Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2011, Page 12

What do you think ofpreachers like Rick Warren who encourage others to preach
their sermons?
I think Charlemagne would be thrilled for all of us to preach Rick Warren’s
sermons. Emperor Charlemagne. Because that was his project: to get
everyone in the empire to preach the same sermon at the same time, so
that he could control what the people heard. You know, Charlemagne was
a good old boy, in the best sense of the phrase. He was hearty, and he was
earnest, and he was a great warrior and a patriot. He really wanted to bring
peace to that tortured collection of fiefdoms that we now know as Europe.
So even though he was as brilliant and imposing in battle as Mel Gibson
in a kilt, he knew that emperors do not survive by military force alone.
There were other forces, equally as powerful, that an emperor could use to
his advantage. One was education. Another was religion. Applied together,
you could create a Holy Roman Empire, if you wanted - a Reich to end all
Reichs: one language, one religion, one culture. That was the idea, anyway.
So Charlemagne called together the best minds of his day, and he told them
his vision, and together they crafted a plan.
The first thing they did was to educate the monarch himself: not a lot, but
some. Charlemagne was a realist: does a seven-foot-tall emperor who rules
most of the known world really need a Ph.D. to get more respect? Probably
not. But a modicum of education — learning how to read, for example; well,
sure; yeah; why not? He hired Alcuin of York to be his teacher, and after a few
years, when Charlemagne considered himself educated enough, they turned
their attention to the rest of the empire: schools, churches, literacy for the
common folk. Soon it became clear that the most efficient way to educate
the masses wasn’t to give them a little book learning and be done with it.
The most efficient thing was to make them go to church week after week and
listen to sermons! - the right sermons, that is. Sermons that were especially
geared to new converts, that would teach them moral values, and civic duty,
and basic Christian precepts. This was important since Charlemagne was a
zealous missionary, and usually gave his conquered subjects a choice between
(1) death or (2) baptism. So he figured the most efficient way to build
Christendom was to build a better sermon, and order the priests to preach
it. Then you knew exactly what your citizens were getting.
It was a massive project, and it required massive legislation. Most priests
at that time were not highly educated, and they weren’t used to preaching
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