Will Sellers: Dividing church and state; uniting faith and reason
Five Hundred years ago, the Protestant Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli’s theology was designated the official religion of Zurich. The rumblings of the Reformation were just starting. As education expanded, literacy allowed more people to read the Bible, increasing curiosity about theology. Families sent their best and brightest sons to become ordained priests. Seminaries become a concentration of intellectually curious male teenagers; rather than accept the authority of the status quo, these seminarians questioned the practices of the church when compared to their reading of the Scriptures. Like Martin Luther, Zwingli had no desire to break from the established church. Instead, he simply wanted to reform the church and conform its practices with his understanding of the Bible. Having some sense of academic freedom in debating points of theology, Zwingli asked the Zurich City Council to convene a debate to decide which doctrines should be allowed to be preached in the city. At this time, there was only one church, both literally and figuratively. Zwingli was designated as the minister for the church in Zurich. He was well-educated and influenced by the humanist Erasmus into studying not only the Bible but also other scholarly texts of the virtuous pagans. Zwingli was an engaging and innovative preacher and known for ministering to the sick and downtrodden. As he began his ministry in Zurich, his unique worship style included reading passages from the Bible in the language of his mostly illiterate congregation. And, as he read through each verse, he would comment on the words of the passage, providing interpretation and application to current issues. Working his way through the Bible, Zwingli began to note differences between the practices of the church and passages in the Bible. His sermons expressed thoughts that were at odds with certain customs and traditions of the establishment. At first, some of these differences were minor, but, as he preached his way through the Bible, the differences became more significant. When some complained, Zwingli decided the best way to deal with accusations of error was to host a debate. At his request, the city council asked the Bishop to come and discuss Zwingli’s 67 points of theology. Amazingly enough, in January of 1523, Zwingli had not heard of Martin Luther or his 95 theses, but, in many ways, his concerns were very similar. It is hard to imagine that the agenda for any city council meeting would include a theological debate to decide which Biblical teaching a city would embrace, but it occurred in Zurich. Separation of church and state was a foreign concept. Government officials and clergy worked together as faith was established, recognized, and supported by the government. Freedom of conscience and liberty of belief was virtually a heretical abstraction. It made just as much sense for a city to decide the faith of its citizens as it would today to decide a zoning variance. The debate was held. When the Bishop’s scholars failed to effectively debate Zwingli and were unprepared to answer his 67 questions, the city councilors voted and confirmed that Zwingli would continue to be their minister, and his teaching would be the established beliefs of Zurich. Zwingli’s triumph was the beginning of the Swiss Reformation and would have a lasting impact on the goals, beliefs, and techniques of Protestantism. But with the city establishing a church and the church taking on roles of the state, a collision course was bound to occur. And it did. Rather than allowing debate over issues and differing ideas, Zwingli did what he accused others of doing. He developed a smug dogmatism, accepting only his beliefs as accurate and squelching all dissent. As a result, he used the power of the state on behalf of the church to punish and even execute those with opposing views. Instead of becoming a bastion of toleration, Zurich became known for persecutions. So great was Zwingli’s zeal for his faith, he encouraged a war against other Swiss cities that rejected his belief system but continued to acknowledge the authority of the Pope. Zwingli would tragically die on the battlefield, literally fighting for his faith. The beliefs that Zwingli held inform Protestant Christianity today. However, his practices in advocating for a politically established church and imposing his beliefs as an official religion without room for dissent could not survive. What Zwingli and other reformers failed to understand is that the faith they developed from their reading of the Bible would be similarly experienced by others. But, as with any writing, people find different interpretations based on any number of grammatical conventions, preconceived notions, prejudices, or personal experiences. In establishing a state-sponsored religion, Zwingli should have realized that the ability to argue beliefs and allow open debate is as good for faith as for any thought process. Ideas are polished by debate, and dissent makes faith stronger. A healthy dose of skepticism is good for confirming aspects of faith. For a political community to prosper, toleration of diverse beliefs is entirely appropriate. Learning from this experience, the United States Constitution was an attempt to allow all beliefs to compete for the souls of the faithful. Americans realized that the personal nature of faith made it impossible to have any government impose it. Unlike the cities and other political subdivisions of the Old World, America would not allow state religions and would opt, instead, for freedom of conscience. While governments cannot designate and support one faith, it can limit practices so that faith doesn’t become a license or an excuse to break established law. Zwingli and the other reformers showed that engaging in debate about faith was intellectually progressive. But government can only provide a framework of allowing open debate so that faith is discussed and opposing points of view are respected. The debate, however, should never stop, but continue as ideas are challenged and discussed to provide a moral fabric of virtue, peace, toleration, and goodwill to stabilize the state. Will Sellers is a graduate of Hillsdale College and an Associate Justice on
