Introduction

Thanks to the irruption of Christianity within the history of the world, the question of Church and State will not go away nor should we expect the question to disappear even if the "Enlightenment" project finally succeeds, and Christianity is suppressed along with all other religions by the agencies of a universal Nanny State. For while such a State will always be nominally atheist – the one common feature of Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia – history is always written in terms of the State. And as the hundred million starved and butchered victims of strict secularism discovered, a parody of the claim to divine authority knocks the hat off any bishop, sultan, or king.

Especially today, when the edicts of "political correctness" must be met and managed in the public square, it is incumbent upon us to know the history and understand the principles animating this explicitly Christian distinction between Church and State. We must grasp that, where "Church" is extinguished, the State necessarily assumes a quasi-divine authority and wins a monopoly on virtue as well as force. However, throughout history, the Church has decided to marry the State and the consequences of this marriage has led to millions of deaths through war, inhumane atrocities of slavery, the oppression of women, as well as the moral corruption of the Church. This article is meant to demonstrate how the Church has been corrupted and exploited throughout history by the State.

1. The Church and War
2. The Church and Slavery
3. The Religious Right in America
4. The Religious Left in America

The Church and War

Some of the worst wars in the history of the world were largely caused by Christian strife or justified by Church leadership. These may be holy wars between Christians and other faiths (Crusades) or Protestants versus Catholics (French Wars of Religion).

The Crusades

The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character which occurred in the years 1095–1291, usually sanctioned by the Pope in the name of Christendom. The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred "Holy Land" from Muslim rule and were launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuq dynasty into Anatolia.

The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through the 16th century in territories outside the Levant, usually against pagans, those considered by the Catholic Church to be heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons. Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rum during the Fifth Crusade. The traditional numbering scheme for the Crusades includes the nine major expeditions to the Holy Land during the 11th to 13th centuries. Other unnumbered "crusades" continued into the 16th century, lasting until the political and religious climate of Europe was significantly changed during the Renaissance and Reformation.

The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions (such as the Fourth Crusade) were diverted from their original aim and resulted in the sack of a Christian city, the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Church, establishing the precedent that rulers other than the Pope could initiate a crusade.

The origins of the crusades lie in developments in Western Europe earlier in the Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the Byzantine Empire in the east caused by a new wave of Turkish Muslim attacks. The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in the late 9th century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings, Slavs, and Magyars, had produced a large class of armed warriors whose energies were misplaced fighting one another and terrorizing the local populace. The Church tried to stem this violence with the Peace and Truce of God movements, which was somewhat successful, but trained warriors always sought an outlet for their violence, and opportunities for territorial expansion were becoming less attractive for large segments of the nobility. One exception was the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian knights and some mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Islamic Moors, who had attacked and successfully overrun most of the Iberian Peninsula over the preceding two centuries.

In 1063, Pope Alexander II gave papal blessing to Iberian Christians in their wars against the Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the vexillum sancti Petri) and an indulgence to those who were killed in battle. Pleas from the Byzantine Emperors, now threatened by the Seljuks, thus fell on ready ears. These occurred in 1074, from Emperor Michael VII to Pope Gregory VII and in 1095, from Emperor Alexius I Comnenus to Pope Urban II. The Crusades were, in part, an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public. A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a "soldier of the Church". This was partly because of the Investiture Controversy, which had started around 1075 and was still on-going during the First Crusade. As both sides of the Investiture Controversy tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs. This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating Just War in order to retake the Holy Land—which included Jerusalem (where the death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus took place according to Christian theology) and Antioch (the first Christian city)—from the Muslims. Further, the remission of sin was a driving factor. This provided any god-fearing men, who had committed sin, as an irresistible way out of eternal damnation in hell. It was a hotly debated issue throughout the crusades as what exactly "remission of sin" meant. Most believed that by retaking Jerusalem they would go straight to heaven after death. However, much controversy goes to what exactly was promised by the popes of the time. One theory was that you had to die fighting for Jerusalem for the remission to apply. This is closer to what pope Urban II said in his speeches. This meant that if the crusaders were successful, and retook Jerusalem, the survivors would not be given remission. Another theory was that if you reached Jerusalem, you would be relieved of the sins you had committed before the crusade. Therefore you could still be sentenced to hell for sins committed after the crusades.

We see a recurring theme in the Crusades: in order to advance a political agenda, individuals will use anything to inspire the hearts of men. Therefore, using a false and heretical argument for salvation, millions of lives were lost, under the guise of Christ.

The French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion (1562 to 1598) were a series of conflicts fought between Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants) from the middle of the sixteenth century to the Edict of Nantes in 1598, including civil infighting as well as military operations. In addition to the religious elements, they involved a struggle for influence over the ruling of the country between the powerful House of Guise (Lorraine) and the Catholic League, on the one hand, and the House of Bourbon on the other hand.

Lutheranism was introduced in France after about 1520. Initially, King Francis I was tolerant of religious reformers, but after the Affair of the Placards in 1534, he began to view Protestants as a threat and persecuted them severely. One French Protestant, John Calvin, found refuge in Geneva, where he came to hold great influence on the reform movement. During the reign of Henry II (1547 - 1559), Calvinism gained numerous converts in France. In 1559, delegates from 66 Protestant churches in France met at Paris in a national synod which drew up a confession of faith and a book of discipline. Thus was organized the first national Protestant church of France. Its members were thereafter commonly known as Huguenots.

In 1560, Catherine de Medici became regent for her young son Charles IX. Her inexperience and lack of financial support created a "political vacuum" and Catherine felt that she had to steer the throne carefully between the powerful and conflicting interests that surrounded it. Although she was a sincere Roman Catholic, she was prepared to deal favourably with the Huguenot House of Bourbon in order to have a counterweight against the overmighty House of Guise. She nominated a moderate chancellor, Michel de l'Hôpital, who urged a number of measures providing for toleration of the Huguenots. She therefore was led to support religious toleration in the shape of the Edict of Saint-Germain (1562), which allowed the Huguenots to worship publicly outside of towns and privately in towns. On March 1, however, a Guise-led faction attacked a Huguenot service at Wassy-sur-Blaise in Champagne massacring the innocent worshippers there. The Edict was revoked, under pressure from the Guise faction. This provoked the First War. The Bourbons, led by Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, organised a kind of protectorate over the Protestant churches and began to garrison strategic towns along the Loire. Here, at Battle of Dreux and at Orléans, there were the first major engagements; at Dreux, Condé was captured by the Guises and Montmorency, the government general, by the Bourbons. In February 1563, at Orléans, Francis, Duke of Guise was assassinated, and Catherine's fears that the war might drag on led her to negotiate a truce and the Edict of Amboise (1563).

This was generally regarded as unsatisfactory by all concerned, the Catholics in particular being uneasy about what they regarded as unwise concessions to the heretics. The political temperature of the surrounding lands was rising, as unrest grew in the Netherlands. The Huguenots became suspicious of Spanish intentions when the latter reinforced their strategic corridor from Italy north along the Rhine and made an unsuccessful attempt at taking control of the king. This provoked a further outburst of hostilities (the Second War) which ended in another unsatisfactory truce, the Peace of Longjumeau (March 1568). In September of that year, war again broke out (the Third War). Catherine and Charles decided to throw in their lot with the Guises. Religious toleration was once more at an end, and the Huguenot army, under the command of Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé and aided by forces from south-eastern France led by Paul de Mouvans and a contingent of fellow Protestant militias from Germany — including 14,000 mercenary reiters led first by the Duke of Zweibrücken, who was killed in combat and then succeeded by the Count of Mansfeld — and from the Netherlands, led by William of Orange and his brothers Louis and Henry, and co-financed by Elizabeth of England fought the Catholics, who were led by the Duke d'Anjou (future Henry III) and assisted by troops from Spain, the Pope and the Duke of Tuscany.

The Protestant army laid siege to several cities in the Poitou and Saintonge regions (to protect La Rochelle), and then Angoulême and Cognac. At the Battle of Jarnac (16 March 1569), the Prince de Condé was killed, forcing Admiral de Coligny to take command of the Protestants. The Battle of La Roche-l'Abeille was a slight victory for the Protestants, but they were unable to take Poitiers and they suffered a defeat at the Battle of Moncontour (October 30, 1569). Coligny and his troops retreated to the south-west and regrouped with Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, and in spring of 1570 they pillaged Toulouse, cut a path through the south of France and went up the Rhone valley up to La Charité-sur-Loire. The staggering royal debt and Charles IX's desire to seek a peaceful solution led to the Peace of Saint-Germain (5 August 1570), which once more allowed some religious toleration of the Huguenots.

