{"id":15971,"date":"2014-07-23T14:39:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T19:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/megaphonedesigns.com\/~pathway\/?p=15971"},"modified":"2014-08-21T11:42:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T16:42:51","slug":"when-christians-killed-why-muslim-violence-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbcpathway.com\/2014\/07\/23\/when-christians-killed-why-muslim-violence-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"When Christians killed & why Muslim violence continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Roach\/Baptist Press<\/em><\/p>\n

NASHVILLE (BP) \u2013 Rising death tolls in Iraq and Syria, where Muslim extremists are killing in the name of their faith, represent a stark contrast to the relative lack of religiously motivated killing among modern Christians \u2013 a contrast that seminary professors say is attributable to the principle of religious liberty.<\/p>\n

Religious violence declines wherever religious liberty \u201chas been preached and practiced,\u201d Rick Durst, professor of historical theology at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press. He added that Baptists have played a significant role in establishing religious liberty as a tenet of modern Christianity.<\/p>\n

Baptists \u201chave asserted from the beginning that the gospel does not need government preference, that the conscience is inalienable and what we really need is a free church in a free state,\u201d Durst said.<\/p>\n

The history of Christian violence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christians used to kill with some frequency over matters of doctrine. There was the Spanish Inquisition, Calvin\u2019s Geneva, England\u2019s notorious Bloody Mary, the drowning of Anabaptists, the Crusades and more.<\/p>\n

Timothy Paul Jones, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty member and author of Christian History Made Easy<\/i>, told BP \u201cit was the intermingling of church authority and civil authority that made it possible for persons who claimed to be Christians to have the state execute others who also professed Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil and church authority first mixed in the early fourth century when the Roman emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and made it the empire\u2019s preferred religion. Perhaps the first case of one Christian executing another occurred in the late fourth century when Emperor Magnus Maximus beheaded an eccentric ascetic named Priscillian.<\/p>\n

Donatists \u2013 fourth- and fifth-century Christians who held that clergy who renounced their faith under persecution could never administer the sacraments again \u2013 claimed that some of their leaders were executed. But no other sources corroborate their account and it may be an embellishment, Jones noted in written comments. Donatists were persecuted and some may have died in prison without being executed.<\/p>\n

Durst, who believes Donatists were executed, agreed that the mingling of church and civil government helped turn Christians from a persecuted sect into a power group prone to persecute.<\/p>\n

If a state prefers one religion, \u201cyou can invoke the state to enforce [the preferred] religion, to actually attempt to force the conscience,\u201d Durst said.<\/p>\n

An early form of the Inquisition \u2013 a Roman Catholic movement that attempted to purge heretics from the church, at times by execution \u2013 began in the 1100s. In the mid-1200s, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas said heretics \u201cdeserved not only to be separated from the church but eliminated from the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones noted that \u201cin most instances, the church did not actually execute anyone. Instead, church officials declared someone to be a heretic. Then they handed over the offender to civil authorities to be executed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While condemning all killing over religious doctrine, Jones wrote that Christians \u201crarely, if ever, perceived themselves as killing fellow Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether rightly or wrongly, they saw themselves as killing heretics who had rejected some essential aspect of the church\u2019s faith,\u201d said Jones, who is Southern Seminary\u2019s Gheens Professor of Christian Family Ministry. \u201cMany of those who did the killing as well as those they killed may not actually have been believers in Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the Inquisition persisted in various forms for centuries and faithful believers were among those executed. Sixteenth-century Reformers also executed those seen as doctrinally deviant. That included the Anabaptists (European Christians who baptized by immersion) and Michael Servetus (a rival of Calvin who denied the Trinity).<\/p>\n

Beginning of change<\/strong><\/p>\n

An initial hint of religious liberty came from Martin Luther, Jones said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1517 in the Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther wrote that \u2018the burning of heretics is contrary to the will of the Holy Spirit,\u2019\u201d Jones said. \u201cLater, Luther distinguished between mere heretics and heretics who were publicly blasphemous or caused public unrest. The latter were to be executed by the state, according to Luther, and he saw the Anabaptists as part of that latter category.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Luther\u2019s wake, several key factors helped end theologically motivated killing, Jones said. Among them:<\/p>\n