Further Exploration of the Religious History of Germany

While I had set up prompt questions for my blog posts, I am going to continue to ignore them in order to delve into thoughts that have arisen during my readings.

I am in the middle of reading The Germanization of Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell. As the name indicates, this reads somewhat like a thesis, but since the subject interests me immensely, it’s a quick and easy read. Before this study began, I initial thought that Christianity came into the Germanic world much like how modern day missionaries create converts, by taking all that they deem sacred and telling them its wrong and showing them that Christ’s path is the only path. Albeit simplified, this is the overarching story that is told about missionaries going into remote locations in Africa and South America and I assumed that such practices began hundreds of years ago.

As is often the case, my oversimplified assumptions were proven wrong and I am glad for it. First of Russell tells us, as his book’s title suggests, is that it wasn’t so much that the Germanic peoples were Christianized as much as Christianity was Germanized. “This process of accommodation resulted in the essential transformation of Christianity from a universal salvation religion to a Germanic, and eventually European, folk religion.” (Russell, 39) In essence, the missionaries allowed for a certain amount of melding of the traditional folk, or pagan, religion with Christianity in order to have converts. Second, the author goes on to describe how current Christianity is in fact a Germanized version of the original religion. In fact, Russell asserts, “were it not for its Germanization, Christianity might never have spread throughout Northern and Central Europe.” (Russell, 40) By allowing the Germanic peoples to take differing parts of the old and new religious ideas, missionaries were able to make Christianity “stick” and eventually spread throughout Europe. Fascinating!

What does this have to do with food, you might ask? Well, my original hypothesis was that the Germanic peoples’ relationship with food was changed by the influence of Christianity. However, in reading this book, I realize that it may be the other way around. This would explain how modern German relationship with food does not seem significantly different than during more agrarian times. Stay tuned for more insight!


P.S.
An interesting blog: http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/cup-of-christ.html