Once again, this war had nothing to do with Christian persecution, but this was nothing more than a political premise under Christ. However, the consequences of this war had devastating effect in France, in particular on the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Despite Peace of Saint-Germain, massacres of Huguenots at the hands of Catholic mobs continued in 1571, in cities such as Rouen, Orange and Paris. Matters became complicated thereafter as Charles IX warmed to the Huguenot leaders — especially the Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny — while Charles' mother became suspicious and eventually alarmed. When it became clear that the king was bent on a full-scale alliance with England and the Dutch rebels, Catherine plotted the assassination of Coligny.

Coligny along with many other senior Huguenots came to Paris for the wedding of Marguerite de Valois to Henry of Navarre on August 28. An assassin made a failed attempt on Coligny's life, shooting him in the street from a window and causing the loss of a finger on his right hand and a broken left arm. Catherine and her supporters believed the Huguenots would react violently, so they decided, with the approval of Henry, to make a preemptive strike by massacring all of the Huguenot leadership in the city. This got out of control and became a full-scale massacre of all Huguenot men, women and children. Over the next few weeks it spread to cities across France. This event became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. On the night of August 23, perhaps 2,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris and, in the days that followed, thousands more in the provinces. Both Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII declared themselves pleased with the outcome, which was naturally viewed with horror by their religious opponents throughout Europe. In France, it solidified Huguenot opposition to the crown. I'm amazed at the amount of lives that were lost based on manipulating Christians in France.

Events like these in Europe have contributed to the lack of Christian presence currently in Europe.

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European continental powers. Although it was from the outset a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, the rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty and other powers was also a central motive, as shown by the fact that Catholic France even supported the Protestant side, increasing France-Habsburg rivalry. The impact of the Thirty Years' War and related episodes of famine and disease was devastating. The war may have lasted for 30 years, but the conflicts that triggered it continued unresolved for a much longer time. The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia.

It is fair to say, however, that this war was as much about politics as it was about religion. Germany, which was called the Holy Roman Empire and extended from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, was not a unified state, but rather a loose collection of a huge number of autonomous city-states or province-states—three hundred and sixty autonomous states to be exact. Each was a more or less sovereign state that levied taxes and tariffs, had its own armies, made its own money, and even enforced its own borders. Religious differences fueled the fires of the political and economic rivalries between these separate states. About half the states were predominantly Protestant while the other half were predominately Catholic. The Treaty of Augsburg recognized Lutheranism, but it did not recognize Calvinism. However, Calvinism made great strides throughout these territories in the latter half of the sixteenth century. In 1559 Frederick III became the Elector of the Palatinate (north of Bavaria) and converted to Calvinism. This new Calvinist state would become a force to reckon with when it allied with England, the Netherlands, and France against the Spanish in 1609.

To the south of the Palatinate, Bavaria was unwaveringly Catholic with a powerful Jesuit presence. Just as the Palatinate was fanatical about the spread of Calvinism and Protestantism, so Bavaria was fanatical about the spread of Catholicism and the Counter-Reformation. When Frederick IV, Elector of the Palatine, formed a defensive league with England, France, and the Netherlands in 1609, Maximillian, Duke of Bavaria, formed a Catholic League. In 1618, the relationship between these two regions erupted into war; this war would outdo all the other previous religious wars in terms of extent and destructiveness. The Thirty Years War was, perhaps, the first World War fought in Europe, for nearly every state in Europe became involved in the war in some way or another. The sheer amount of casualties and human destruction made this war the most calamitious and disastrous war of European history before the nineteenth century.

After thirty years of untiring bloodshed, the war came to an end with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Treaty was not really an innovation; it simply reaffirmed the Treaty of Augsburg and allowed each state within the Holy Roman Empire to decide its own religion. The only important innovation of the treaty was the recognition of Calvinism.

Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal started in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control. The new body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II. The Inquisition, as an ecclesiastical tribunal, had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians, some of who also practised other forms of faith and at the time were considered heretics according to the Catholic Church and recently formed kingdoms at the time. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts.

An inquisition was created through papal bull Ad Abolendam, issued at the end of the 12th century by Pope Lucius III as a way to combat the Albigensian heresy in southern France. There were a huge number of tribunals of the Papal Inquisition in various European kingdoms during the Middle Ages. In the Kingdom of Aragon, a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition was established by the statute of Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX, in 1232, during the era of the Albigensian heresy. Its principal representative was Raimundo de Peñafort. With time, its importance was diluted, and, by the middle of the 15th century, it was almost forgotten although still there according to the law.There was never a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition in Castile. Members of the episcopate were charged with surveillance of the faithful and punishment of transgressors. During Middle Ages, in Castile, little attention was paid to heresy.

The Spanish Inquisition was created by a multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors (Muslims). Much of the Iberian Peninsula was dominated by Moors following their invasion of the peninsula in 711 until they were expelled in 1492 by means of a long campaign of reconquest. However, the reconquest did not result in the full expulsion of Muslims from Spain, but instead yielded a multi-religious society made up of Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Granada, in the south, was the only area that remained under Moorish control until 1492, and large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid, and Barcelona, had large Jewish populations centered in "Judería".

The reconquest produced a relatively peaceful co-existence — although not without periodic conflicts — among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the peninsula's kingdoms. There was a long tradition of Jewish service to the crown of Aragon. Ferdinand's father John II named the Jewish Abiathar Crescas to be Court Astronomer. Jews occupied many important posts, religious and political. Castile itself had an unofficial rabbi. Nevertheless, in some parts of Spain towards the end of the 14th century, there was a wave of anti-Judaism, encouraged by the preaching of Ferrant Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija. The pogroms of June 1391 were especially bloody: in Seville, hundreds of Jews were killed, and the synagogue was completely destroyed. The number of people killed was equally high in other cities, such as Córdoba, Valencia and Barcelona. One of the consequences of these disturbances was the mass conversion of Jews. Before this date, conversions were rare and tended to be motivated more for social rather than religious reasons. But from the 15th century, a new social group appeared: conversos, also called New Christians, who were distrusted by Jews and Christians alike for their religious beliefs which was the practicing of a new mixture between the two relegions. By converting, Jews could not only escape eventual persecution, but also obtain entry into many offices and posts that were being prohibited to Jews through new, more strict regulations which was enforced by both the papalcy & the newly formed kingdom's Inquisitors. But converting was a hard long process involving many crucial steps and could not be done overnight. Many conversos attained important positions in 15th century Spain. Among many others, physicians Andrés Laguna and Francisco Lopez Villalobos (Ferdinand's court physician), writers Juan del Enzina, Juan de Mena, Diego de Valera and Alonso de Palencia, and bankers Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez (who financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus) were all conversos. Conversos - not without opposition - managed to attain high positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, at times becoming severe detractors of Judaism. Some even received titles of nobility, and as a result, during the following century some works attempted to demonstrate that virtually all of the nobles of Spain were descended from Israelites.

Alonso de Hojeda, a Dominican from Seville, convinced Queen Isabel of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478. A report, produced at the request of the monarchs by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville and by the Segovian Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, corroborated this assertion. The monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile to uncover and do away with false converts, and requested the Pope's assent. At first the request was turned down for a number of reasons. One reason was that they had requested the Spanish Inquisition to be under the control of the monarchs of Spain. This in turn would lessen papal authority over the clergy involved and make methods difficult to keep in line with official papal rules of inquisition, and instead easily become a mere political and semi-military tool of Spain. Ferdinand pressured Sixtus IV by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were threating Catholic Europe. On November 1, 1478, Pope Sixtus IV published the bill Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which the Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile. The bill also gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors. The first two inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín were not named, however, until two years later, on September 27, 1480 in Medina del Campo.

