President Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast that Christianity, like Islam today, has been used to justify violence, mentioning particularly the Crusades and the Inquisition, historical episodes that are always being brought up against Christians. It’s kind of strange, though, for us heirs of the Reformation to be blamed for those particular incidents.Luther opposed the Crusade against the Turks. The Crusades, in fact, were responsible for the invention of indulgences. The church promised that any one who died while fighting the infidels would be spared Purgatory and would go straight to Heaven. (Sound familiar? The Crusades were essentially identical to what the Islamic jihadists are preaching.) The certificate that attested to this release was known as an indulgence, and, later, they would be put up for sale. Luther opposed the Turks when they invaded Europe and urged defensive war against them, but he rejected the Pope’s call for a “crusade” with all of the false theology that went with it.
As for the Inquisition, its targets were Christians! Specifically, Lutherans and Jewish Christians. The latter were Jews who had converted and been baptized, but the church of Rome–as many evangelicals do now–insisted on asking, “are you REALLY a Christian?” and used torture to determine the state of their souls.
Many Lutherans, as well as Calvinists, anabaptists, and others reacting against the church of Rome, were burned at the stake for their “heresies.” The Spanish inquisition was set up specifically to put a stop to the Reformation in Spain, which had indeed made inroads.
I do know of one “Protestant” who was a major persecutor, but, again, his main target was Lutherans. That would be Henry VIII, who carried out his most brutal tortures and burnings AFTER he himself broke from Rome so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. It was Henry–not the Catholics–who arranged for William Tyndale’s execution in the Netherlands for translating the Bible into English. And it was Henry who sent the Lutheran theologian Robert Barnes to the stake.
Luther taught that consciences should be free in matters of faith and never coerced.
I’m sure that Lutherans and Protestants in general have much to answer for, but I’m trying to think of Inquisition-like punishments for heresy carried out by Lutherans. Calvin burned Servetus for rejecting the Trinity. Luther came down hard against the Peasant revolt and the anabaptist revolutionary theology that inspired them, but that was a matter of social disorder that he called on the princes’ armies to put down. Of course, Luther in his dotage said horrible things about the Jews, despite his earlier defense of them in his tract “That Jesus Christ was born a Jew.” He certainly defended Baptized Jews, the target of the Inquisition. And later there was the Thirty Years War, an unusually bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants, with atrocities on both sides. President Obama blamed Christianity for slavery and the Jim Crow laws, but though such practices may have been justified with religious language, it’s hard to see how there was a direct, causal connection to Christianity.
Does anyone know of Protestant “inquisitions”? I am not denying that there might have been some. I’ve found that when accused of a sin, it’s better practice to acknowledge it, rather than to try to justify oneself, so that it might be repented for and forgiven. But guilt by association is not right either.
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