Totalitarianism and historical faith

 As this semester have fast forwarded, I have come to teach alot about the church's historical role. I would say that it is perhaps not impossible, but very hard to write a history of Europe and especially Sweden without taking the church into account. From a very obvious point, Sweden was not a literal society (apart from rune-writing, which is not fully a classical way to write) society. It was with the early church that the latin alphabet entered Sweden and the church need for adminstration later on played an important part in spreading the written word. This have for instance the consequence that much of Swedens early history only can be viewed through christianity, since it was mostly christians that knew how to read or write. 

As history forwards we can also see how religion becomes a tool for giving legitimacy to hatred and actions that we today would view as crimes against humanity. A clear example of this is the Swedish crusades into Finland which led ot the country being forced into Sweden during the 12th century. We can also see how the colonization of latin-america was made possible through religious imperatives. Due to it's dark history, it would be easy to dismiss all religious teachings but this is still not really something that have worth in itself. 

When I teach often meet students who have not been taught to separate christian teachings, faith and the church. It is almost impossible to know if the medieval persons were truly pious or religious, since historians seldom can enter the minds of those who lived century ago. We are always trapped with texts and other artefacts, which comes with the need for their makers to position themselves in society. In other words: just beacuse a person claimed to be christian, we can seldom know what their fate actually was.

As a teacher I am often fond of incooperating sources in my lectures. These sources are written accounts of historical events as they unfolded and often it works as a way to engage students in the classroom, but sometimes they also enables to give another perspective than the course literature. During one of my lectures, about the plague in 14th century, I highlighted the writings of a Swedish king, Magnus Eriksson, and his remedies for the plague. Amongst his remedies were to give large donations to the crown, since this would please god. In this regard we can see how the church as an institution, rather than christianity in itself, enables certain historical action. The problem with course literature, such as a history of world societies, is that it seldom does this. Instead they put the church and faith in the same basket. 

The royal emblem of King Magnus Eriksson

In some senses I have therefore come to tried to keep these things seperated. Drawing inspiration from Hanna Arendts The origins of totalitarianism it would be much closer to view the church as a totaltarian ideology. Arendt herself writes that totalitarianism is often linked to "terror and a system of logic" and we can clearly see how this is at play in the writings of Magnus Eriksson. We have a terror in the ongoing plague, but also a logical remedy in acting in the will of god. As a history educator, this was an aspect that struck me rather recently and I look forward to actually work with my students and see if this brings forth a different understand than that presented in AHS. 

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