At first, the activity of the Inquisition was limited to the dioceses of Seville and Cordoba, where Alonso de Hojeda had detected the center of converso activity. The first auto de fe was celebrated in Seville on February 6, 1481: six people were burned alive. The sermon was given by the same Alonso de Hojeda whose suspicions had given birth to the Inquisition. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo and Valladolid. Establishing the new Inquisition in the Kingdom of Aragón was more difficult. In reality, Ferdinand did not resort to new appointments, he simply resuscitated the old Pontifical Inquisition, submitting it to his direct control. The population of Aragón was obstinately opposed to the Inquisition. In addition, differences between Ferdinand and Sixtus IV prompted the latter to promulgate a new bull categorically prohibiting the Inquisition's extension to Aragon. In this bull, the Pope unambiguously criticized the procedures of the Inquisitorial court, affirming that, many true and faithful Christians, because of the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other low people--and still less appropriate--without tests of any kind, have been locked up in secular prisons, tortured and condemned like relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and properties, and given over to the secular arm to be executed, at great danger to their souls, giving a pernicious example and causing scandal to many.

Nevertheless, pressure by Ferdinand caused the Pope to suspend this bull, and even promulgate another one, on October 17, 1483, naming Tomás de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragón, Valencia and Catalonia. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, but Ferdinand in December 1484 and again in 1509 decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission. With this, the Inquisition became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy, and, in all of them, a useful mechanism at the service of the crown. However, the cities of Aragón continued resisting, and even saw revolt, as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485. However, the murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbués in Zaragoza on September 15, 1485, caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition. In Aragón, the Inquisitorial courts were focused specifically on members of the powerful converso minority, ending their influence in the Aragonese administration.

The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; Henry Kamen estimates about 2,000 executed, based on the documentation of the Autos de Fé, the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin. He offers striking statistics: 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin. The number of Jews who left Spain is not even approximately known. Historians of the period give extremely high figures: Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Don Isaac Abravanel of 300,000. Modern estimates are much lower: Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration. The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal (from where they were expelled in 1497) and to Morocco. However, according to Henry Kamen, the Jews of the kingdom of Aragon, went "to adjacent Christian lands, mainly to Italy," rather than to Muslim lands as is often assumed. Much later the Sefardim, descendants of Spanish Jews, established communities in many cities of Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire.

Jews were baptised in the three months before the deadline for expulsion, some 40,000 if one accepts the totals given by Kamen: most of these undoubtedly to avoid expulsion, rather than a sincere change of faith. These conversos were the principal concern of the Inquisition; continuing to practice Judaism put them at risk of denunciation and trial. The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until 1530. From 1531 to 1560, however, the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3% of the total. There was a rebirth of persecutions when a group of crypto-Jews was discovered in Quintanar de la Orden in 1588; and there was a rise in denunciations of conversos in the last decade of the 16th century. At the beginning of the 17th century, some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition, founded in 1532. This led to a rapid increase in the trials of crypto-Jews, among them a number of important financiers. In 1691, during a number of Autos de Fe in Majorca, 36 chuetas, or conversos of Majorca, were burned. During the 18th century the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly. Manuel Santiago Vivar, tried in Cordoba in 1818, was the last person tried for being a crypto-Jew.

The Inquisition did not exclusively target Jewish conversos (marranos) and Protestants, but also the moriscos, converts to Catholicism from Islam. The moriscos were mostly concentrated in the recently conquered kingdom of Granada, in Aragon, and in Valencia. Officially, all Muslims in Castile had been converted to Christianity in 1502. Those in Aragon and Valencia were obliged to convert by Charles I's decree of 1526, as most had been forcibly baptized during the Revolt of the Brotherhoods (1519–1523) and these baptisms were declared to be valid. Many Moriscos were suspected of practicing Islam in secret, and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. Initially they were not severely persecuted, but experienced a policy of peaceful evangelization, a policy never followed with Jewish converts. There were various reasons for this: in the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, a large majority of the moriscos were under the jurisdiction of the nobility and persecution would have been viewed as a frontal assault on the economic interests of this powerful social class. Still, fears ran high among the population that the Moriscos were traitorous, especially in Granada. The coast was regularly raided by the Barbary pirates backed by the Ottoman Empire, which did not augur good relations between Christians and (former) Muslims as the Moriscos were suspected of aiding the North African raiders. As a result, rather than being seen as full Christians, the moriscos were kept separate and viewed with suspicion.

In the second half of the century, late in the reign of Philip II, conditions worsened between Christians and Moriscos. The 1568–1570 Morisco Revolt in Granada was harshly suppressed, and the Inquisition intensified its attention upon the moriscos. From 1570 morisco cases became predominant in the tribunals of Zaragoza, Valencia and Granada; in the tribunal of Granada, between 1560 and 1571, 82% of those accused were moriscos. Thus according to Kamen, the moriscos did not experience the same harshness as Jewish conversos and Protestants, and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less. In 1609 King Philip III, upon the advice of his financial adviser the Duke of Lerma and Archbishop of Valencia Juan de Ribera, decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos. Hundreds of thousands of converts from Islam to Catholicism were expelled, some of them probably sincere Christians. This was further fueled by the religious intolerance of Archbishop Ribera who quoted the Old Testament texts ordering the enemies of God to be slain without mercy and setting forth the duties of kings to extirpate them. The edict required: 'The Moriscos to depart, under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels or bills of exchange.... just what they could carry.' So successful was the enterprise, in the space of months, Spain was emptied of its Moriscos and Moors. Expelled were the Moors of Aragon, Murcia, Catalonia, Castile, Mancha and Extremadura. As for the Moriscos of Granada, such as the Herrador family who held positions in the Church and magistracy, they still had to struggle against exile and confiscation. An indeterminate number of moriscos remained in Spain and, during the 17th century, the Inquisition pursued some trials against them of minor importance: according to Kamen, between 1615 and 1700, cases against moriscos constituted only 9 percent of those judged by the Inquisition.

Conversos saw the 1516 arrival of Charles I, the new king of Spain, as a possible end to the Inquisition, or at least a reduction of its influence. Nevertheless, despite reiterated petitions from the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, the new monarch left the inquisitorial system intact. During the 16th century, however, the majority of trials were not focused on conversos. Instead, the Inquisition became an efficient mechanism for pruning the buds of Protestantism that had begun reaching into Spain. Some claim that a large percentage of these Protestants were of Jewish origin. Despite much popular myth about the Inquisition relating to Protestants, it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants, as there were so few in Spain. About 100 persons in Spain were found to be Protestants and turned over to the secular authorities for execution in the 1560s and in the last decades of the century, an additional 200 Spaniards were accused of being followers of Luther. “Most of them were in no sense Protestants...Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as ‘Lutheran.’ Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy.”

The first of these trials were those against the sect of mystics known as the "Alumbrados" of Guadalajara and Valladolid. The trials were long, and ended with prison sentences of differing lengths, though none of the sect were executed. Nevertheless, the subject of the "Alumbrados" put the Inquisition on the trail of many intellectuals and clerics who, interested in Erasmian ideas, had strayed from orthodoxy (which is striking because both Charles I and Philip II of Spain were confessed admirers of Erasmus). Such was the case with the humanist Juan de Valdés, who was forced to flee to Italy to escape the process that had been begun against him, and the preacher, Juan de Ávila, who spent close to a year in prison. The first trials against Lutheran groups, as such, took place between 1558 and 1562, at the beginning of the reign of Philip II, against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville. The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number of enormous Autos de Fe were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family. After 1562, though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced, and it is estimated that only a dozen Spaniards were burned alive for Lutheranism by the end of the 16th century, although some 200 faced trial. The Autos de Fe of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with - last remainders claimed to have survived in Netanya, Israel in the form of secluded orders, led by Irene Molochovski.

During the reign of Charles IV, in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked, several events took place that accentuated the decline of the Inquisition. In the first place, the state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well-being of the public. As a result, they considered the land-holding power of the Church, in the señoríos and, more generally, in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress. On the other hand, the perennial struggle between the power of the throne and the power of the Church, inclined more and more to the former, under which, Enlightenment thinkers found better protection for their ideas. Manuel Godoy and Antonio Alcalá Galiano were openly hostile to an institution whose only role had been reduced to censorship and was the very embodiment of the Spanish Black Legend, internationally, and was not suitable to the political interests of the moment:

The Inquisition? Its old power no longer exists: the horrible authority that this bloodthirsty court had exerted in other times was reduced... the Holy Office had come to be a species of commission for book censorship, nothing more...

