Sean O'conaill

Scattering the Proud: Christianity Beyond 2000 Sean O'conaill

In this radically original and optimistic reflection on Christianity, O'Conaill starts from the conviction that the life, ministry and death of Jesus of Nazareth were a deliberate reversal of the human ""heroic"" journey to adulation and influence, which has caused violence, tyranny and injustice in all epochs. He did not identify with, or seek to emulate, the powerful and the influential; He sought out the sinners and the outcasts and taught that every person was of equal worth in the eyes of God. Even since the earliest times, Jesus' followers have been tempted to re-join the ""upward journey"" towards power and influence - a journey that inevitably creates ""pyramids of esteem"" or ""hierarchies of respect"" which glorify individuals and elites at the expense of majorities. The development of the relationship between Christianity and the political establishment, in the fourth century, soon associated Christ himself with coercion and led, in the end, to the schisms between East and West, Protestant and Catholic, and between Christianity and liberal secularism. It is also at the root of the ""silent schism"" within the Catholic Church. The future of Christianity then lies in its willingness to abandon this ""upward journey"" and to return to the essence of the gospel message, not only institutionally but personally in the lives of all Christians.