The Light and the Glory

If any man hears my words, and believes not, I judge him not.1 Our Master’s declaration almost two thousand years ago established for all time how those who believe in Him should treat those who don’t believe. He made it clear that the judgment for unbelievers who rejected Him and His words would come “at the last day.”2 He also established a limit to the church’s authority by confirming that belief in and obedience to the gospel were confined to individual choice. They were never to be imposed upon someone else by any means of force or coercion whatsoever.

When our Master taught and put into practice beliefs that were contrary to the traditions of the elders of Israel, He was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Israel. The chief priests and scribes charged Him with proclaiming allegiance to a king other than Caesar. When Pilate found no fault with Him, they demanded His crucifixion with venomous rage. This pattern of violence and bloodshed has been the result every time a religious establishment has sought the power of the state to enforce adherence to its beliefs and practices.

The merger of church and state was made official during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 321 A.D. when he “established” Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. This set in motion an unholy alliance between the church and the state, an adulterous relationship which has continued on through history and marches prophetically toward the consummation of the age.3 Once Rome declared Christianity to be its state religion, the Roman church was instantly clothed with civil power and began to wage war against all those who disagreed in matters of conscience and belief.

The Error of Reform

For over a thousand years the corruption and atrocities of the Roman Catholic church continued uninterrupted. Many in the clergy were notoriously immoral, maintaining mistresses or young boys, lived in luxury, and delved into political intrigue and treachery; papal authority was used to coerce kings and princes; church positions were sold to the highest bidder; forgiveness of sins and release of relatives in purgatory were granted to those who contributed large sums to the church; supposed relics of the cross, Jesus’ clothes, and beard were bought and sold; heretics were tortured and executed, including the mass slaughter of dissenting religious groups.

Even though Martin Luther and others like him eventually rose up in protest, their hoped-for reforms were unable to purify the church, much less disentangle her from the political machine. By compromise and accommodation to the state, Martin Luther deftly maintained his political influence for the sake of establishing his brand of Christianity. His example paved the way for other religious movements to become established state churches, continuing in the Constantinian pattern. Thus the Reformers all ironically committed the same error as the Catholics had before them. As history so tragically reveals, the leaders of the Reformation quickly joined blood-stained hands with their Catholic opponents in persecuting anyone who differed with their doctrines.

Innocent Blood

The Reformation may have begun as a struggle of men’s souls for the freedom to worship God as each saw fit (guided, in Martin Luther’s words, by “the Bible, and the Bible only”), but the Reformers soon proved that they desired freedom for their way of thinking only, which is no freedom at all. In fact, they added new bonds and chains to mankind, instead of breaking asunder the ones that already existed.

Few Reformers, however, realized that they were imitating the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church in their bloody persecution of religious dissidents. John Calvin, for example, showed that his roots were sunk deep in Roman Catholic soil by employing the same means as they had to persuade the reluctant: torture and death. By having Michael Servetus burned at the stake for his beliefs, Calvin indelibly etched on history his contempt for the conscience of others. In support of his practices, he wrote, “Godly princes may lawfully issue edicts for compelling obstinate and rebellious persons to worship the true God and to maintain the unity of the faith.”4

Martin Luther, in his younger days, urged that the Christian law of love be applied to the Jews in an effort to win them (see The Legacy of Martin Luther, page 30). He also scorned the use of force to change anyone’s beliefs. His own words stated clearly why persecution should be repugnant to any man of good conscience, no matter how sure he was of the rightness of his beliefs:

The mass is a bad thing; God is opposed to it; it ought to be abolished; ... But let no one be torn from it by force. We must leave the matter in God’s hands ... And why so? Because I do not hold men’s hearts in my hand as the potter holds the clay. We have the right to speak; but have not the right to act ... Were I to employ force, what should I gain? — Grimace, formality, aping, human ordinances, and hypocrisy ... But there would be no sincerity of heart, nor faith, nor charity. Where these three are wanting, all is wanting, and I would not give a straw for such a result.5

Turning radically from this gracious “soul liberty” he once championed, Luther wrote of the Anabaptists in 1530, just as He would later write of the Jews, “Since they are not only blasphemous, but also seditious men, let the sword exercise its rights over them, for this is the will of God.”6 Other great Reformers like Zwingli in Switzerland and Melanchthon in Germany also supported this view in their words and writings, calling for the death sentence for Anabaptists. The Reformation was drenched in blood, a fact well attested to in history, but curiously unacknowledged by Christians today.