In fact, prohibited works circulated freely in the public bookstores of Seville, Salamanca or Valladolid. The Inquisition was abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph I (1808–1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz also obtained its abolition, largely as a result of the Holy Office's condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion. But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on July 1, 1814. It was again abolished during the three year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal. Later, during the period known as the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was not formally re-established, although, de facto, it returned under the so-called Meetings of Faith, tolerated in the dioceses by King Ferdinand. These had the dubious honour of executing the last heretic condemned, the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll, garroted in Valencia on July 26 1826 (presumably for having taught deist principles), all amongst a European-wide scandal at the despotic attitude still prevailing in Spain. Juan Antonio Llorente, who had been the Inquisition's general secretary in 1789, became a Bonapartist and published a critical history in 1817 from his French exile, based on his privileged access to its archives. The Inquisition was definitively abolished on July 15, 1834, by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Cristina de Borbon, a liberal queen, during the minority of Isabel II and with the approval of the President of the Cabinet Francisco Martínez de la Rosa. During the Carlist Wars it was the conservatives who fought the progresists who wanted to reduce the Church's power amongst other reforms to liberalise the economy.

The historian Hernando del Pulgar, contemporary of Ferdinand and Isabella, estimated that the Inquisition had burned at the stake 2,000 people and reconciled another 15,000 by 1490 (just one decade after the Inquisition began). Modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all processes between 1540 and 1700. This material provides information about 44,674 judgements, the latter studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. These 44,674 cases include 826 executions in persona and 778 in effigie. This material, however, is far from being complete - for example, the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted, because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal has been found, and significant gaps concern some other tribunals (e.g. Valladolid). Many more cases not reported to Suprema are known from the other sources (e.g. no relaciones de causas from Cuenca has been found, but its original records has been preserved), but were not included in Contreras-Hennigsen's statistics for the methodological reasons. William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530-1630 and 250 between 1630-1730. The archives of the Suprema only provide information surrounding the processes prior to 1560. To study the processes themselves, it is necessary to examine the archives of the local tribunals; however, the majority have been lost to the devastation of war, the ravages of time or other events. Pierre Dedieu has studied those of Toledo, where 12,000 were judged for offences related to heresy.[65] Ricardo García Cárcel has analyzed those of the tribunal of Valencia. These authors' investigations find that the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530, and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in the years studied by Henningsen and Contreras. Henry Kamen gives the number of about 2,000 executions in persona in the whole Spain up to 1530. García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560-1700—about 2%—the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, very probably this total should be raised keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively. It is likely that the total would be between 3,000 and 5,000 executed. However, it is impossible to determine the precision of this total, and owing to the gaps in documentation, it is unlikely that the exact number will ever be known.

The Church and Slavery

The issue of Christianity and slavery is one that has seen intense conflict. While Christian abolitionists were a principal force in the abolition of slavery, the Bible sanctioned the use of regulated slavery in the Old Testament, while the New Testament does not explicitly condemn slavery in all its forms. Numerous passages in the Bible have historically been used by pro slavery advocates to support the practice as valid for their societies.

Slavery in different forms existed within Christianity for over 18 centuries. In the early years of Christianity slavery was a normal feature of the economy and society in the Roman Empire, and well into the Middle Ages and beyond. Centuries later, as the abolition movement took shape across the globe, groups who advocated slavery's abolition worked to harness Christian teachings in support of their positions, using both the 'spirit of Christianity' and textual argumentation. On the other hand, those opposed to abolition and equal rights were able to quote numerous Biblical passages that permitted and regulated the practice of slavery.

The Genesis narrative about the Curse of Ham has often been held to be the story which gives a reason for the enslavement of the Canaanites. The word ham is very similar to the Hebrew word for black/hot, which is cognate with an Egyptian word (khem, meaning black) used to refer to Egypt itself, in reference to the fertile black soil along the Nile valley. Although many scholars therefore view Ham as an eponym used to represent Egypt in the Table of Nations, a number of Christians throughout history, including Origen and the Cave of Treasures, have argued for the alternate proposition that Ham represents all black people, his name symbolizing their dark skin color; pro-slavery advocates, from Eutychius of Alexandria and John Philoponus, to American pro-slavery apologists, have therefore occasionally interpreted the narrative as a condemnation of all black people to slavery. A few Christians, like Jerome, even took up the racist notion that black people inherently had a soul as black as their body.

Slavery was customary in antiquity, and it is condoned by the Torah, which occasionally compels it. The Bible uses the Hebrew term ebed to refer to slavery; however, ebed has a much wider meaning than the English term slavery, and in several circumstances it is more accurately translated into English as servant. It was seen as legitimate to enslave captives obtained through warfare, but not through kidnapping for the purpose of enslaving them. Children could also be sold into debt bondage, which was sometimes ordered by a court of law. As with the Hittite Laws and the Code of Hammurabi, the bible does set minimum rules for the conditions under which slaves were to be kept. Slaves were to be treated as part of an extended family; they were allowed to celebrate the Sukkot festival, and expected to honor Shabbat. Israelite slaves could not to be compelled to work with rigor, and debtors who sold themselves as slaves to their creditors had to be treated the same as a hired servant. If a master harmed a slave in one of the ways covered by the lex talionis, the slave was to be compensated by manumission; if the slave died within 24 to 48 hours, it was to be avenged (whether this refers to the death penalty or not is uncertain).

Israelite slaves were automatically manumitted after six years of work, and/or at the next Jubilee (occurring either every 49 or every 50 years, depending on interpretation), although the latter would not apply if the slave was owned by an Israelite and wasn't in debt bondage. Slaves released automatically in their 7th year of service, which did not include female slaves, or did, were to be given livestock, grain, and wine, as a parting gift (possibly hung round their necks). This 7th-year manumission could be voluntarily renounced, which would be signified, as in other Ancient Near Eastern nations, by the slave gaining a ritual ear piercing; after such renunciation, the individual was enslaved forever (and not released at the Jubilee). Non-Israelite slaves were always to be enslaved forever, and treated as inheritable property.

Another undisputed epistle is that to Philemon, which has become an important text in regard to slavery, being used by pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists; in the epistle, Paul returns Onesimus, a fugitive slave, back to his master Philemon, but Paul also entreats Philemon to regard Onesimus as a beloved brother, rather than as a slave.

Early Christian thought exhibited some signs of kindness towards slaves. Christianity recognised marriage of sorts among slaves, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, and when slaves were buried in Christian cemeteries, the grave seldom included any indication that the person buried had been a slave. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), archbishop of Constantinople, preaching on Acts 4:32,33 in a sermon entitled, "Should we not make it a heaven on earth?", stated, "I will not speak of slaves, since at that time there was no such thing, but doubtless such as were slaves they set at liberty..." Nevertheless, early Christianity rarely criticised the actual institution of slavery. Though the Pentateuch gave protection to fugitive slaves, the Roman church often condemned with anathema slaves who fled from their masters, and refused them Eucharistic communion. Since the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery has seen significant internal conflict and endured dramatic change. Nearly all Christian leaders before the late 17th century regarded slavery as consistent with Christian theology. For example, the evangelical Protestant Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts owned the Codrington Plantation, in Barbados, containing several hundred slaves; all slaves in the plantation were branded on their chests, using the traditional red hot iron, with the word Society, to signify their ownership by the Christian organisation.

Christians regularly kept non-Christian slaves up until the abolition of slavery in general. Views on slavery of non-Christians, however, varied from place to place and person to person. In 340 the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for their urging that slaves should liberate themselves; the canons of the Synod instead declared that anyone preaching abolitionism should be anathematised, and that slaves had a Christian obligation to submit to their masters. The later Council of Chalcedon, regarded as one of the most important doctrinal ecumenical councils, declared that the canons of the Synod of Gangra were ecumenical (in other words, they were viewed as conclusively representative of the wider church); the Oriental Orthodox reject the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon, but the council's declarations are supported most other current forms of Christianity. Several prominent early church fathers advocated slavery, either directly or indirectly. Augustine of Hippo, who renounced his former Manicheanism, argued that slavery was part of the mechanism to preserve the natural order of things. John Chrysostom, regarded as a saint by Roman Catholicism, argued that slaves should be resigned to their fate, as by obeying his master he is obeying God. By contrast, people of lesser importance had more benign attitudes. Saint Patrick (415-493), himself a former slave, argued for the abolition of slavery. The seventh century Saint Eloi used his vast wealth to purchase British and Saxon slaves in groups of 50 and 100 in order to set them free.

