Zachary Damasco Change Over Time

Change over time essay By: Zachary Damasco

With the discovery of America in 1492, along with help from the Columbian exchange, Christianity was able to expand to new places. It expanded to North and South America, as well as diffuse it’s religion into new cultures while remaining dominant in Europe. It even helped contribute to new hybrid religions such as a widespread new American beliefs that infused traditional Native American beliefs with Christianity. An example being how Native Americans kept their traditional rituals but incorporated new Christian relics such as the crucifix. Buddhism was largely popular in South-East and Central Asia, where it remained one of the staple religions
While the 1450’s to the 1750’s are most notable for the changes that occurred to Christianity and Buddhism, the numerous continuities that remained from the previous time period all the way through 1750 give us a great idea of how origins remained unscathed. Christianity had been the staple religion of Europe from the early times, nearly a thousand years back after it replaced Paganism, and remained unchanged, because of the Christian stronghold of all of Europe. The pope was an incredibly powerful figure and even had the power to grant land rights to countries. Since countries such as Spain and Portugal wanted to keep up a good reputation with the church, being Christian allowed the elites to rule more smoothly, and their acceptance of Christianity trickled down to the lower classes beneath them for the same reasons. Also, Christianity was so against other adopting religions that if you were of another religion, you were for the most part shunned and neglected from society. For example, Islamic people were despised by Christians, for a few reasons, one being that Christians and Muslims have notoriously fought for hundreds of years (crusades) and already had a bad reputation, but then when the Ottoman empire gained control of the path from Europe to Asia, it
The most important change had to be that the spread of Buddhism was stagnating. Prior to its stagnation, it was converting on a regular basis and reached many millions of people, however, there was a point where regions began to just stay with their religions, because of the perks that came to being of that religion. In Islamic lands, you had to pay a non-islamic tax, and in Europe, forget about being anything but Christian, and really the only places Buddhism could have an impact was where it already was. This is why Buddhism remained only in Central and South-East Asia and failed to spread any further. It did though change the people and faith of the areas it was dominant. In Japan, the traditional Samurai’s who were Shinto (and became Bushido after Buddhism’s addition), adopted aspects of Buddhism in order to better serve their home life. It allowed the Shinto believers and warriors to reach enlightenment (Nirvana-Nevermind, great album). This was great for them, because it, in their eyes, allowed them to understand themselves, their enemy, their surroundings, and all aspects, giving them the edge in battle. So Japan’s warrior mindset allowed for China’s Buddhist ideal to spread, because it benefited the mentality of the