In 1563, John Foxe, an English clergyman, wrote a book titled Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. In it, he listed Christian martyrs beginning with Stephen, proceeding with the early persecutions of Christians by Rome, persecution by the Christian Church of dissenters, heretics, and troublemakers, Reformation persecutions, and the burning of about 280 English Protestants at the command of Catholic Queen Mary Tudor, sometimes referred to as Bloody Mary. Foxe died in 1587.
Persecution of Christians by the pagan Romans is somewhat understandable. Their whole way of life and governance was being challenged by the followers of Jesus who was believed to be a new King who had risen from the dead and been transported to Heaven to be in the presence of the one true God, a replacement of all those Roman gods.
What is less understandable is how professing Christians, Catholic and Protestant, could have found it necessary to persecute and kill each other over theological issues after having had access to the Gospels and other Sacred Scriptures for more than a thousand years. It seems they should have known, from the teachings of Jesus, that God was not going to be pleased with such behavior. I guess Christian Education was weak at the time.
It wasn’t just Catholic vs. Protestant. I’m reminded of protesting Anabaptists who rejected infant baptism and rebaptized those who had experienced it. Their punishment for such heresy in Zwingli’s Protestant Zurich, Switzerland, was death by drowning, “The Third Baptism.” (See picture below.)
There is a tendency to excuse those historic sins by saying that times and culture were just different, and that things were complicated by the unfortunate mix of Church and State issues. For example, a current article, The Real Story of Bloody Mary, states that “Three hundred people were burned to death in four years–thus the nickname “Bloody Mary” but goes on to say that her action was “typical in a brutal age.” It makes me think of going to Confession, confessing some sin, and then offering some excuses about how it really wasn’t my fault.
It is interesting to consider how much stronger the Christian Church would be in the 21st Century if it did not bear the burden of those historical sins and if we were not bogged down even today in criticisms of each other.
But surely, we Christians can confess and apologize for past sins rather than make excuses for them and spend our time now discussing theological differences, looking for and expanding common ground, spending more time explaining why we believe rather than just stating what we believe. Such an approach should be more helpful than criticizing and condemning each other.
And I’m wondering if those Protestants killed by Catholics, Catholics killed by Protestants, and Anabaptists killed by Zwingli’s crowd shouldn’t all be recognized and prayed for by the various guilty Churches.
Below is an image I purchased from Alamy.com. It illustrates the 1552 drowning of an Anabaptist, Maria von Monjon, for the sin of rebaptizing. Sin abounds!