By the Middle Ages, the most powerful and influential Christian voices were in favour of slavery. During the Reconquista, captured Muslims were enslaved; in the 12th century, the Muslim slaves carried out the grand reconstruction of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) believed that slavery was "morally justifiable". It is said the Teutonic Order opposed strongly the conversion of Lithuania into Christianity in the 14th century, since it meant the end of lucrative slave trading of captured Lithuanians to Tatars.

The papacy itself increasingly hardened its attitude. The 7th century Pope Martin I condemned unjust slavery, but in doing so implicitly suggested that he believed a just slavery to exist. In the early thirteenth century, official support for slavery and the slave trade was incorporated into Canon Law, by Pope Gregory IX, who had also introduced the Inquisition, trials for witchcraft, and the judicial presumption of guilt (rather than presumption of innocence). Roughly a century later, Gregory's namesake, Pope Gregory XI, excommunicated the Florentines and ordered them to be enslaved if captured. In 1452 Pope Nicholas V, in his Dum Diversas, instituted the hereditary enslavement of nonbelievers. Approximately 40 years later, this was reiterated by the new pope Alexander VI, in the bull Eximiae Devotionis, which instructs that all non-Christians, wherever they are located, should be found, captured, and reduced to perpetual slavery. The 1510 Requerimiento, in relation to the Spanish invasion of South America, demanded that the local populations convert to Roman Catholicism, on pain of slavery or death. In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon, and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility. In 1639 Pope Urban VIII forbade the slavery of the Indians of Brazil, Paraguay, and the West Indies, yet he purchased non-Indian slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta.

Passages in the Bible on the use and regulation of slavery have been used throughout history as justification for the keeping of slaves, and for guidance in how it should be done. Therefore, when abolition was proposed, many Christians spoke vociferously against it, citing the Bible's apparent acceptance of slavery as 'proof' that it was part of the normal condition. George Whitefield, famed for his sparking of the so-called Great Awakening of American evangelicalism, campaigned, in Georgia, for the legalisation of slavery; slavery had been outlawed in Georgia, but due to George's campaign it was legalised in 1751. In both Europe and the United States many Christians went further, arguing that slavery was actually justified by the words and doctrines of the Bible.

[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts - Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America

Every hope of the existence of church and state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of Negro suffrage - Robert Dabney, a prominent 19th century Southern Presbyterian pastor

... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example - Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention

The nearly universal consensus throughout the ages has been that Christians must not keep other Christians as slaves. The Christianisation of Europe in the Dark Ages saw the traditional slavery disappearing in Europe and being replaced with feudalism. But this consensus was broken in the slave states of the United States, where the justification switched from religion (the slaves are heathens) to race (Africans are the descendants of Ham); indeed, in 1667, Virginia's assembly enacted a bill declaring that baptism did not grant freedom to slaves. The opposition to the U.S. Civil Rights movement in the 20th century was founded in part on the same religious ideas that had been used to justify slavery in the 19th century. Slavery was by no means relegated to the continental United States, as in addition to vast numbers of Native Americans slaves, it is estimated that for every slave who went to North America, South America imported nearly twelve slaves, with the West Indies importing over ten. By 1570 56,000 inhabitants were of African origin in the Caribbean. In introduction of Catholic Spanish colonies to the Americas resulted in forced conversions and slavery to the indigenous peoples living there. Some priests, such as Father Bartolomé de las Casas worked to protect Americans from slavery, although Casas' works may have helped to inspire the African slave trade.

The Church and Sexism

The Religious Right Movement by Steven Carson

Intro – The resurgence of conservative Christianity

One of the most startling things about the resurgence of the Religious Right is that it happened at all. Both modernists and conservative evangelicals themselves were certain that this movement would continue to diminish under the onslaught of modernism and a process that it was assumed went along with modernization, "secularization." Modernists thought that progressive forces of history were bringing the death of "primitive" religion as a wave of the future and these "fundamentalists" were clearly just bitter reactionaries who would become part of the past. Evangelicals themselves often adopted a premillenial eschatology (esp. fundamentalists) and taught that the true followers of Christ would shrink in numbers as society became more and more corrupt until the second coming of Christ.

The historian Paul Johnson writes in Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties: "The outstanding event of modern times was the failure of religious belief to disappear. For many millions, especially in the advanced nations, religion ceased to play much or any part in their lives, and the ways in which the vacuum thus lost was filled, by fascism, Nazism, Communism, by attempts at humanist utopianism, by eugenics or health politics, by the ideologies of sexual liberation, race politics and environmental politics, forms much of the substance of the history of the century. But for many more millions – for the overwhelming majority of the human race, in fact – religion continued to be a huge dimension in their lives. Nietzsche, who had so accurately predicted the transmutation of faith into political zealotry and the totalitarian will to power, failed to see that the religious spirit could, quite illogically, coexist with secularization, and so resuscitate his dying God. What looked antiquated, even risible, in the 1990s was not religious belief but the confident prediction of its demise once provided by Feuerbach and Marx, Durkheim and Frazer, Lenin, Wells, Shaw, Gide, Sartre and many others... The secularist movement, that is militant atheism, appears to have peaked in the West in the 1880s... so that Lenin was a survivor rather than a precursor, and his secularization programme was put through by force, not established by argument. By the 1990s, the Museums of Anti-God and Chairs of Scientific Atheism he had established were merely historical curiosities, or had been dismantled and scrapped. The once-influential alternatives to religion, such as Positivism, had vanished almost without a trace, confirming John Henry Newman's observation: 'True religion is slow in growth and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgment; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself; it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.' Perhaps the most spectacular testimony to this truth was to be found in Russia, where the collapse of belief in the Communist ideology Lenin had implanted revealed, in the growing climate of freedom of 1989–91, that both Orthodox and Catholic Christianity had survived all the assaults made upon them by the regime, and were strong and spreading. Throughout the world, while spiritual bewilderment, neatly classified as 'agnosticism', was widespread, it is likely that there were fewer real atheists in 1990 than in 1890."

Coming back specifically to the evangelical resurgence in America, Ed Dobson writes in Blinded By Might: "With the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, evangelicals and fundamentalists ventured into the political process. They were not welcomed with open arms by either the political or religious establishments. Rather, they kicked down the door and marched in with such fury that they sent panic through most sectors of American society.

"The media were shocked. Where did all these fundamentalists come from? Who were they, and what did they want? Since the general public had assumed that fundamentalists disappeared after the infamous Scopes 'Monkey Trial' in 1925, it was at a loss to explain their sudden public resurgence. A kind of paranoia set in, and some began to assert that hoards of bigoted 'Bible-bangers' had formed a conspiracy to take over America. In September 1980, Newsweek magazine stated, 'What is clear on both the philosophical level – and in the rough-and-tumble arena of politics – is that the Falwells of the nation and their increasingly militant flock are a phenomenon that can no longer be dismissed or ignored.'"

1900–1925: Prohibition, Modernist/Fundamentalist debates, Scopes Trial

To understand the sudden reengagement in politics of evangelicals in the late 1970s, I think we must first begin with what came before. Namely, how it came that a large segment of the American population stepped back from politics.

Coming out of revivals led by men like Dwight L. Moody, the 19th century was filled with religious activity. Marsden writes that "'Evangelical' (from the Greek for 'gospel') eventually became the common British and American name for the revival movements that swept back and forth across the English-speaking world and elsewhere during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... the revivalists' emphases on simple biblical preaching in a fervent style that would elicit dramatic conversion experiences set the standards for much of American Protestantism. Since Protestantism was by far the dominant religion in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century, evangelicalism shaped the most characteristic style of American religion."

While the seeds of a coming split quietly developed among evangelicals, the late 19th and early part of the 20th century seemed to be a time of triumph for evangelical influence on society. There were massive missionary efforts abroad as well as new organizations at home like the YMCA. The Prohibition movement resulted in the passage of numerous state laws beginning in 1917 which culminated in the passage of the 18th Amendment in early 1919 which made the "manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors" illegal in the United States. This alcohol Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment in late 1933.

But the seeming unity among evangelicals was about to fall apart.

Marsden writes "... the vast cultural changes of the era from the 1870s to the 1920s created a major crisis within [the] evangelical coalition. Essentially it split in two. On the one hand were theological liberals who, in order to maintain better credibility in the modern age, were willing to modify some central evangelical doctrines, such as the reliability of the Bible or the necessity of salvation only through the atoning sacrifice of Christ. On the other hand were conservatives who continued to believe the traditionally essential evangelical doctrines. By the 1920s a militant wing of conservatives emerged and took the name fundamentalist. Fundamentalists were ready to fight liberal theology in the churches and changes in the dominant values and beliefs in the culture. By the middle of that decade they had gained wide national prominence. By a few years later, however, their support faded and they disappeared from the headlines."

