[Zagorin writes]
Of all the great world religions past or present, Christianity has been by far the most intolerant. This statement may come as a shock, but it is nevertheless true. In spite of the fact that Jesus Christ, the Jewish founder of the Christian religion, is shown in the New Testament as a prophet and savior who preached mutual love and nonviolence to his follower, the Christian church was for a great part of its history an extremely intolerant institution. From its inception it was intolerant of other, non-Christian religions, first Greco-Roman polytheism, then Judaism, from which it had to separate itself, and later on Islam. Early in its history, from the time of the apostles, it also became increasingly intolerant of heresy and heretics, those persons who, although worshippers of Christ, dissented from orthodox doctrine by maintaining and disseminating beliefs -- about the nature of Christ, the Trinity, the priesthood, the church, and other matters -- that ecclesiastical authority condemned as false, and incurring the penalty of damnation.
[page 1]
A few years ago the British philosopher A.J. Ayer observed in the essay titled "Sources of Intolerance" that religious intolerance has probably done greater harm than all other forms of intolerance and was also exceptionally hard to explain.
[Ayers declares]
"I do consider it extraordinary that persons who have somehow managed to convince themselves that the course of nature is dependent on the volition of one or more supernatural beings should consequently be impelled not merely to despise and traduce but to torture and murder those who do not share their view. Not only that but those who affirm their faith in the existence of what is nominally the same supernatural being have been as viciously divided among themselves. If any thing, they have displayed even more enthusiasm in reviling, oppressing, torturing, and murdering those who held a different opinion concerning the properties of this being or the details of the ritual which was appropriate for its worship."
[For their own good -- there was a conviction among leaders of Christendom that the persecution was positive and salutary, whether to cleanse the Church, or to purify the non-conformist, or to rescue the heathen]
persecution with a good conscience
What chiefly rendered persecution commendable was a set of doctrines and underlying rationale that explained and justified it. There was, in short, a Christian theory of persecution that long antedated any concept or philosophy of religious toleration and freedom, and without which the Catholic Church, and later Protestant state churches, Christian governments, and religious persons could not have undertaken or approved of the repression of Christian heretics and dissenters. Because this theory was embraced by men of high moral character, it is possible to describe the religious persecution of earlier centuries as persecution with a good conscience. W.H. Lecky, author of the nineteenth-century classic History of Rationalism in Europe (1865) had this fact in mind when he observed that the peculiar evil of persecution was that it took its seat in the realms of duty and conscience and was defended by sentiments of the deepest piety. A similar comment was made by Henry C. Lea. the greatest historian of the medieval and Spanish inquisitions, who pointed out that[Henry Lea:][Back to Zagorin:]
men of the kindliest tempers, the profoundest intelligence, the noblest aspirations, the purest zeal for righteousness, professing a religion founded on love and charity, were ruthless when heresy was concerned and were ready to trample it out at the cost of any suffering.
Among these men, as he noted, were such persons as Saints Dominic, Francis of Assisi, and Bonaventura, Pope Innocent III, and Saint Louis king of France. With all of them it was not desire of gain or lust of blood or pride of opinion or wanton exercise of power, but "sense of duty" that made them unsparing of the heretic; and in this, said Lea, they "represented what was universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century."
Nevertheless
The modern concepts of religious toleration and freedom are Western in origin and the offspring of European civilization. They are almost entirely due (the main exception is the Jewish philosopher Spinoza) to the work of Christian thinkers, mostly unorthodox Protestants, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all of whom were powerfully motivated by their religious beliefs to fight against the intolerance of both the Catholic and Protestant churches.
The lustre of our country - religious freedom, America's sublime contribution to the world.
The poor are rich in faith - frontier populism and the recurring "group insanity" of gospel religion
Christian Intolerance - dangers of a muscular Christianity
Desiderius Erasmus - History should have listened (but didn't)
Noah Feldman helps build a bridge - Secularism and Faith-values oddly need each other!!
| Self-righteousness is always wickedness. It is critical. It is bigoted. It is unChristlike. It is cruel. And surely it has no place in the highest realms of thought. To feel self-righteous one has to feel superior to his fellow men. he has to mentally place himself as a judge over them, and view with condemning attitude their weakness. This accusing busniness is very dangerous. [From spiritual writer Annalee Skarin] |