FIVE
HUNDRED YEARS AGO, Martin Luther was at the
forefront of an attack on a dominant Christian Culture, the Roman Catholic
Church. As most Christians know, Christianity has since splintered into many
subcultures, which often do battle over matters of belief.
Although the contentiousness between
Catholics and non-Catholics has considerably abated in North America and
Europe, there were times in the UK and its large North American colonies (after
4 July 1776, the United States), when Catholics were treated as outsiders—as people
of a foreign religion.
Some features of the acrimonious verbal
and physical battles between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians bear a
similarity to current concerns aimed at people whose religion is suspect.
Catholics
are of course those Christians under the leadership of the Pope.
Non-Catholics are a diverse group consisting of several Orthodox traditions,
Anglicans, Protestants, and a few other groups. In social science research,
various classifications are used. I find in the US that people often think of
Christians as either Protestants or Catholics.
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I’m focusing on the United States
because recent rhetoric in the world’s foremost superpower reminds me of
previous battles between ruling Protestants and minority Catholics. And I wonder
if people with sharp religious differences may one day live peacefully as most
Catholic and non-Catholic Christians do today. Of course, I am mindful of the more recent horrid clashes between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland but that deserves a separate investigation though it is relevant to a broader understanding of religious conflict.
There are probably many ways to
categorize the historic animosity between U S Catholics and Protestants. I’ve
chosen a few based on Haidt’s analyses of moral-political values (See more in Chapter 4, A House Divided).
HARM
AND DANGER FEARS
The recent concerns about unchecked
immigration in Europe and the United States have been leading reasons for political
change in the UK and USA. The attempted immigration ban by President Trump has
been attacked as a thinly veiled attempt at keeping out Muslims because of the high
percentage of Muslims in the countries named in his executive order. I won’t
debate the issue of religion and the order here (see links below for related
stories). My point is that many Americans fear Muslims because of the 911
attacks and the ongoing war against people who claim to be Muslims and often
use the language of their faith in battle
cries.
“Pope Day” in the U S
colonies was celebrated by burning effigies of the Pope on 5th
November when the English remembered the Catholic, Guy Fawkes, who attempted to
blow up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I, considered by some to
be a Catholic sympathizer. That celebration in the US officially ended in 1775 when
George Washington issued an “executive order” banning the event to obtain assistance
from Catholic France to defeat the British forces.
JUSTICE
FEARS
As recent as the 1990s, the Catholic faith
of Justice Clarence Thomas was an issue. In 2010, Coffman in the conservative Christianity
Today magazine asked: “Does it matter that there might soon be no
Protestants on the Supreme Court?” Obviously, it mattered enough to warrant an
essay, which noted only Jews and Catholics were on the court. Ironically, the
current nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is an Episcopalian and former Catholic (Denver Post).
As I note in my book, A House Divided, the research
supports the view that judges take their faith to court.
The U S has come a long way since 1641
where the “papists” were not permitted to hold a public office or even serve on
a jury in Virginia.
AUTHORITY
FEARS
Writers like Samuel F. B. Morse (Morse code
fame) and Lyman
Beecher (famous Beecher family) warned US citizens in the 1830s of Catholic
plots against Protestants brought about through immigrants from Catholic
countries and the Catholic parochial schools. Anti-Catholic violence was
evident in the 1834 burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, MA- the day
after Beecher preached his third anti-Catholic sermon.
Authority fears continued into the 20th
Century. I recall the anti-Catholic rhetoric hurled against Catholic Presidential
Candidate, John F. Kennedy who had to address the issues in a famous speech
given 12 September 1960. Here’s a quote:
“I
believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor
Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on
public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other
ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will
directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its
officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against
one church is treated as an act against all.”
LOYALTY
FEARS
Loyalty fears can overlap with
authority fears as evident in the concerns about President Kennedy’s religion.
The fears may be construed as loyalty to the rules of the church vs. the laws
of the US.
Such fears continue in the form of the Sharia
law followed by Muslim groups. Here’s a 2012 quote from Presidential Candidate,
Newt Gingrich.
“We should
have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the
United States will Sharia [law] be used in any court to apply to any judgment
made about American law…”(Source TIME, 2016).
PURITY
FEARS
Purity concerns are common to many
religions and Christianity is no exception. Purity fears can take on various
dimensions including basic fears of contamination from impure hands and foods
to more abstract notions of impure, unholy, and untouchable people and
doctrines (aka heresies and cults).
According to Massa,
a salacious best seller of 1836, Maria Monk’s, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Monastery in Montreal,
told of a Protestant girl who escaped from a Catholic convent where she was a
victim of sexual abuse.
The recent exposure of sexual abuse by Catholic priests
has fanned suspicion of celibacy and questions of the link between celibacy
and sexual abuse (e.g., Power,
SMH, 2014) despite some research (e.g., Oddie,
CH, 2014; Peralta,
npr, 2011).
Doctrinal heresy is another form of
purity. It is no surprise that various religious groups wish to distance
themselves from others who commit some act considered at the time to be
socially undesirable or worse. In the “Pope Day” festivities mentioned
previously, the Pope was sometimes considered to be The Beast in the Book of Revelation.
REFLECTIONS
I would not be surprised to find people
capable of disputing all of the points I have made. Nevertheless, I think it
reasonable to conclude that Protestants and Christians have had sharp disagreements
in the past 500 years that have led to violence.
People care to distinguish
their tribe from other tribes. Religious people are no exception. If we are not talking about walls around castles and nations, we may be talking about psychosocial walls or boundaries of beliefs that identify members as inside or outside.
Often religious leaders establish boundaries
based on belief or practice-linked belief (e.g., baptism). Although the harsh
rhetoric in the West is often voiced by Christian and Muslim conservatives,
harsh words, suspicion, and discrimination is not limited to fundamentalists.
Moreover, when more salient clashes are less in the news, Christians find
themselves at war against other Christians over issues such as women’s rights,
LGBT rights, capital punishment, and so forth.
My hope is that understanding,
promoting civil discussions, and bringing people of different beliefs and
practices together, can lead to a safer and less contentious society as usually
happens when Catholics and Protestants currently interact without concern for
their religious beliefs.
Links
to related articles I read (see intext links for other sources).
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