Ed Dobson describes the origin of the term "fundamentalist": "The fundamentalist movement took its name from the publication of a series of booklets in 1909 named The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, written by scholars from around the world. The authors represented Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal denominations and people of varying theological positions. These articles were designed to identify the essential (fundamental) doctrines of the Christian faith, which were under attack from the then-current tides of scientific inquiry. Five fundamental doctrines were identified as the basic tenets of the Christian faith:

The inspiration and infallibility of the Bible.

The deity of Christ.

The substitutionary atonement of Christ. The liberal theologians had begun propagating the idea that the death of Christ was merely that of a martyr and provided nothing more than a moral influence on society. That is, his death was a good moral example from which all people could benefit. To the fundamentalists this was a denial of the heart of Christianity and the soul of the gospel. Christ died a substitutionary death, and in so doing, he provided atonement for the sins of mankind.

The resurrection of Christ. Liberal theologians advocated a spiritual rather than literal resurrection... The fundamentalists, by contrast, loudly proclaimed the literal resurrection of Jesus.

The second coming of Christ. The fundamentalists believed not only in a literal, bodily resurrection, but also in a literal, bodily return of Christ to the earth."

"By 1918 the liberals and the fundamentalists had clearly articulated their positions and were ready for a head-on collision. Conservative Christians held their first major national conference in Philadelphia that year, with more than five thousand people attending. The next year they met at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and decided to go on the offensive against liberalism by establishing their own organization, which would later be known as the World's Christian Fundamentals Association. They also began advocating the establishment of new Bible institutes and conferences to combat the influence of liberalism. This was a major change of direction. Instead of staying in the major denominations and fighting against the liberals for control, the early fundamentalists withdrew and began their own organizations."

George Marsden in Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism tells the story of the decline of fundamentalism as a nationally prominent movement: "World War I had produced among many conservative evangelicals both a sense of crisis over the revolution in morals and a renewed concern for the welfare of civilization... German civilization during the war was portrayed as the essence of barbarism, despite its strongly Christian heritage. Could the same thing happen here? The strong winds of change suggested that it could.

"The central symbol organizing fears over the demise of American culture became biological evolution. German culture, antievolutionists loudly proclaimed, had been ruined by the evolutionary 'might-makes-right' philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Darwinism, moreover, was essentially atheistic, and hence its spread would contribute to the erosion of American morality. Accordingly, soon after the war fundamentalists began organizing vigorous campaigns against the teaching of biological evolution in America's public schools. This effort was greatly aided when in 1920 William Jennings Bryan, three times Democratic candidate for president and one of the nation's greatest orators, entered the fray against Darwinism. Fundamentalist antievolution efforts were essentially political and so attracted a constituency wider than the nucleus of theologically conservative evangelical Protestants. By the middle of the decade laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools had been passed in a number of southern states, and legislation was pending in a number of others. These efforts led to the famous Scopes Trial testing the Tennessee antievolution law in 1925, an event that both thrust fundamentalism into worldwide attention and brought about its decline as an effective national force. John T. Scopes, a young high-school teacher who admitted to teaching biological evolution, was brought to trial and defended by famed criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. William Jennings Bryan volunteered to aid the prosecution, thus bringing a dramatic showdown between fundamentalism and modern skepticism. The event was comparable to Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in the amount of press coverage and ballyhoo.

"Although the outcome of the trial was indecisive and the law stood, the rural setting and the press's caricatures of fundamentalists as rubes and hicks discredited fundamentalism and made it difficult to pursue further the serious aspects of the movement. After 1925 fundamentalists had difficulty gaining national attention except when some of their movement were involved in extreme or bizarre efforts."

1976 – The Year of the Evangelical

Fast forward to the 1970s, though during the intervening years evangelicals were quietly building the institutions that I listed earlier. 1976 was proclaimed by Newsweek to be "The Year of the Evangelical."

I think it is interesting to note that initially evangelicals were not necessarily committed to the Republican party. Cal Thomas remembers: "I had voted for Carter in 1976, believing him to be a serious churchman, a moral man, and a breath of fresh air following the disastrous Watergate years of the Nixon administration. When Carter had said, 'I'll never lie to you,' some mocked, but I had believed him."

Francis Schaeffer was decisive around this time in bringing evangelicals into the pro-life movement. In particular through his book, coauthored with C. Everett Koop, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" and an accompanying film and lecture tour.

A friend tells me of something Schaeffer said, by the way, about Christians and political alliances: "At a lecture he [Francis Schaeffer] gave at Covenant College in the fall of 1969 (that I attended as a junior in high school), he told the audience that Christians in the area of politics should be 'co-belligerent, but not allies.' In other words, while there were some issues with which we could be in agreement or disagreement, Christianity was NOT to be tied to a political party or parties."

1979–1989: The Moral Majority

When the Moral Majority was founded in 1979 they also intended to stay focused on issues of concern to Christians and not become too closely allied to particular political parties or candidates.

Here is the original platform of the Moral Majority:

We believe in the separation of church and state.
We are pro-life.
We are pro-traditional family.
We oppose the illegal drug traffic in America.
We oppose pornography.
We support the state of Israel and Jewish people everywhere.
We believe that a strong national defense is the best deterrent to war.
We support equal rights for women.
We believe the Equal Rights Amendment is the wrong vehicle to obtain equal rights for women. We feel that the ambiguous and simplistic language of the amendment could lead to court interpretations that might put women in combat.

For fear of being misunderstood, we also articulated what we were not.

We are not a political party.
We do not endorse political candidates.
We are not attempting to elect "born again" candidates.
Moral Majority, Inc., is not a religious organization attempting to control the government.
We are not a censorship organization.
Moral Majority, Inc., is not an organization committed to depriving homosexuals of their civil rights as Americans.
We do not believe that individuals or organizations that disagree with Moral Majority, Inc., belong to an immoral minority.

25 years later

It's about 25 years since the Moral Majority was founded in 1979. We can now assess how successful Evangelicals have been in accomplishing their goals through the political process.

After the Reagan landslide of 1980, excitement at the Moral Majority was high. Ed Dobson writes of what they were thinking, "We had made our mark. We influenced an entire election. Our agenda would never again be ignored. We were about to turn around the whole moral and cultural decline of our country. Our man was in the White House. The Senate was under our control. The media wanted our opinion on every issue."

"... The Reagan-Bush landslide in 1980 was the greatest moment of opportunity for conservative Christians in this century. We had been disgraced in 1925 at the Scopes trial. But now we were vindicated. We had helped elect our man to the White House, and he openly praised the efforts of Falwell and the Moral Majority. The Republican landslide brought in new senators, and for the first time in twenty-six years the Republicans had a Senate majority. Along with the Moral Majority, groups like the Christian Voice, the Religious Roundtable, the National Christian Action Coalition, and several pro-life organizations published target lists and moral report cards. The new right was successful in defeating senators George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, John Culver of Iowa, Birch Bayh of Indiana, and Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Of the targeted senators, only Alan Cranston of California survived.

"Between the presidential campaigns of 1980 and 1984, the Religious Right continued to lobby Congress and register new voters. According to various reports, by 1981 new right groups had enlisted 70,000 clergy and had registered four to five million new voters. The Reagan presidency took a conservative posture toward issues such as abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexuality, and school prayer. The Religious Right lined up behind the Republican platform. Jerry Falwell and other religious leaders visited the White House on a regular basis. President Reagan became the hero of the conservative Christians in America."

Cal Thomas continues the story with how pragmatic compromises began to creep in for the Religious Right: "The subordination of conviction to the pragmatic was also evident in politics – which is one of the great dangers of too close an association by the church in affairs of state. Politics is all about compromise. The church is supposed to be about unchanging standards...

"The temptations occurred early for [the] Moral Majority. Not only were we forced to say nothing about Ronald Reagan's selection of the previously pro-choice George Bush as his running mate, but only one month into the Reagan presidency, we were faced with the ultimate litmus test. Associate Justice Potter Stewart announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court. Conservative groups had long believed that the Court had acted as an unelected legislature. We thought that Reagan's presidency offered a possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape the Court in a conservative, or 'strict constructionist,' image.