Will Sellers: Liberty of conscience didn’t come easy
We take freedom of conscience for granted, but 500 years ago, accepting and practicing beliefs outside of the mainstream was deadly. The 1521 Diet of Worms was a legislative gathering held in Worms (one of the oldest cities in Europe) to consider Martin Luther’s theology. The stakes were extraordinarily high as Luther, a mere monk, parried with the leading Roman Catholic scholars of his day. The ramifications of this meeting, while couched in religious terms, had clear political underpinnings. So much so that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presided over the “meeting,” which allowed the trappings of his office to validate the ultimate decision. Martin Luther’s heretical writings were to be publicly reviewed and examined, and while he was given safe conduct to attend the diet, that he was a heretic was a foregone conclusion. The issue before the diet was not the persuasiveness of Luther’s argument but whether he would recant. When Luther appealed to his conscience and argued that his conviction about his beliefs was firm and not subject to change, he set himself in the crosshairs of the 16th century religious and political establishment. Heresy and blasphemy were capital offenses. Keeping the doctrines of the Church pure and undefiled was taken quite seriously, and anyone advocating a different belief system was considered an outlaw with no legal process available for protection. Inappropriate beliefs about religion might lead others to perdition, so political power was enlisted to stop errant beliefs and prohibit any doctrine that was not officially sanctioned. But mandating beliefs or emotions fails to consider human advancement in rationally considering ideas, accepting some while rejecting others, and developing a personal system of faith and knowledge. The most critical idea inadvertently let loose by the Edict of Worms was that in matters of faith, people could think for themselves and choose a belief system appealing to the conviction of their conscience. While it would be easy to accuse the Holy Roman Empire of attempting to eliminate competing faiths, protestants held an equally monolithic view resulting in religious wars that seemed to miss the point of the faith each side advocated. Protestants, while wanting to believe as they wished, were not willing to extend this liberality to others within their realm of influence. The Puritan poet John Milton would see his writings banned by Cromwell’s Commonwealth, causing him to write one of the first essays against censorship and in favor of Christian liberty. Said Milton, “Let Truth and falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” But even in the new world, liberty of conscience was slow to catch on. The Dutch Reformed Peter Stuyvesant attempted to limit the worship of Quakers within his jurisdiction. Refusing to submit, the residents of Flushing, New York published the Flushing Remonstrance, which advocated for freedom of conscience not only to Quakers but also to “Jews, Turks, and Egyptians.” Controlling beliefs and limiting ideas was nothing new for religion, but once institutional religion was de-coupled from government, limiting dissension became applied more frequently in the realm of politics. Often when a new political regime became ascendant in countries without a history of personal freedoms, dissent was stifled, disagreements became illegal and hagiographic propaganda replaced information. One area in which politicians around the world agree is how much they despise opposing viewpoints. Even in seemingly democratic countries with a history of freedoms supported by the rule of law, politicians simply hate criticism and will attempt to restrain if not eliminate it. Usually, this takes the form of mild disgust, but at times it can prove to be both personally and financially costly to oppose the ruling elite. We expect this from authoritarian governments, but when we find democratically elected governments engaging in censorship and limiting dissent, we should be troubled. Consider the Reuther Memorandum of the 1960s. Seemingly established to advocate for fairness and equality of the public airwaves, Bobby Kennedy used the Reuther brothers’ report to curtail political opposition with breathtaking success. But this is not a liberal vs. conservative issue as regulation and limitations of speech are subtly advocated by all sides. Even founding father John Adams had Congress pass the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to speak, write, or print criticisms of the government that were arguably false, scandalous, or malicious. Numerous newspaper editors were arrested, and some even imprisoned under this act. In recent memory, both conservative and liberal groups have advocated using government regulations to limit their respective definition of offensive speech. A journalist of the Jacksonian era, William Leggett, warned: “if the government once begins to discriminate as to what is orthodox and what heterodox in opinion, what is safe and unsafe in tendency, farewell, a long farewell to our freedom.” Ideas, whether in opposition or support of a politician or political ideology, should never be restricted. It is much better to have ideas aired and let people decide. Bad ideas typically die a quiet death, but good ideas live on and become part of the progress of democratic government. Rather than restrict poorly thought ideas, it is better to let them be proclaimed loudly and see them disintegrate on impact. Many years ago, Jerry Rubin encouraged student protestors to burn down a historic academic building. The more he shouted, the more the crowd responded, but no one was willing to act because no one was willing to torch a building to support academic freedom. Bad ideas are like that. Giving someone a megaphone and unlimited time can be their undoing. Public debate, like sunlight, is a great disinfectant. Debate and open discussion forces ideas to compete against practical reality, thus winnowing out the ill-conceived and fostering workable solutions. So, 500 years ago western civilization moved toward allowing people to think and believe as they followed their convictions, but even Luther and his followers failed to see the broad
