[Vision2020] Easter without a Bloody Crucifixion? The Early Church did just that

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries,

I'm fully committed getting my book on religious violence done, so I've
suspended my column/radio commentaries for the time being.  I will recycle
oldies but goodies on the radio, and will write something new only when it
is timely or when I can't help myself.

This is an Easter column from 2011 that I'm posting once again for those
who may have missed it.  I know Rita Brock from Claremont Grad. School and
Rebecca Ann Parker is President of the Unitarian seminary in Berkeley.
 Their book is a veritable tour de force.  The full version is attached.

The trees and bushes are in full bloom here in Bellingham, and the Canadian
mountains are looming large across the bay.

Happy Spring,

Nick

*Christianity without Crucifixion in the Early Church*

*Paradise, not crucifixion, was the dominant image of *

* early Christian sanctuaries, and paradise was this world, not the next.*

—Rita Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, *Saving Paradise
*

          In July of 2002 Rita Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker set out on a
Mediterranean journey to confirm a claim that had been made for many years:
Christian art did not show a crucified Christ until the 10th Century. Brock
and Parker confess that “initially we didn’t believe it could be true.
Surely the art historians were wrong.” Brock and Parker found Christ as a
victorious king and as a good shepherd with a live lamb on his shoulders,
but they did find any images of Jesus dying on the cross.

In the 6th Century St. Apollinare Nouvo Church there are 26 panels
depicting the life of Christ. The tenth panel is Simon of Cyrene carrying a
cross and the next panel shows the angel and the two women at the tomb.
Churches that have the Stations of the Cross always have the Crucifixion
between these two panels.  Curiously but significantly, this panel is
missing in this early church.

Many early churches were decorated in ways that made them an earthly
paradise—a heaven on earth.  Above the altar in the 6th century San Vitale
church in Ravenna there is a globe on which the non-crucified Christ is
sitting. Underneath the globe the four rivers of Eden flow out into a
beautiful valley. Christians then were not saved by the blood of the dying
Jesus; instead, they were grafted on to the Tree of Life.

Early Christian artists were not at odds with the written texts. Already in
circulation at the end of the first century, *The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles* does not mention the Crucifixion.  Later in second century Pope
Clement prays about the resurrected but not the crucified Christ.  Also in
the second century Justin Martyr performs the Lord’s Supper without mention
of the cross and without the phrase “poured out for the remission of sins.”

There’s an old joke about people wearing electric chairs around their necks
if Jesus had come to middle 20th Century America. This bit of crudity,
however, may reveal the reason why the Crucifixion does not appear in early
Christian art. Early Christians had seen a lot of crucifixions and perhaps
they did not want their savior to be associated with the most shameful and
gruesome form of execution known to humankind.

The first known crucifix was made by a Saxon artist who carved a life-size
dead Jesus from oak. The ancient Saxons worshipped trees and they were
converted by Charlemagne’s troops at the points of their swords. As Parker
and Brock state: “The cross—once a sign of life—became for them a sign of
terror. Pressed by violence into Christian obedience, the Saxons produced
art that bore the marks of their baptism in blood.”In a supreme and
terrible irony the humiliated Saxons identified with the crucified Jesus
and they saw their own wounds—physically and spiritually—in his tortured
figure.

          Brock and Parker draw political conclusions from the replacement
of Churches of Paradise with Churches of Crucifixion: “The Carolingians
fused church and state in new ways, altered the long-standing Christian
prohibition against the shedding of human blood, and made Christianity a
colonizing tool.  They aligned the Cross with military victory and laid the
axe to the root of sacred trees.”

Over the next hundred years pogroms against Jews increased dramatically.
Significantly, Christian leaders who focused on the Crucifixion were also
those who called the Jews “Christ killers.” As Brock and Parker state:
“This shows how easily a focus on the death of Jesus spilled over into the
vilification of Jews.”

Under the banner of a huge red cross the Crusades sent huge military
expeditions against infidels in Asia, killing thousands of Jews and other
innocents on the way. In the centuries to come it would witches and
heretics who would die, and Christian violence continued in the great
European empires of the 16-19th Centuries. Brock and Parker chose an
appropriate subtitle for their book: “How Christianity Traded Love of this
World for Crucifixion and Empire.”

In conclusion I’m reminded of a sign outside a church in Southern
California at the beginning of the Iraq War.  It read: “Christ: Our
Commander in Chief.”  Christian imperialists are still very much among us.**

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years.
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