, which would make this a more authorative work.

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Summary: Doesn't get to the root cause of religious intolerance
Review: Ellerbe's sweeping survey of Christendom does little more than re-cap human rights abuses that have conducted in God's name. Ellerbe's own explanation for these abuses is that Christianity is innately evil and, implicitly, should be expunged from the earth. She claims that Christianity is evil because Christians - *gasp* - think that their religion is actually True.

This analysis fails for several reasons.

For starters, Ellerbe seems oblivious to the role of the State, except to portray the state as some kind of obedient lap-dog that does the church's evil bidding. But a fair reading of history shows that it is the State that performs these atrocities, not Christianity. For example, the Anabaptists, the Quakers, and other groups were all Christians, even Fundamentalist by today's standards. They were "born-again Christians" in the full modern sense of the term. But they were mercilessly persecuted by the state-run churches of England, Germany, and other nations. The government wanted everyone to be part of their churches so that no one would question the government. This same state of affairs also dominated the Eastern Orthodox world, where the emperor was looked upon as the physical manifestation of the Will of God. In Rome, the Church and the State were merged into one Whole, with disasterous results. In these examples we have rather non-devout, nominal Christians persecuting devote, "born-again" Christians. It has little to do with God, and everything to do with politics and the State.

Ellerbe's idea that Christianity is "intolerant" simply because it teaches that it's own beliefs are true doesn't stand up to history. The Baptists founded RI with absolute freedom of conscience for all. Have you ever been to a Baptist church? They're hardly wishy-washy Unitarians. You get a hearty dose of born-again, hallelujah, praise-God-I've-been-saved spirituality. But this is the church that gave us freedom of religion and separation of church and state! ...

It is an innate part of Biblical Christian teaching that each person chooses to follow or reject Christ. This teaching mitigates strongly against any type of religious coercion. Religious coercion has been characteristic of churches that are the least Biblical in their teachings, such as the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.

Ellerbe also fails to give credit where credit is due. For example, she says that churches supported slavery. Did some southern Christians support slavery? Yes. But EVERYONE supported slavery for thousands of years, without question, until evangelical Protestants in England and America opposed it. Slavery continues in many non-Christian nations. Even in the South, the evangelical churches were opposed to slavery in the 1700s. It wasn't until ....non-Christian influences that they acquiesced to slavery's existence. Without Christianity, I doubt very much that anyone would opposed to slavery, even today.

Ellerbe's solution to Christianity's "intolerance" is that religion should not teach that God is one being with one identity. God should have many faces, like in Hinduism. But does this pantheistic concept of God really lead to tolerance? Right now, in 2001, every Buddhist nation on earth actively persecutes non-Buddhist religions. India is ruled by a Hindu-nationalist party that wants to expel all Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities. Secularist nations in Europe are passing "anti-sect" legislation to crush unpopular religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology. As we can see, Ellerbe's idea that pantheism leads to tolerance is for the birds.

This book is also one-sided and anachronistic. Today, it is Christians - particularly the ones who descend from the Anabaptist/Baptist line, the Christians who never really persecuted anyone else - who are being persecuted in Muslim, Communist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Secularist countries. Where is the outcry? Where is the justice? Not from people like Ellerbe, that's for sure.

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Summary: A bit disappointed
Review: I enjoyed the book as far as the part on Christian history was concerned but I felt that the connection Ms. Ellerbe's established between Christian history and modern science was a bit tenuous at best. In light of the fact that most of Ms. Ellerbe's information in regard to science comes from sources such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics, I am skeptical of her knowledge regarding the ideas of mainstream science. I believe that Ms. Ellerbe is a New Ager in disguise, a thin disguise at that. Her discussion of science is just another attempt to justify metaphysical believes through science. I found it hard to finish the book when it took this well worn path that never leads anywhere.

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Summary: Very well done, but doesn't go far enough
Review: I was very impressed by Helen Ellerbe's "The Dark Side of Christian History." A critical overview of nearly 2000 years of Christian history, Ellerbe sheds light on the ugly skeletons that "feel good" Christendom would like the rest of us to ignore or downplay. Ellerbe opens by saying that the Christian legacy "fosters sexism, racism, the intolerance of difference, and the desecration of the natural environment" and goes on to intelligently justify her position.

Ellerbe covers the suppression of theological diversity in early Christianity (including the suppression of alternative gospel texts), the Crusades, the Inquisition, genocide against Native Americans, the witch hunts of the 1400s-1700s, and other atrocities committed under the direction of Christian churches. The book is thoroughly annotated, and contains a substantial bibliography for further reading.

My only criticism of Ellerbee's book is that, if anything, she doesn't go far enough. This is especially true in her brief mention of Christian complicity in the slave trade. The intertwining of Christian churches and theologies with slavery is a truly vast phenomenon with a huge body of documentation (start with Frederick Douglass' "Narrative" and Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"). But I suppose there is only so much an author can accomplish in a book of about 220 pages.

I recommend "The Dark Side" both to intellectually honest Christians and to non-Christians who may be the targets of some of the types of bigotry that have historically been intertwined with Christianity. As a companion text, try "The Bible Tells Me So: Uses and Abuses of Holy Scripture," by Jim Hill and Rand Cheadle.

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Summary: The Russian/Gr. Orthodox/Quaker Church remain untainted
Review: Perhaps there is a lesson that the Eastern church was untainted compared to its two Western counterparts (barring Quakerism and similar later as more liberal movements). The Eastern church was the Christianity of Gurdjieff when he was a boy, a softer more spiritual and esoteric tradition.

This book is a blood letting and quite excoriating to read. A partially arranged work which verges on becoming too politically correct out of context. I am glad however to have been made aware of mistakes. A little more could have been said as to what occured outside the borders of Europe in S. America and Asia, but this is not a flaw in the work.

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Summary: Excellent.
Review: I am amazed that stories told in this book were never told to me before now. Some of these stories like the council and nicea, directed by Constantine, the way Constantine has his son killed and wife boiled alive I had never heard. These stories are basic past of life on planet earth and yet kept secret. This book is like a forgotten text book, filled with accurate data that is part of a basic, simple education that describes the past. Another example, of this is the example given of the basic relation between reproductive celebrations in spring that Christian humans changed and called "Easter" with a rabbit and egg, both symbols of reproduction.

I hate 999 of 1000 books, this book I like.

I ask Helen Ellerbe and other humans to search for my name on the internet. I got this book in a beautiful library in Newport Beach, California, and now I think I want to buy a copy for me, and for the human that owned the ovum I grew from.

Thanks Ted Huntington

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Summary: Polemic gone awry
Review: Sadly, this simple work once again takes the oportunity to go on a Christian bashing rampage that has become so pervasive in our western culture during a time when new age pseudo-spirituality continues to subvert religious traditions. Ms. Elerber painstakingly does the credible research, albeit selectively to fulfill her own agenda, without considering the fact that Christianity represents a wide diversity of believers, not just the conservative right wing. Unfortionately, the message that she will convey to the reader is that Christianity is once again the bad guy throughout. What she fails to mention, is that institutions by their very nature are prone to corruption and oppression when give enough power. Institutions are made up of people who, individually,possess a dark nature as well as the good. For two millenium Christianity has been one of those institutions, albeit not perfect, but by its own renewal, continues to struggle within the darkness to seek the light through the inclusive and egalitarian message of Jesus Christ.