Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

Even in Downton Abbey, it's just presented as the most logical way to enable Mary to inherit.

Exactly. Obvs it was different from forced marriage but traditionally (and not just in the upper classes) families have had a LOT of authority over who marries who,especially women.

Exactly. Obvs it was different from forced marriage but traditionally (and not just in the upper classes) families have had a LOT of authority over who marries who,especially women.

Yes...☹️ I was reading Thomas Sowell recently & he argued that traveller & similar customs being imported by Scottish & Irish migrants to some rural areas of the Southern US are part of the reason for those areas traditionally having more issues. Obviously it's complex but it sounded at least somewhat plausible.

Yes, and countries like Spain & Italy have strong traditions of closeness to extended family.

That sounds about right. A tough life, particularly for women.

Would this tie in with the way older customs like honour and clan-ties are still common (arguably not always to good effect)? Unless my info is wrong (I've been researching Romany gypsies recently & tangentially read some info on Irish travellers)

Yes, think of Mansfield Park, where at the start, the thought of Fanny marrying a Bertram cousin is frowned on , but bc they've been raised as siblings, not because they are first cousins. And ofc she marries Edmund at the end. 🤮 Irl, Austen's brother Henry married their first cousin Eliza. Darwin was another who married a cousin. And obvs cousins marrying was common among royalty across Europe until relatively recently.

It was never as common as Pakistan, but it was accepted esp among upper classes until post-WW1. Thank goodness things have changed!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/036319908601100305

What do you mean by 'police harassment of street preachers'? Is this a reference to prayer outside abortion clinics? That is a complex case I haven't read much on yet. AFAIK preachers in general aren't being harassed?

First cousin marriage is common among Irish Travellers.

There's certainly an issue with immigrant pakistani communities. I'm not sure the extent the problems are about a first cousin marriage, or whether it is more about simple bad luck, or just doing it generation after generation. The latter is certainly a problem.

Either way it should be discouraged.

You're right about the aristocracy. After 1000 years of being illegal, Henry VIII legalized first-cousin marriage in England in 1540, partly to allow his marriage to Catherine Howard. It's still legal today.
However I doubt it suddenly became the fashion across society.
Today it is less than 1 percent in Europe. Far lower than many other countries.

BTW, since we've been talking about early medieval Ireland, if anyone has the chance to see the Words on the Wave exhibition in the National Museum, you still have a month. Manuscripts written by Irish scribes on Irish cattle skins that have been in the monastic library in St Gall in Switzerland since the 8th century back on loan, displayed with loads of supporting material from Ireland. Go.

Máire MacNeill, in addition to being a fabulous scholar who gave us a new way of looking at Irish calendar customs, also left the National Gallery of Ireland a collection of art including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris.

Her dad Eoin, also a fine historian (who may have done a few other things) would have been very proud.

The Church, for example, banned cousin marriage, arranged marriage and polygamous marriage

Far from being frowned upon, my impression is that cousin marriage and arranged marriage have been positively encouraged for centuries in the upper echelons of UK society.

From the 4th Lateran Council. It doesn't mean that it was universally obeyed just like adultery and abortion still happen despite rulings.

'Moreover the prohibition against marriage shall not in future go beyond the fourth degree of consanguinity and of affinity, since the prohibition cannot now generally be observed to further degrees without grave harm. The number four agrees well with the prohibition concerning bodily union about which the Apostle says, that the husband does not rule over his body, but the wife does; and the wife does not rule over her body, but the husband does; for there are four humours in the body, which is composed of the four elements. Although the prohibition of marriage is now restricted to the fourth degree, we wish the prohibition to be perpetual, notwithstanding earlier decrees on this subject issued either by others or by us. If any persons dare to marry contrary to this prohibition, they shall not be protected by length of years, since the passage of time does not diminish sin but increases it, and the longer that faults hold the unfortunate soul in bondage the graver they are.'

Ronald Hutton , Peter Berrisford Ellis and a few others. I've got Máire MacNeills massive tome , The Festival of Lughnasadh. A compendium of old pagan traditions. I think it was originally written for a PhD so it's not a rattling good yarn. Quite challenging , but comprehensive.

Yes , left to itself, Ireland may have preserved a caste system like that of India. But we'll never know.

