Chapter Guide for "Twilight of Atheism"

The people could not pay because it was fairly high. Many people left the church due to this tax demand, and they also were not happy that nobles and priests were exempted from this taxes. The Revolution removed churches tax exemption, seized much of the Church lands and limited religion and the church in education. The revolutionaries went much farther, trying to destroy all the religious art in France, ruined religious books, knocked down and rob all the churches, rape nuns, murder the clergy, dig up graves, desecrate cemeteries. They removed many statues, plates, and other places of worship.

Foster’s primary assertion in the chapter is that certain traits possessed by characters of a text qualify them to be considered as Christ figures. While characters do not have to possess every trait to be considered a representation of Christ, they must show some similarity (129). These similarities may be succinct, such as walking on water, or they may be less obvious, such as bearing scars on the hands or the side (126). This list also includes features such as “very forgiving,” “last seen in the company of thieves,” and “in agony” (126).

Chapter 14 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses how to identify and the significance of Christ figures in literature. According to the book, Christ Figures are prevalent in literature for various reasons including putting emphasis on the sacrifice of the character or deepening the plot with the parallel to Christ. This works because Christ is an important feature in our culture. I believe that literature from dominantly Christian areas will contain many figures resembling Christ simply because the religion is ingrained in the culture. Foster lists many of the qualities that help to indicate the presence of a Christ figure. Some of these include wounds on hand and feet, and struggle in the wilderness, a sacrificing character,

Revolutionaries eliminated the guilt of the bloodshed by making their fight against people that are no longer viewed as human. Dechristianization was one of the first big steps in this. Although freedom of religion is a civil liberty, religion to the Catholic French is so deeply personal and spiritual, it is almost inhumane to remove someone’s spiritual side. In November, 1793, began, and churches were closed by the revolutionary government (Document A). Like mentioned above, the Vendée region fought against dechristianization, but the French went to humiliating extremes. One church official in Auxerre said that government representatives, “took a copper crucifix which was on the altar… [and] carried it mockingly, upside down on a cart, offering it to passers-by to spit on. (Document C). Religious people were not only stripped of their religion but humiliated, too. The greatest discrimination was towards the counterrevolutionaries, who were just trying to fight for their rights like anyone else. These people were aristocracies, priests, farmers, and townspeople, but they were regarded as thieves or rabble (Document C). A local government official sent a letter to the National Convention asking for an example to be set for the counterrevolutionaries. He said, “… six patriots have already fallen victim to this rabble, but at least forty of their numbers were killed (Document D).” The same men who vowed to fight for fraternity found comfort in the fact that more of their enemies were killed, even though they share the same French blood, and still they crave more. In October 1793, the revolutionaries set their example in Lyons, where they destroyed 1600 homes and beheaded twelve people in one day (Document C). Of course these revolutionaries felt no remorse, though, because they viewed the lives of these innocent people less important than theirs. Finally, the greatest

A Christ figure can share attributes with Jesus and be the antagonist of the story. In Thomas C. Foster’s novel How to Read Literature like a Professor, he analyzes what a Christ figure looks like in literature. He argues that a character who shares personality traits and or physical characteristics with Christ is a representation and reflection of Jesus. Similarly, in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, her character Nathan Price believes he is synonymous to Christ while in reality, he is far from perfect. She uses irony to exploit the idea of the Christ figure. The use of irony as seen in Kingsolver’s novel, up-ends Foster’s claims as to what makes a Christ figure by creating a character who assumes he is Christ yet does not reflect Christ’s attributes.

As the revolution started, work became more important to people in their lives than anything else. Many of people who were living in countryside started to move into the urbanized city to get jobs. Because they left their homes, not many people were left to care about the churches. Automatically, because of busy life, religion decreased in importance. Consequently, families became more

The clergy are also beginning to lose their land to the government and the government took over the control on religion from the clergy. The nobility also began to lose their authority. They lose their land and ties to the government. The nobility began to be executed in the second revolution. Throughout the two revolutions, the clergy and nobility lose their authority over the people.

