Honest Doubt Part 6 - Breaking Up

This episode was about the Reformation - the thought of Martin Luther and John Calvin and the formation of Protestantism. It showed both how the Reformers sought to create a more authentic Christianity with a return to its origins, but opened a Pandora's box of dissent that could only be confronted through violent persecution.

Because religious experience is so subjective, it seems natural that it takes many different forms. Only when there is a strong political power to prevent difference does religion retain any semblance of orthodoxy and consistency. Prior to the Reformation the Roman Catholic church had allowed many different expressions of spirituality in terms of religious ways of life, even if the words used to express religious doctrines were carefully controlled. The Catholic church would probably have been able to include within itself something like the Reformation - in terms of a Christianity more faithful to the early believers - if the Reformers hadn't so clearly attacked the financial income of the church.

As it was the Reformation created numerous divisions of belief and only violence was able to reign in the different expressions of faith. This contradiction of the Reformation - that one's conscience should be the final arbiter between an individual and God while at the same time murdering those who disagreed with whichever Protestant sect had control of the state - led to the Enlightenment, where religious dissent pushed for the logical political expression of freedom of conscience - toleration of different beliefs by the state.

The question of toleration is therefore essential for religion - given that the nature of religion is to generate difference. It is arguable that the notorious "genocide" texts of the Old Testament are more political than religious, as there are other texts that encourage toleration:

Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

The same law should apply to both Hebrew and stranger:
One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you. (Exodus 12:49)

The stranger should rest from work on the Sabbath the same as the Hebrew:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: (Exodus 20:20)

The basic argument is that the Israelites should remember that they lived in the land of Egypt, and they should treat others who live in their land how they would have wanted to be treated the Egyptians to treat them.

Similarly in the New Testament "love your enemies" might reasonably be assumed to include toleration of difference.

It is similarly interesting that Calvin uses the doctrine of "election" to separate out "saved" from "damned" but in the Bible it could be argued that God chooses individuals to benefit the community - Joseph is chosen to help his family, Moses is chosen to lead Israel out of slavery.

It could therefore be argued that the final expressions of tolerance within western secular society that we see today at least partly have their roots within the practical religious need to value those who are different to ourselves.