Christian debate on persecution and toleration

This article gives a historical overview of Christian positions concerning religious persecution and toleration. Christian theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas had legitimized religious persecution to various extents and, during the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Christians considered heresy and dissent to be punishable offences. However, Early modern Europe witnessed the turning point in the Christian debate on persecution and toleration. Christian writers like John Milton and John Locke argued for limited religious toleration, and later authors like Thomas Jefferson developed the concept of religious freedom. Christians nowadays generally accept that heresy and dissent are not punishable by a civil authority. Many Christians "look back on the centuries of persecution with a mixture of revulsion and incomprehension."

Historical overview
Early Christianity was a minority Religion in the Roman Empire and the early Christians were themselves persecuted during that time. After Constantine I converted to Christianity, it became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. Already beginning under his reign, Christian heretics were persecuted; The most extreme case (as far as historians know) was the burning of Priscillian and six of his followers at the stake in 383. In the view of many historians, the Constantinian shift turned Christianity from a persecuted into a persecuting religion. Beginning in the late 4th century A.D. also the ancient pagan religions were actively suppressed.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, the further Christianization of Europe was to a large extent peaceful. , although Jews and Muslims were harshly prosecuted, to an extent of forced conversions in Byzantine empire. Encounters between Christians and Pagans were sometimes confrontational, and some Christian kings (Charlemagne, Olaf I of Norway) were known for their violence against pagans. The persecution of Christian heretics resumed in 1022, when fourteen people were burned at Orléans. Around this time Bogomilism and Catharism appeared in Europe; these sects were seen as heretic by the Catholic Church, and the Inquisition was initially established to counter them. Heavily persecuted, these heresies were eradicated by the 14th century. The suppression of the Cathar (or "Albigensian") faith took the form of the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church. Its violence was extreme even by medieval standards. Notable individuals who were executed for heresy in the late Middle Ages are Jerome of Prague, John Badby and Jan Hus. Only the Waldensians, another heretical Christian sect, managed to survive in remote areas in Northern Italy.

Also during the late Middle Ages, the Crusades pitched Christians and Muslims against each other in a war about the possession of Jerusalem, with atrocities from both sides. There were massacres of Muslims and Jews when Jerusalem was taken by Crusaders in 1099. There were also the Northern Crusades, against the remaining pagans in Northern Europe. As a result, the pagan religions in Europe disappeared almost completely. After Grand Duchy of Moscow and later the Tsardom had conquered the Kazan Khanate and Astrakhan Khanate in the 1550s, the government forcibly baptized Muslim Volga Tatars and pagan Chuvash, Mordva and Mari. Mosques were prohibited. This persecution ended only during the reign of Catherine II of Russia. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition also went on to persecute Jews and Muslims. In Spain after the Reconquista, Jews were forced to either convert or be exiled. Many were killed. The persecution of Jews goes back to 12th century Visigothic Spain after the emergence of the blood libel against Jews. Although the Spanish had agreed to allow Muslims the freedom of religion in 1492, this was often ignored. In 1501, Muslims were offered the choice of conversion or exile. In 1556, Arab or Muslim dress was forbidden, and in 1566 Arabic language as a whole was prohibited in Spain. Jews were eventually expelled from England by King Edward I, too.

When Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, Catholicism reacted the same way as it had to the heresies of the late Middle Ages. However, while the Protestant Reformation could be "crushed" in Spain with "a few dozen executions in the 1550s", the same strategy failed in Germany, Northern Europe and in England. France had to suffer through the French Wars of Religion before it again became wholly Catholic. The divide between Catholicism and the new Protestant denominations was deep. Protestants commonly alleged that the catholic Pope was the Antichrist. Conflicts between Christian factions reached their heights in France with the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in Germany and Central Europe with the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and in England with the English Civil War (1641–1651). Following the devastations caused by these wars, the ideas of Religious toleration, Freedom of religion and Religious pluralism slowly gained ground in Europe. The Witch trials in Early Modern Europe, which had reached their height between 1550 and 1650, continued until 1750.

European Colonialism, that was accompanied by Christian evangelism and often by violence, led to the suppression of indigenous religions in the territories conquered or usurped by the Europeans. The Spanish colonization of the Americas largely destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilization. However, Colonialism (and later European Imperialism) as a whole were not motivated by religious zeal; the suppression of the indigenous religions was their side result, not their main purpose. Only partial aspects, like the Goa Inquisition, bear resemblance to the persecutions that occurred on the European continent. By the 18th century, persecutions of unsanctioned beliefs had been reduced in most Europeans countries to religious discrimination, in the form of legal restrictions on those who did not accept the official faith. This often included being barred from higher education, or from participation in the national legislature. In colonized nations, attempts to convert native peoples to Christianity became more encouraging and less forceful. In British India during the Victorian era, Christian converts were given preferential treatment for governmental appointments.