Immortality, the ability to live forever, is a powerful theme addressed throughout history and literature. The Greeks were one of the first to analyze and investigate how one can obtain everlasting life. In Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito and Virgil’s Aeneid, fathers reach immortality by passing on lessons to their offspring, but Aeneas acts as a biological father to his son whereas Socrates is a philosophical father and his sons are his followers. These differences in fatherhood ultimately create different kinds of son figures as Aeneas teaches Ascanius to be a leader more like himself whereas Socrates pushes his sons to be philosophers themselves.

How can we tell if a character in a book is a Christ figure? Harrison Bergeron is an appropriate example. He went through and done things that Christ had done such as being persecuted for his faith, carried a beam of wood on his shoulders, and came to rescue the unqualified world. Harrison was taken away from home and went through series of rough treatment. He was terrorized for his beliefs, as with Jesus when He suffered the same way when He was crucified. In addition, the story read that he wore earphones that dulled his intelligence, weights that were strapped him to decrease his strength, wavy glasses that made him half blind, and a wooden beam on his shoulders to cut his mobility. Coincidentally, Jesus had to carry a wooden cross on

good example. From my chosen work, the Christ was shown as the image of the good

Sir Thomas Huxley coined the term “agnostic” in 1869. Popularly the word agnostic is felt to mean that the nature of god cannot be known but that there is a god. Therefore the agnostic is accepted in the community and he is accepted by the church, unlike those labeled or known as “atheists”. Agnosticism is very closely related to the religious doctrine that the ways of god are incomprehensible, that human reason is deceptive and that man requires a

The was once a time in Russia's history in which righteous living, not wealth, prestige, or prosperity; was what every man strove to obtain. A form of Christianity (whose roots went back to the church of the Apostle's days) prevailed over the country; able to defend Russia from the Roman catholic armies of Germany and Sweden while protecting its own citizens pressed under over two-hundred years of outside dominance. Under that foreign dominance was when the very culture, mindset, schedule, everyday lifestyle, calendar, and organizing of any business revolved around the Church, a Church whose beliefs molded and brought the country together.

“No face as hideous as my face was ever meant for heaven's light. But suddenly an angel has smiled at me And kissed my cheek without a trace of fright. I dare to dream that she might even care for me as I ring these bells tonight, my cold dark tower seems so bright” (HND). The hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, struggles to be accepted by his society for a very long time. He was always an outcast in his society. People saw nothing in him, and failed to value him for his kind heart. He was seen as a monster like creature, who would never encounter love. Jesus Christ, although not seen as hideous, was also rejected by members of his society. Both Jesus and Quasimodo had kindness and love ot offer to the world. Jesus, who claimed he was the

In the turmoil of infamously chaotic Russia in the 1860’s, there began intellectual movements that denied Christ growing within the nation. This had a huge influence on the populace of St. Petersburg and the multitudes of Russian youth. Certain Russians such as Fyodor Dostoevsky were concerned by the lack of faith that was resulting from these movements. The fear was that people were being disconnected from God and that the country would become corrupt. As a result of these fears, Dostoevsky produced his famous work Crime and Punishment and integrated the extremely significant roles of water and color to show his theme that man cannot survive without God.

On November 17, 1792, following the successful storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd, Lenin initiated a new official policy that would lead to the conversion of the masses from a “backwards, heaven-based superstition” to a “progressive, Earth-based, materialistic understanding of life” (Gabel 16). While there were several fundamental differences between the atheistic Bolsheviks and the Orthodox Church, the greatest difference was the question of whether religion answered to a basic human need and was universal, or was merely a product of economic conditions at a certain stage of history and could be disposed of when that stage was over? The Bolsheviks were certain that religion was simply a product of economic conditions and that “rationalism and materialism” would abound (Gabel 16). Considering the fact that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had