Lots of feedback. From a reader:
Dear Jonah,
You say: “Calvinists and Lutherans beat the stuffing out of each other.” This is true, but only in terms of theological argumentation. They NEVER fought wars against one another. The Thirty Years War was between the Roman Catholics on the one hand and a combination of Lutheran and Calvinist forces on the other. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia was essentially a peace of exhaustion; central Europe was devastated. While later conflicts were not entirely devoid of religious elements, the Catholic powers never again attempted to eliminate Protestantism as such, by force.
You’re quite correct in saying that Protestantism lent itself to being a state religion, as most then believed in a state church. This in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, which was (and is) in concept transnational and more inclined to aspire to being THE only church throughout Christendom. This is not, in a sense, unlike Muslim aspirations for a universal Caliphate; I wonder if Sunni and Sufi would battle each other in such a situation, so as to eliminate the side which has the theology of the matter wrong.
I very much enjoy reading your stuff, but occasionally you get things quite wrong.
Best wishes,
David
Me: I do not dispute that I often get things wrong, or even “quite” wrong. But I also try to correct the record. I’m not sure in this case what I’ve gotten “quite wrong.” David says Lutherans and Calvinists never fought wars against each other. When I have more time I’d like to discuss that further. But that’s not what I had in mind when I wrote that Calvinists and Lutherans beat the stuffing out of each other. Calvinists and Lutherans did clash violently in the German states, including in mob violence in the streets of Berlin.
And:
Your column in USA today was good, but I have a serious gripe with one line (and I expect I have lots of company in this). “Protestantism lent itself to being a state religion even more than Catholicism did.” I think that the historical evidence for this claim is very weak, and the theoretical justification even more so. Catholicism is a much more immanent religion than Protestantism, which naturally leads it to seek state authority (see Innocent III and his view that only the Church can grant a government legitimacy). To the extent that Protestantism originally had statist tendencies, they were largely a response to Catholicism being a state religion through Europe; the statist impulses that came latter were usually found in the various gnostic movements among Protestants, such as the progressives.
As for comparing Luther’s opposition to the sale of indulgences with the jihadis’ fundamentalism…I’m going to assume the comparison was brought on due to the accidental ingestion of something illicit at the NRO fundraiser in SF. Yes, both are about purifying a corrupted religion, but there’s some differences in object, scale, and method.
Me: I simply disagree that Catholicism lends itself more to being a state religion, though I think there’s obviously room for considerable disagreement, particularly considering how many different kinds of Protestantism there are. But the fact is that after the Reformation Europe exploded with Protestant State religions including, for example, the Anglican Church. And, while Catholicism’s role as a State religion was rich and complex, the Church has been grappling with the relationshiop of the City of God and the City of Man for a very long time. Also, as a Church with small-c catholic aspirations, there was always going to be a disconnect between the interests of particular states — which had nonetheless established Catholicism as a State religion — and the Church which meant that it was, as a matter of realpolitik, ill suited to being a state religion at least in certain respects.
As for the comparison between Protestantism and Islam generally, I knew there was no way I could make the comparison at all without offending people which is why I decided to just barrel ahead. However, I did qualify my comments by saying: “And, while enormous theological and historical differences shouldn’t be overlooked, today’s Islamic fundamentalists have quite a bit in common with these religious crusaders.”
There is an endless supply of issues and objections that could not be included in an op-ed length discussion of this sort. All I can tell readers is that simply becasuse I didn’t mention something doesn’t mean that it isn’t important.
Update: Lots of readers disagree with David in the first email. Here are two:
…your reader ‘David’ is in serious error, as one of the assertions you published amounts to an anti-Catholic slur. He writes: “…the Roman Catholic Church, which was (and is) in concept transnational and more inclined to aspire to being THE only church throughout Christendom. This is not, in a sense, unlike Muslim aspirations for a universal Caliphate…” Wrong, wrong, wrong. The claims of the RC Church for universality relate exclusively to the spiritual domain and have nothing to do with political governance. The universal Caliphate is based on the aggregation of temporal power. Aggregating these two either speaks of woeful ignorance, or deliberate malice. Either way, it needs correcting.
And:
David is even more wrong that you say, I think
Luther’s initial view of forms of Protestantism more
radical than his own (e.g. Calvinism) was to crush it
violently.
He is also wrong to say that after Westphalia
“Catholic powers” never tried to eliminate
Protestantism again. That was exactly what Louis XIV
was trying to do (vis-a-vis France’s Hugenots) when he
revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and what James II
had planned if 1685-1688 had not gone as badly for him
as it ended up going.
Protestants fought each other a lot, as you say. The
Tories who supported James were mostly High Anglicans
(there were not enough Catholics in England to sustain
a majority of the personel of the British government
at the time) who were perfectlly willing to make
common cause with Catholics so that they could
persecute and otherwise kill the Baptists, the Quakers
and the other Puritans of England. It was when many
of the Tories saw that James might be more interested
in Catholic supremacy than in crushing the Quakers
(that is, the Quakers and Anglicans were the same to
him), that the other shoe dropped and he was gonna
fall from power.