At the present time, most countries in which Christianity is the religion of the majority of the people, are either secular states or they embrace the separation of Church and State in another way. (A list of countries in which Christianity still is the state religion can be found at the article on State religion.) Some recent political conflicts are sometimes considered as religious persecution. Among these, there is the case of the Hue Vesak shootings in Vietnam on May 8, 1963 and the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, most of them Muslim, in Kosovo between 1992 to 1999, along with Bosnian Muslims.

Persecution in the 4th and 5th century A.D.
After he had adopted Christianity following the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan in 313 (together with his co-emperor Licinius). Since 306 there had already had been several edicts that granted Christians religious toleration in parts of the Empire, but the Edict of Milan removed all obstacles to the Christian faith and made Empire officially neutral with regard to religious worship. Constantine's supported the church with his patronage; He had an extraordinary number of large basilicas built for the Christian church, and endowed it with land and other wealth. In doing this, however, he required the Pagans "to foot the bill". According to Christian chroniclers it appeared necessary to Constantine "to teach his subjects to give up their rites (...) and to accustom them to despise their temples and the images contained therein," which led to the closure of pagan temples due to a lack of support, their wealth flowing to the imperial treasure; Constantine I did not need to use force to implement this, although his subjects are said to simply have obeyed him out of fear. Only the chronicler Theophanes has added that temples "were annihilated", but this is considered "not true" by contemporary historians. According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen Constantine desired to obliterate non-Christians but lacking the means he had to be content with robbing their temples towards the end of his reign. . He resorted to derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the "obstinacy" of the pagans, of their "misguided rites and ceremonial", and of their "temples of lying" contrasted with "the splendours of the home of truth".

During the course of his life he progressively became more Christian and turned away from any syncretic tendencies he appeared to favour at times and thus demonstrating, according to his biographers, that "The God of the Christians was indeed a jealous God who tolerated no other gods beside him. The Church could never acknowledge that she stood on the same plane with other religious bodies, she conquered for herself one domain after another".

After the 3-year-reign of Julian the Apostate (ruled 361 to 363), who revived the Roman state paganism for a short time, the later Christian Roman Emperors sanctioned "attacks on pagan worship". Towards the end of the 4th century Theodosius worked to establish Catholicism as the privileged religion in the Roman Empire."Theodosius was not the man to sympathise with the balancing policy of the Edict of Milan. He set himself steadfastly to the work of establishing Catholicism as the privileged religion of the state, of repressing dissident Christians (heretics) and of enacting explicit legal measures to abolish Paganism in all its phases."

Two hundred and fifty years after Constantine was converted and began the long campaign of official temple destruction and outlawing of non-Christian worship Justinian was still engaged in the war of dissent.

The Augustinian consensus
The transformation that happened in the 4th century lies at the heart of the debate between those Christian authors who advocated religious persecution and those who rejected it. Most of all, the advocates of persecution looked to the writings of Augustine of Hippo, the most influential of the Christian Church Fathers. Initially (in the 390s), he had been sceptical about the use of coercion in religious matters. However, he changed his mind after he had witnessed how the Donatists (a schismatic Christian sect) were "brought over to the Catholic unity by fear of imperial edicts." When Augustine had characterized himself in De utilitate credenti (392), he said he was cupidus veri, eager for truth. But in his 93. letter he described himself as quietis avidus, needing rest, and gave as reason the agitating Donatist. From a position that had trusted the power of philosophical argumentation, Augustine had moved to a position that emphasised the authority of the church. Augustine had become convinced of the effectiveness of mild forms of persecution and developed a defence of their use. His authority on this question was undisputed for over a millennium in Western Christianity. Within this Augustinian consensus there was only disagreement about the extent to which Christians should persecute heretics. Augustine advocated fines, imprisonment, banishment and moderate floggings, but, according to Henry Chadwick, "would have been horrified by the burning of heretics." In late Antiquity those burnings appear very rare indeed, the only certain case being the execution of Priscillian and six of his followers in 385. This sentence was roundly condemned by bishops like Ambrose, Augustine's mentor.

The treatment of heretics
With the adoption of Christianity by Constantine I (after Battle of Milvian Bridge, 312), heresy had become a political issue in the late Roman empire. Adherents of unconventional Christians beliefs not covered by the Nicene Creed like Novatianism and Gnosticism were banned from holding meetings, but the Roman emperor intervened especially the conflict between orthodox and Arian Christianity, which resulted in the burning of Arian books.