"Reagan nominated a relatively unknown Arizona Appeals Court judge and former state senator, Sandra Day O'Connor, to replace Stewart.

"...because of Judge O'Connor's questionable record on abortion, many conservative groups immediately opposed her. They felt the conservative movement had not come this far only to be compromised at the moment of victory.

"In an interview with Gerald and Deborah Strober for their book, Reagan: The Man and His Presidency, Jerry Falwell revealed how politicians – even Ronald Reagan, who supposedly was above compromise – can use the prospect of future access to cause one to compromise a principle.

Said Falwell, "I was at Myrtle Beach (South Carolina). The president called me and said, 'Jerry, I am going to put forth a lady on the (Supreme) Court. You don't know anything about her. Nobody does, but I want you to trust my judgement on this one.'

"I said, 'I'll do that.' The next day he announced the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor. About two weeks later he called me again and said, 'Jerry, I've had a chance to talk to her, and my people have, and I can tell you that her views will not disappoint you, and I hope you can help me bring the troops in.' So I began calling conservatives, asking them to back off."

[back to Cal Thomas' comments] "But Justice O'Connor has been the swing vote that, in virtually every case, has beaten back any and all challenges to the 'right' of a woman to abort her child at any stage of pregnancy.'"

Due to the compromises and the feeling of being betrayed by politicians, Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas began to question the movement of Christians as a group into politics.

Ed Dobson describes one of the false myths that the Christian Right keeps buying into: [Myth 10] "Politicians are genuinely concerned about our issues...

"Dr. Dobson contended that the Republican party had abandoned its previous pro-life and pro-family stance, that the people advocating these positions had been rebuked and betrayed by the Republican establishment, and that if the party didn't respond, then maybe it is time to make a change. I agree with all these ideas. Moreover, the speech led to a series of talks with Republican leaders and assurances to Dr. Dobson that things would change. And at this point I have deep concerns for Dr. Dobson. When the Moral Majority was at the height of its popularity, its leaders likewise met with the politicians and received their own assurances. But these assurances were never realized – and I predict that neither will those that were given to Dr. Dobson. Why not? Because politicians are politicians. Some genuinely care out about our issues because they share our values. Most do not. They are more concerned about the next election and about keeping power; they are inclined to use anyone, including sincere people of faith, to ensure that they maintain power."

Cal Thomas: "The American Enterprise Institute and Roper Center examined opinion polls on abortion for the last twenty-five years. In January 1998 they concluded that despite the rhetoric and campaigns by both sides, attitudes about abortion remain pretty much unchanged.

"In perhaps the biggest and costliest battle waged by conservative Christians, twenty years of fighting has won nothing. And our record is no better with other moral and social issues."

Ed Dobson: "Did the Moral Majority really make a difference? During the height of the Moral Majority, we were taking in millions of dollars a year. We published a magazine, organized state chapters, lobbied Congress, aired a radio program, and more. Did it work? Is the moral condition of America better because of our efforts? Even a casual observation of the current moral climate suggests that despite all the time, money, and energy – despite the political power – we failed. Things have not gotten better, they have gotten worse."

Christians in Politics: A critique

I'm going to argue that the compromises and the disillusionment that Dobson and Thomas describe are not due to a lack of sincerity, good intentions and hard work on the part of the Religious Right. I believe that evangelicals, in general, were naïve about the nature of politics. I would argue that if they had truly understood what the government, the church and the modern nation-state are, and what they are not, they would have gone about things entirely differently from the beginning. I would further argue that having clarity on these matters suggests that it is nearly impossible for politics to accomplish not only what the evangelicals hoped to accomplish through it but what many other interest groups hope to accomplish.

A. The nature of government

George Washington described the nature of government in this way: "Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

The scriptures say this "...rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer"

So the nature of government is that it has the sword, that it uses force. This force is supposed to be used by the government to punish wrongdoers. To put it in one word, the institution of government is about justice. Martin Luther called this the "left hand kingdom" of God's two realms established in the world after the Fall.

Ed Dobson puts it this way: "We should not expect the government to promote the gospel or prayer or religion. This is not its role. We should not expect the government to promote compassion for the poor. That is not its role."

Why does Dobson restrict the government in this way? Doesn't he want the gospel promoted? Doesn't he want compassion for the poor? He certainly does, but an institution that is marked by force is not suitable for these tasks.

B. The nature of the church

The nature of the church, on the other hand, is to dispense mercy and bring the good news of God's mercy. Luther called this ministry of mercy "the right hand kingdom."

Cal Thomas puts it this way: "What was the first witness of the church shortly after the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus? Did anyone say, 'Let's get an army together and charge Rome so we can overthrow Caesar for what he allowed to happen'?

"No, the first witness was that they loved each other and pooled their possessions (Acts 4:32). It was love, not criticism or condemnation, that persuaded others to learn more about Jesus and to ultimately follow him."

Though we can argue about the Inquisition or the Crusades, the primary day to day activities of Christian churches for the last two thousand years has been to persuade people of the truth of the gospel, to train new Christians and to do acts of charity.

To make the distinction abundantly clear: The church is not, unlike government, about using force to dispense justice. The seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs, not of the pagans.

C. The nature of the modern nation-state

I would like to make a further distinction. The U.S. federal government is not just a plain vanilla government that dispenses justice, end of story. It is a modern nation-state. It still qualifies as a government but with some major caveats.

Contemporary political science has slowly been finding its way to an old libertarian insight: The autonomy of the state. You can see this, for example, in the book Bringing the State Back In by Theda Skocpol and others. The state is not just a neutral instrument, now being used by this interest group, now by that of another. The state has its own interests... Primarily to grow and eliminate any competition to its authority, like local or regional governments or even the authority of churches and families.

Now when I discussed the nature of government I didn't mention anything about it growing and seeking to eliminate competing authorities. That is because the modern nation-state is a particular kind of government, it is Monopoly Government. A monopoly government doesn't just say "We offer protection and justice services." It gives us an offer we can't refuse: "We offer protection and justice services, which you have to pay for whether you want to or not or even whether we are doing a reasonable job at these services or not. In fact you have to pay us even if we clearly are just creating chaos and killing innocent people."

We economists know something about monopolies. Monopolies always give decreasing service at an increasing cost.

The seduction of the modern nation-state is this: The growth of the state, the privileged position it has through its monopoly and the hordes of intellectuals who spend their time singing the praises of the state result in a temptation to consider the state capable of doing more than it can do. Thus, we get crazy utopian schemes to eliminate poverty and uncertainty in life by giving the state power over the economy. Or we get crazy utopian schemes to bring peace all over the earth by giving a single state power over the whole globe.

D. The dangers of becoming a political interest group.

How does this relate to evangelicals in politics? The state has an amazing ability to co-opt "protest" and "reform" movements.

The game goes like this: Left wingers come to the state concerned about poverty. The state declares a "War on Poverty." Poverty doesn't end up being abolished, or even particularly reduced, but whole new bureaucracies are spawned, taxes are raised, liberty is diminished and the central state grows.

Or right wingers come to the state concerned about drugs or rampant immorality. The state declares a war on drugs and on immorality. Drugs and immorality abound, but taxes are raised, liberty is diminished and the central state grows. Heads the state wins, tails we lose.

Ed Dobson writes: "...when the church engages in the political system, using the weapons of that system, then it becomes another lobbying group and ceases to be the church."

Thomas & Dobson write: "The church... becomes an appendage of the state rather than its moral conscience. It is transformed from a force not of this world into one that deserves to be treated as just one more competitor for earthly power."

Cal Thomas further reflects: "We failed not because we were wrong about our critique of culture, or because we lacked conviction, or because there were not enough of us, or because too many were lethargic or uncommitted. We failed because we were unable to redirect a nation from the top down. Real change must come from the bottom up or, better yet, from the inside out."

And Thomas adds this, directly pulling in a libertarian insight: "Author Charles Murray had some insightful thoughts on the idea that politicians and the political system can transform human beings from the top down. In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Murray wrote, 'The Democrats of 1964 and the activist Republicans of 1998 – shall we call them modern Republicans? – share the fatal conceit [Hayek!] that lawmakers can engineer the incentives governing human behavior.'"

