Back in the eighties Riane Eisler authored The Chalice and
the Blade exploring what she saw at the tensions between the “feminine” goddess
beliefs and the “masculine” patriarchal beliefs. There are plusses and minuses
about the book but that’s not what caught my attention today.
I was reading up on the Orkney Islands (located to the north
of Scotland )
and came across this little titbit. Sort of the chalice and the blade on
steroids. Traditional stories “credit” Norwegian king Olav Tryggvasson with
Christianizing the islands around the year 995. Stopping at the island now
known as South Walls he summoned the local lord Sigurd the Stout and supposedly
made the following announcement “I order you and all your subjects to be baptized.
I you refuse, I’ll have you killed on the spot and I swear I will ravage every
island with fire and steel.” The good islander submitted to baptism becoming “official”
Christians. Surprise. Surprise. Imagine a really strong tone of sarcasm here.
Funny how all the forced conversions through history never
made it into my sunny, cheerful, often boring, definitely irrelevant Sunday School classes.
No comments:
Post a Comment