In contrast to the late antiquity, the execution of heretics was much more easily approved in the late Middle Ages, after the Christianization of Europe was largely completed. The first known case is the burning of fourteen people at Orléans in 1022. In the following centuries groups like the Bogomils, Waldensians, Cathars and Lollards were persecuted throughout Europe. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) codified the theory and practise of persecution. In its third canon, the council declared: "Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, .. to take an oath that they will strive .. to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church."

Saint Thomas Aquinas summed up the standard medieval position, when he declared that that obstinate heretics deserved "not only to be separated from the Church, but also to be eliminated from the world by death"

The Protestant theory of persecution
The Protestant Reformation changed the face of Western Christianity forever, but initially it did nothing to change the Christian endorsement of religious persecution. The Reformers "fully embraced" Augustine's advocacy of coercion in religious matters, and many regarded the death penalty for heresy as legitimate. Furthermore, by presenting a much more powerful threat to catholic unity than the heretic groups of the Middle Ages, the Reformation led to the intensification of persecution under catholic regimes.


 * Martin Luther had written against persecution in the 1520s, and had demonstrated genuine sympathy towards the Jews in his earlier writings, especially in Das Jesus ein geborener Jude sei (That Jesus was born as a Jew) from 1523, but after 1525 his position hardened. In Wider die Sabbather an einen guten Freund (Against the Sabbather to a Good Friend), 1538, he still considered a conversion of the Jews to Christianity as possible, but in 1543 he published On the Jews and their Lies, a "violent anti-semitic tract."
 * John Calvin helped to secure the execution for heresy of Michael Servetus, although he unsuccessfully requested that he should be beheaded instead of being burned at the stake.

Effectively, however, the 16th century Protestant view was less extreme than the mediaeval Catholic position. In England, John Foxe, John Hales, Richard Perrinchief, Herbert Thorndike and Jonas Proast all only saw mild forms of persecution against the English Dissenters as legitimate. But (with the probable exception of John Foxe), this was only a retraction in degree, not a full rejection of religious persecution. There is also the crucial distinction between dissent and heresy to consider. Most dissenters disagreed with the Anglican Church only in secondary matter of worship and ecclesiology, and although this was a considered a serious sin, only a few 17th century Anglican writers thought that this 'crime' deserved the death penalty. The Elizabethan bishop Thomas Bilson was of the opinion that men ought to be "corrected, not murdered", but he did not condemn the Christian Emperors for executing the Manichaeans for "monstrous blasphemies".

The Protestant Churches were more inclined towards ecclesiastical tolerance, although this might simply be the result of different political circumstances. The Lutheran theologian Georgius Calixtus advocated the ecumenical unity of the church. Another Lutheran theologian, Rupertus Meldenius, brought the understanding ecclesiastical tolerance under the phrase: in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas (in necessary things unity; in uncertain things freedom; in everything compassion) in 1626.

The English Protestant 'Call for Toleration'
While the Christian theologians mentioned above advocated religious persecution to various extents, it was also Christians who helped pioneer the concept of religious toleration.

In his book on 'The English Reformation', particularly in the chapter 'The Origins of Religious Toleration', the late A. G. Dickens argued that from the beginning of the Reformation there had "existed in Protestant thought – in Zwingli, Melanchthon and Bucer, as well as among the Anabaptists – a more liberal tradition, which John Frith was perhaps the first echo in England". Condemned for heresy, Frith was burnt at the stake in 1533. In his own mind, he died not because of the denial of the doctrines on purgatory and transubstantiation but "for the principle that a particular doctrine on either point was not a necessary part of a Christian's faith". In other words, there was an important distinction to be made between a genuine article of faith and other matters where a variety of very different conclusions should be tolerated within the Church. This stand against unreasonable and profligate dogmatism meant that Frith, "to a greater extent than any other of our early Protestants", upheld "a certain degree of religious freedom".

Of course, Frith was not alone. John Foxe, for example, "strove hard to save Anabaptists from the fire, and he enunciated a sweeping doctrine of tolerance even towards Catholics, whose doctrines he detested with every fibre of his being".

In the early 17th century, Thomas Helwys was principal formulator of that distinctively Baptist request: that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have a freedom of religious conscience. Helwys said, the King "is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for then and to set spiritual Lords over them". King James I had Helwys thrown in Newgate prison, where he had died by 1616 at about the age of forty.