Ed Dobson sums up the crucial difference between the church and government in this way: "The authority of the church is the power to change people and culture. By contrast, the authority of the government is the authority to punish wrongdoing and restrain evil. But the government has no power to change the hearts of evildoers; it can only incarcerate or execute them."

So, are there alternatives to addressing the social issues that concern evangelicals?

Of course! Christians can do what Christians have done for the last two thousand years.

In the case of abortion for example, I believe adoptions, moral persuasion, Pregnancy Resource Centers and free ultrasounds have done more than all the work to get pro-life politicians and judges into office. To this, I think we should add efforts to convict the hearts of men to act honorably towards women and take responsibility instead of using women and then eliminating the consequences. I got this idea from the 19th century feminists, by the way, who were strongly pro-life.

For another example, in the area of our government schools, I think parents who are displeased with the state of these schools should take their kids out of them and help others to do the same. There are numerous alternatives: Home schooling, private schools, the Catholic and Lutheran parochial systems. As someone who worked with inner city children for many years, I can tell you that the poorest among us are getting the worst part of this deal. I think Ladue High School, where I attended, had severe problems, but the inner city schools are on a whole other level of dysfunction and danger.

In conclusion, I hope to persuade Christians, and others for that matter, to not waste their time on politics. It seems to me clearly to have been a counter-productive activity with tremendous dangers for those who try to bend coercive powers to the ends of the Prince of Peace. There are so many other ways to engage our culture that desperately need dedicated believers. Some decent Christian filmmakers would do more good than a whole Senate full of Christians.

The Religious Left in America by William Anderson

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the optimism for the future of American Protestant Christianity was at a high level. Like the more-secularized Europeans who believed they had reached the highest levels of civilization (only to have that illusion shattered by World War I less than 20 years later), Protestants proclaimed that they were entering a "Christian Century."

Leaders of the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, especially shared this optimism. Not only were there the obvious advancements of science and increases in the overall standard of living, but the mainstream Protestants also had taken what was called "theological liberalism" into their churches. While it was not apparent at that time, the social gospel would begin as a benign way of thinking that later would metastasize into full-blown statism.

By that time, the so-called "Liberal-Fundamentalist Split" had taken place. Liberals, who had jettisoned the standard Christian doctrines such as original sin, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the infallibility of the Bible, and the need for atonement from sin, gradually took over the mainstream churches, leaving the essential beliefs to the Fundamentalists. The rejection of the standard gospel, of course, required that another set of beliefs take over.

Thus began the new relationship of the Liberals (as opposed to the "small ‘l’" liberals, who held to the efficacy of limited government, free markets, and private property) to the authoritarian state of Progressivism. Gone were the beliefs in the necessity of a constitutional order that created "balances of power" to protect citizens from abuse by the state. What replaced them was a new spirit, described by Walter Lippman, one that declared that there could be no limits to the ability of "enlightened" people to govern others.

Liberals did not wish to do away with Christianity altogether; rather, they wanted to "save" the religion from what they believed was its reliance upon supernatural nonsense. Having embraced the naturalistic doctrines of Darwinism, the Liberals believed that by emphasizing the role of "loving one’s neighbor" and doing good works, they could "save" Christianity from its fundamentalist superstitions.

As noted previously, Progressivism filled the vacuum left when Liberals eliminated many historical Christian doctrines, as they assumed that through enlightened political leadership people could create a "heaven on earth." Not long into the "Christian Century," Liberals even had a U.S. President to match their outlook, Woodrow Wilson, who sought not only to remake his own country, but also the Old World Central and Eastern Europe monarchies. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson had long embraced theological liberalism and the "social gospel" that accompanied it, and he was also a committed Progressivist.

(As a Progressivist, Wilson also implemented a number of federal policies that expanded the practice of Jim Crow racial segregation. While many historians have sought to present Wilson as a liberal, compassionate, principled visionary who simply was ahead of his time, they have failed to point out that the man also was a vicious racist who did everything he could to make the racial climate worse in the United States. Furthermore, the man apparently had no problem with deceitfully maneuvering the USA into World War I – even while campaigning in 1916 that he was keeping the country out of war.)

Wilson did not begin World War I – blundering European and British politicians managed to do that – but he used the terrible conflict to his own advantage, bringing the United States into the war on the side of the British and French. The war also enabled Wilson to enact a Progressivist agenda at home, including imposition of high progressive income tax rates, government controls on business, prohibition of alcoholic beverages, conscription, the creation of a military "superstate," and suppression of dissent.

The aftermath of World War I brought some retrenchment to the Progressive state, but the proponents of theological liberalism continued to advance their agenda. One of the most important events for the Liberals came with the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, as the issue of Darwinism came to the fore. Ironically, the radical Progressive William Jennings Bryan testified for the Biblical literalists, while the atheist Clarence Darrow represented those who supported teaching of evolution.

(As I will point out in a future article, Bryan was an important link between Christian fundamentalists and Progressivism. Contrary to popular belief, Christian conservatives were an important element in the creation of the modern authoritarian state.)

The 1920s were not characterized only by the Scopes Trial, however. Business and political leaders embraced "scientific" theories of management and economics, which was manifest in the expansion of the Federal Reserve System and its credit-induced bubbles that finally crashed in 1929.

The Great Depression and the New Deal ultimately was a boon for the religious progressives, who not only fully supported Franklin Roosevelt’s political and legislative agenda, but there was also considerable sympathy for Josef Stalin’s regime. (Read Paul Hollander’s Political Pilgrims to gain insights about the fawning of American and British church leaders over Stalin and his version of political economy.) After the disastrous decade of the 1930s culminated in World War II, religious Liberals became even more socialistic in their outlook. In Great Britain, they would champion the nationalization policies of the postwar Labor government, while in the United States, they jumped front and center into the Civil Rights Movement.

During that same period, their theological positions became increasingly secular as many came to the conclusion that even Christianity itself was not worth saving. As their estrangement from the old faith grew, the void became filled with drive to obtain political power, and by the mid-1950s, religious Liberals found themselves in a permanent alliance with the leftward elements of the Democratic Party. As the Civil Rights Movement began to wane with the passage of Lyndon Johnson’s legislative agenda in the mid-1960s, Liberals found plenty of other causes to occupy their time, as there was the Vietnam War, women’s liberation, homosexual rights, expansion of abortion rights, and the environmental movement.

Nor did religious Liberals forget their admiration for communists. Even the exposure of Stalin’s enormous crimes did little to stem the enthusiasm these folks had for communist dictators such as Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro. In short, the politics of religious Liberals became identical to the politics of Hollywood (and for that matter, Madison Avenue), despite their alleged aversion to the "shallowness" of media, advertising, and entertainment figures.

In the last four decades, religious Liberalism has grown into an ideology that permits no dissent. At home, the Liberals have joined with anti-Christian groups to restrict the rights of those Christians who fall in the fundamentalist-evangelical camps. As noted in my first article on religious freedom, those who are extremely hostile to conservative Christians have found a home with the Democratic Party, which is also the political base for religious Liberals, whose hatred of fundamentalists and evangelicals literally knows no bounds.

For example, it is no accident that the Liberals have uncritically supported those socialistic regimes abroad that have mercilessly persecuted Bible-believing Christians and Catholics. From Mao’s China to Vietnam to Cambodia to Castro’s Cuba to the former U.S.S.R. to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, religious leftist publications such as Sojourners, The Other Side, Christianity and Crisis and the secular (but popular with religious leftists) The Nation have sung the praises of those who have labored to exterminate those who might be opposed to socialism.

Those who hold to statist ideologies abhor any kind of competition, and anyone who might hold views opposed to religious Liberals have become rivals to be eliminated. Modern Christian Liberalism has moved from a philosophy that emphasized good works to an ideology of social engineering that holds the socialistic state to be the highest order of humanity. It is obvious that such a worldview cannot coexist with a mindset that permits private property, free markets, and freedom of thought and conscience.

A century ago, religious Liberals stated that they were simply trying to "save" Christianity and the institutions that accompanied it. Today, they have abandoned that mission and are now actively working to destroy most vestiges of the historic Christian religion. Of course, that means that people who might actually believe in things like the Virgin Birth, the Ten Commandments, the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, and the primacy of the Holy Scriptures are also impediments to progress.

Religious Liberals, however, cannot simply wish these folks and their beliefs to disappear on their own. They need an ally, and that collaborator, of course, is the anti-religious totalitarian state that seeks its own worship.

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