4 ms·

Shunning of heretics was designed to centralize power in the church and affiliated groups. Modern social progressives do perform analogous shunnings, yes, but

• haberman 8y ago
  Shunning of heretics was ostensibly done to defend the honor of God. The fact that it increased the power of the people doing the shunning was surely viewed as a means to a noble and right end, just as today.
  • toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Shunning was almost certainly also a matter of not wanting to be tainted by association, which also can find parallels here.
• belorn 8y ago
  > explicit purpose of decentralizing power _away_ from groups who have it If one agree to the belief that race is the significant force behind social economic status then it will seem obvious that the narrative of white privilege as having that effect. Like any logic within a religion, it builds upon faith.
• repolfx 8y ago
  No, shunning is about building the power of the group doing the shunning. Which is why you see universities getting crazier and crazier, as students and academics learn they can obtain power 'for free' by merely virtue signalling: they get what they want, realise they can get more, and at some point the exercise of power becomes the ends justify the means.