Christians and Power

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Christians tend to get into trouble once they escape from persecution and gain positions of influence and authority. Perusing the history of the reformation and its three main representatives in the last couple of days has reinforced my convictions in this regard.

John Calvin's Geneva, for instance, was hardly a place most Christians today would want to live in (although perhaps it is a little anachronistic to say that) - to some degree, it rivaled today's Saudi Arabia in terms of behavioral rules. More seriously, however, was Calvin's treatment of heretics. If you have time, look up "Michael Servetus" - a somewhat annoying man who wanted to debate Calvin on the subject of the trinity, which he denied. When he stopped by Geneva, Calvin pushed for him to be executed. Once he was sentenced, Calvin wanted to show mercy by having him beheaded, but Servetus was burnt at the stake instead. Many of his opponents in Geneva, the "libertines", where executed as well once Calvin gained the upper hand.

Huldreich Zwingli, the reformer in Zurich, took a dim view of anabaptists, assenting to the death sentence of Felix Manz for re-baptizing people after they had already been baptized as infants. Manz was then promptly drowned in a nearby river by the community. The confederation of cantons (provinces) which today comprise Switzerland had divided up into catholic and reformed camps. Zwingli hoped to force the catholic cantons to allow protestant preachers to operate on their territory, which they had refused to do. Several battles were fought between them, and Zwingli was killed at a fairly young age in one of them.

I've always highly regarded Martin Luther for his emphasis on the separation of religious and secular authority - the two kingdoms (derived from Jesus' "give to caesar what is caesar's, and God what is God's). Even he, however, was implicated in the deaths of tens of thousands of peasants after they had interpreted Luther's ideas about the priesthood of all believers in a too socio-political manner, seeking to overthrow the established hierarchical and aristocratic order.While Luther did not order the harsh response of the nobility against the peasantry (he wasn't quite that powerful), he seemed to assent to it (with perhaps some regrets). He got into trouble later in life when he counseled Philip of Hesse, a fairly major protestant ruler, to keep his marriage to a second wife secret so as to avoid controversy - the opposite occurred. Most problematically, of course, have been Luther's writing on the Jews, particularly after they failed to convert to Christianity as he was expecting (somewhat eerily, this mirrors Muhammad's evolution of thought towards the Jews as well). Some of this can be attributed to Luther's tendency to write in a rather crude and harsh manner at times when he was in a foul mood.

Of course, the portrayals of these three men here are very selective, and negatively so. My point is not to disparage the reformation, which, in my opinion, was absolutely necessary. Rather, it is to point out that Christians often do not do well in positions of power, particularly if they seek to reshape and purify society in grand new ways. I want to end with one last figure in the reformation, a rather minor one that I have stumbled across. His name is Sebastian Castellio, a fellow french reformer who worked under Calvin in Geneva. Calvin seems to have gotten envious of the younger man, and had him expelled. Castellio criticized Calvin for his treatment of heretics, in particular the Servetus affair. He could not believe that Calvin would persecute people for having divergent believes when Calvin himself had argued against his own persecution by the Catholic authorities in France. Look this guy up too, when you have the chance. Here is a man who recognized the danger of government attempting to control the way people behave in too extensive a manner. I end with a quote of his:

"To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man."