By the time of the English Revolution Helwys’ stance on religious toleration was more commonplace. However, whilst accepting their zeal in desiring a ‘godly society’, some contemporary historians doubt whether the English Puritans during the English Revolution were as committed to religious liberty and pluralism as traditional histories have suggested. However, historian John Coffey's recent work has emphasised the contribution of a minority of radical Protestants who steadfastly sought toleration for so called Heresy, Blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even Atheism. This minority included the Seekers, as well as the General Baptists and the Levellers. Their collective witness demanded the church to be an entirely voluntary, non-coercive community able to evangelise in a pluralistic society governed by a purely civil state. Such a demand was in sharp contrast to the ambitions of the magisterial Protestantism of the Calvinist majority.

In 1644 the "Augustinian consensus concerning persecution was irreparably fractured." This year can be identified quite exactly, because 1644 saw the publication of John Milton's Areopagitica, William Walwyn's The Compassionate Samaritane, Henry Robinson's Liberty of Conscience and Roger William's The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. These authors were Puritans or had dissented from the Church of England, and their radical Protestantism led them to condemn religious persecution, which they saw as a popish corruption of primitive Christianity. Other non-Anglican writers advocating toleration were Richard Overton, John Wildman and John Goodwin, the Baptists Samuel Richardson and Thomas Collier and the Quakers Samuel Fisher and William Penn. Anglicans who argued against persecution were: John Locke, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, James Harrington, Jeremy Taylor, Henry More, John Tillotson and Gilbert Burnet.

All of these considered themselves Christians or were actual churchmen. John Milton and John Locke are the predecessors of modern liberalism. Although Milton was a Puritan and Locke an Anglican, Areopagitica and A Letter concerning Toleration are canonical liberal texts. Only from the 1690s onwards the philosophy of Deism emerged, and with it a third group that advocated religious toleration, but, unlike the radical Protestants and the Anglicans, also rejected biblical authority; this group prominently includes Voltaire, Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Thomas Jefferson and the English-Irish philosopher John Toland. When Toland published the writings of Milton, Edmund Ludlow and Algernon Sidney, he tried to downplay the Puritan divinity in these works.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, issued the Patent of Toleration in 1781.

Developments in England
Following the debates that started in the 1640s the Church of England was the first Christian church to grant adherents of other Christian denominations freedom of worship, with the Act of Toleration 1689, which nevertheless still retained some forms of religious discrimination and did not include toleration for Catholics. At present, only individuals who are members of the Church of England at the time of the succession may become the British monarch.

Developments in the United States
The Puritan-Whig tradition of toleration did have their greatest effect not in England, but in the Thirteen Colonies that would later form the United States. Notable tolerationists were directly involved in the founding of the colonies. Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island, "a haven for persecuted minorities," John Locke drafted the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina and William Penn drew up the constitution of Pennsylvania. Voltaire pointed the readers of his Traité sur la Tolérance (1763) specifically to the examples of Carolina and Pennsylvania. People like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams stood self-consciously in the tradition of Milton, Sidney and Locke, and extended their tolerationism further to also apply to Catholics and atheists. Coffey considers it possible to argue, "that the tolerationist tradition of seventeenth-century England reached its fulfilment in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the First Amendment to the American Constitution."

That the North American colonies and later the United States provided a refuge for religious minorities from Europe partly explains the higher degree of religiosity in the contemporary United States and the "unusual sectarian quality of U.S. Protestantism". Compared to Europe, "the United States has a superabundance of denominations and sects (...) as well as a far higher ratio of churchgoers." Which importance the Christian religion should have in the United States, with its strong strong concept of Separation of church and state, is a contentious question. For Kevin Phillips, who wrote a book with the polemical title American Theocracy, "few questions will be more important to the twenty-first-century United States than whether renascent religion and its accompanying hubris will be carried on the nation's books as an asset or as a liability."

According to a 2008 survey, 65% of US-American Christians belief that many religions can lead to eternal life. 52% of US-American Christians think that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life.

Modern Roman Catholic policy
On the seventh of December 1965 The Catholic Church as part of the Vatican II council issued the decree "Dignitatis Humanae" that dealt with the rights of the person and communities to social and civil liberty in religious matters. It states: "2. The Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. Freedom of this kind means that all men should be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that, within due limits, nobody is forced to act against his convictions in religious matters in private or public, alone or in associations with others. The Vatican Council further declares that the right of religious freedom is based on the very word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom must be given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civic right...but if it [the civil authority] presumes to control or restrict religious activity it must be said to have exceeded the limits of its power...Therefore, provided the just requirements of public order are not violated, these groups [i.e. religious communities] have a right to immunity so that they may organize their own lives according to their religious principles...From this it follows that it is wrong for a public authority to compel its citizens by force or fear or any other means to profess or repudiate any religion or to prevent anyone from joining or leaving a religious body. There is even more serious transgression of God's will and of the sacred rights of the individual person and the family of nations when force is applied to wipe out or repress religion either throughout the whole world or in a single region or in a particular community".

