Shinto And Christianity: The Impact Of Progressive Ideas

Introduction Both Shinto and Christianity are ancient religions that have held a place of primacy in the East and West respectively—until recent years. Christianity is essentially the religion by which the Western calendar was dated, with dates divided between AD (anno domini—Latin for “year of Our Lord) and BC (before Christ)—the birth of Christ serving as the year 1 mark. With the West’s move away from Christianity towards secularism and progressive ideals, AD and BC have been replaced by CE and BCE—common era and before the common era, respectively. In Japan, Shinto has also been marginalized in recent years as a result of progressivism in the East. Shinto dates from the 8th century officially (but essentially existed in Japan from

The freedom to worship according to one’s faith is important both to Shinto and to Christianity. In the U.S., public schools used to allow prayer and used to post the Ten Commandments in the classrooms in acknowledgement of the most common religion of the U.S.—Christianity. Likewise, in Japan, Shinto was the official religion of the state for centuries and was acknowledged and supported as sacred by the Emperor. However, when progressive ideas took hold all around the world in the 20th century, religion began to be marginalized and set aside in favor of the progressive ideas that were favored by a new wave of leaders who felt that religion should be a private matter and that the state and religion should not be integrated. Instead, progressive ideas related to social justice and social control were implemented. For example, in Japan, Shinto was no longer accepted as the official state religion (which coincided with the Emperor stepping down and Japan basically becoming subservient to the U.S.) (Stone and Kuznick). Likewise, in the U.S., the Ten Commandments began to be taken out of schools and the suppression of religion and creationism (as taught by the Christian churches) began to gain steam, especially following the Scopes trial in 1925 in which the Christian notion of creation and the atheistic notion of evolution were pitted against one another in a tiny courtroom in Tennessee (“Monkey Trial