Not even big landowners either. My own ancestry is full of cousin marriage of different degrees - let's just say villages in Tyrone or Donegal where there are only three surnames. Keeping the land in the family was important even if they were tenant farmers and even if the land was one of those tiny Irish farms that are one or two fields and a handful of pigs.

Except that marrying cousins (not first cousin necessarily) and making sure people knew where their partner came from and that property did not go to strangers was pretty universal throughout Christian Europe until the Industrial revolution and continued after that among land owners. My own grandparents (probably 'peasants') were fourth cousins and had several interconnections in earlier generations. I had a Spanish friend whose mother's marriage to her uncle (her father's brother) needed to be approved by the church, but did get that approval because it kept the property in the family. Think of the British Royal family. Until recently they didn't marry out.

I think those historians didn't understand the documents they were interpreting.

Another example is the impact of Christianty on marriage in the middle ages
This article is an interesting look at cultural differences and the assumptions we make about universality.

'A growing body of research traces these psychological differences to the structure of families – what anthropologists call kin-based institutions. This work suggests that our minds calibrate and adapt to the social worlds we encounter while growing up. Until recently, most societies have been undergirded by intensive kin-based institutions built around large extended families, clans, cousin marriage, polygamy and many other kinship norms that regulate and tighten social life. These institutions persist in many parts of the world today, especially in rural areas.'
'By contrast, many European populations have been dominated by monogamous nuclear families – a pattern labeled the “European Marriage Pattern” by historians – since at least the end of the Middle Ages.'
'The structure of our family networks plays a central role in explaining global psychological diversity'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20201231-how-the-way-you-think-was-shaped-centuries-ago

What appears to be the first critique of slavery came from Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa in the 4th century.
'Gregory vigorously attacked slavery as an institution. In his homily, he lays out a complex philosophical argument based on the premise that masters and slaves are equal in the eyes of God. This premise was already generally accepted by Christians. Both slaves and masters were understood by Christian intellectuals to have the same human nature. Gregory, however, follows the argument farther than most of his contemporary intellectuals did. If slaves and masters are both equally human, then the practice of one human enslaving another is immoral in the eyes of God.'
“You condemn a person to slavery whose nature is free and independent, and you make laws opposed to God and contrary to His natural law. For you have subjected one who was made precisely to be lord of the earth, and whom the Creator intended to be a ruler, to the yoke of slavery, in resistance to and rejection of His divine precept. … How is it that you disregard the animals which have been subjected to you as slaves under your hand, and that you should act against a free nature, bringing down one who is of the same nature of yourself, to the level of four-footed beasts or inferior creatures … ?”
It is the debates about meaning and texts that is the real legacy of Christianity for this country the continual debate that has fed into our laws.
A hymn I liked at school was 'Once to every man and nation' written an America abolitionist John Russell Lowell
'Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood
For the good or evil'

New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth
They must still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth

Hate to break it to you but there is a Christian resurgence in this country. As I posted above, a couple of my local (Catholic) Churches the pews are filling up. With young men. Dismiss it if you like but it is not going away.

Thats what I'd have imagined, although tbh I've not seen anyone call themselves this in the wild, so may be missing context.

I'm third gen atheist/agnostic, but I'd still acknowledge that being raised and living in a nominally Christian society must have had some impact.

I'll admit not having read De Bello Gallico since school, but I don't take Caesar as an unbiased source either. My main memory of it is that Caesar had an odd habit of referring to himself in the third person, after the manner of Mr. T.

And obviously with non-literate cultures of the past, what we know about them comes from literate cultures, often colonial ones, that encountered them.

The modern pagan scene, neodruidism and Wicca and so forth, is chock full of stuff that sounds ancient but was invented within living memory. I don't necessarily have a problem with that if they get spiritual value out of it, almost all religious traditions are constantly innovating to some degree. What takes me to the fair is when recent inventions seep into folk consciousness and very earnest people insist that they're literal history when they provably aren't. Read Ronald Hutton and you won't go far wrong.

A lot of sophisticated, cultured, religious, literate societies developed caste systems that survive to this day. Christian Europe, not so much, and although aspects of American Jim Crow racism resemble caste attitudes, they are not enshrined in modern law. The church always provided an escape route for individuals who were poor or female or otherwise lesser. It may have deprived them of the right to reproduce as a price of that freedom, but it left a space for art and learning and science.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure, based on Brehon law, that without Christianity, Ireland would have developed on Caste based lines.