On 12 March 2000 Pope John Paul II prayed for forgiveness because "Christians have often denied the Gospel; yielding to a mentality of power, they have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions"

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the present Pope Benedict XVI) wrote "The quality of exemplarity which the honest admission of past faults can exert on attitudes within the Church and civil society should also be noted, for it gives rise to a renewed obedience to the Truth and to respect for the dignity and the rights of others, most especially, of the very weak. In this sense, the numerous requests for forgiveness formulated by John Paul II constitute an example that draws attention to something good and stimulates the imitation of it, recalling individuals and groups of people to an honest and fruitful examination of conscience with a view to reconciliation"

Biblical exegesis
Christian theology derives its sources from the teachings and actions of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament and several other sources depending on the Christian denomination. This makes the Bible, especially the canonical Gospels, the primary source in order to classify persecution by Christians as either religiously motivated persecution or ethnic persecution. Some churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church, give weight to oral tradition.

The Old Testament has been the main source for Christian theologians advocating religious persecution. An example of this would be John Jewel. In defending the demand for religious uniformity by Elizabeth I of England, he declared: "Queen Elizabeth doth as did Moses, Josua, David, Salomon, Josias, Jesophat, ..."

Tolerance in general in the Bible
Core issues include the interpretation of Jesus' teachings, reconciliation of acts of destruction and death between the Israelites and others with Biblical teachings, and to what extent the Bible's teachings are a source of authority to the Christian.

The Bible and tolerance of other religions
Whether the Bible preaches tolerance or not towards practitioners of other religions, and to what degree this might entail, may involve examination of passages such as those that appear to show God commanding destruction and death of unbelievers - and whether this can or cannot be reconciled with Jesus' teachings - as well as passages on Christian eschatology and dealings with Jesus and the early Christians with Jews. Debate about attitudes to proselytizing may involve reference to passages such as the parable of the banquet.

The Bible and tolerance of Jews
What the Bible has to say about the tolerance and persecution of Jews may involve the question of to what extent Christians are bound by the Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament as well as the culpability or lack thereof of Jews in the death of Jesus. Proponents of the Bible as a document promoting tolerance of Jews look to what shared teachings Jews and Christians might have. Opponents of the idea that the Bible teaches tolerance of Jews consider Jesus' contentions with the Pharisees and Jewish leaders, what part Jews may have played in the crucifixion of Jesus (such as, which quotes a Jewish mob crying, shortly before the Crucifixion, "His blood be on us and on our children", taken by some to refer to all Jews), and general differences that there may be between Judaism and Christianity.

Jesus and tolerance
Jesus' teachings about tolerance in the Bible seem to revolve around his attitude to violence and violent intolerance (such as what, and ( mean) what loving one's neighbour constitutes, whether actions of God the Father are reconcilable with Jesus' teachings, and his general interactions with people in the Gospels.  Proponents of Jesus' message in the Bible as one of tolerance look to benevolent messages he may have taught in the Gospels.  Critics of Jesus as tolerant might look at tensions that may have existed between Jesus and others.

Paul of Tarsus and tolerance
Paul's teachings about tolerance might involve topics such as what his teachings about women, Jews and attitudes to other doctrines (such as in what and ) might mean. The issue of the authorship of the Pauline epistles may play a role as well.

The Bible and tolerance of homosexuals
The issue of tolerance of homosexuals and homosexuality, with reference to the Bible, touches on topics such as which passages refer to homosexuality, what components of the Mosaic civil law such as mean for homosexuals and homosexuality now and then, and to what degree homosexual love is similar or different to the command to love one's neighbour. Proponents of the idea that the Bible promotes tolerance of homosexuals and homosexuality charge that Christian love and homosexual love can be reconciled, and that homosexuality is either not present or is not condemned by the Bible. Opponents of this view consider parts of the Bible, such as the aforementioned Leviticus 20:13 and the writings of Paul as clear condemnations of homosexuality, and see irreconcilable differences between homosexual love and Christian love.

The Bible and tolerance of witches and witchcraft
This issue may touch on the identity of the crime in verses such as and what these, together with the teachings of Jesus and others, might mean for practitioners of Wicca, historical figures perceived as witches, and similar.

Literature

 * John Coffey (2000), Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689, Studies in Modern History, Pearson Education
 * Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing The Roman Empire A.D.100-400, Yale University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-300-03642-6
 * Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eight Centuries", Yale University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-300-07148-5