Religious wars

[arapahoepark]

This day in age we have a tendency to be aghast when we hear of wars between religion or inside religion, but what do you think of all the religious wars that took place after the reformation? Were they justified?

 

[Zach]

I am not particularly well studied in that area of church history, but my gut level reaction to the question is that war is not a very good way to love our enemies. However, wars fought as a way of defense are justified and required. I would love to hear what some of the Church History buffs have to say about these wars because it's been so long since I've read anything about them.

 

[arapahoepark]

like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hydrant.

I can picture that now! (very funny)
As for the war, I'll have to look at some and get back to you....

 

[arapahoepark]

How about for instance, the wars Zwingli was in?

 

[Contra_Mundum]

As is not so unusual, my comments on the topic do not stay focused on the question.... Still, I hope I have something to contribute.



A lot of these conflicts were more about princes fighting for control of various territories. Religious differences could often be simply a pretext for the assertion of control.

At certain times in this world, we see that religion is a very influential factor in society. Today, we are seeing (in the west) public influence of religion on the decline. So, are people any less belligerent? Absolutely not; they simply transfer their rationale for aggression to their new philosophy, often political/economic ideology: so for example Fascism, Marxism, Democracy, etc.

Atheists who like to blame religion as the main cause of the world ills turn a blind eye to the 20th "century of death" led by the officially atheist governments of USSR, ChiCom, Cambodia, and the like. Not that the "religious countries" were blameless, of course; but that the atheists put several centuries of "religious war" in the shade with their incredible body-count. It is laughable when ChristopherHitchens publishes his "god Is Not Great" book, and sanitizes his "atheist camp" by self-serving redefinition of the warlike atheist-regimes as failing by being overly "religious." Perfect example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Great rhetorician, but what a phony.

Why can't the atheist be more honest? I think its because he's emotionally committed to the notion that its religion that's to blame; and he's not that interested in a problem that is rooted in human nature--a nature that he shares. It's just as bad when a Christian "excuses" vicious behavior by Christians, by redefining them as "no true Christians." A proper anthropology doesn't commit him to that kind of self-serving tripe. The problem isn't religion (per se), but the tendency of sin-warped humanity to justify whatever they do by postulating whatever ultimate Justice they believe in must be on their side.


Having said that, it is still true that defensive war is justified, as upholding the 6th commandment. Truly reluctant killing (and not more self-serving apologies for aggression) is not a violation of the law, but an attempt to limit the damage to the innocent targets of aggressors. Zwingli saw himself as a patriot, defending his home. Was he in the right? We'd need a comprehensive look at the politics of the day to attempt a provisional answer. But the fact is that he was killed in battle, against flesh-and-blood, wielding non-spiritual weapons.

What is greatly ironic in my view is that decades earlier at the very dawn of the Reformation when he was a young, brilliant priest, pursuing the new Humanist learning with great vigor (and wholly independent of Luther), Zwingli was an open, vigorous opponent of the mercenary trade. He preached incendiary sermons against the recruiters, who came to his free but poor valleys to siphon off bodies for the wars of distant nobles, including the Pope himself. You know why the Vatican's soldiers are called "Swiss Guards, don't you?

If they came home at all, it was usually maimed. But, next year there were always fresh young men willing to go off with promises of money, glory, and papal indulgences ringing in their ears. Zwingli was fulminating against this abuse of his flock long before 1517. And yet, on the battlefield he was slain himself in an inglorious defeat of his hometown forces by another political alliance (with religious affinities to Rome).


Bottom line: any attempt to analyze the "religious wars" of the 16th-17th centuries that only asks religious questions--as if the whole matter were new to that era, as if the uniformly RomanCatholic princes of previous centuries weren't warring with one another, when they weren't warring together against the Turk(Muslims)--is dealing in a reductionist historiography. The religious differences simply made it easier to engage in "scorched earth" policies against whole populations.

Since most of these wars were engaged either on nominally "Protestant" soil, or as civil wars of mainly Papist monarchs against Protestant minorities (e.g. Spain against the Low Countries; France against the Huguenots), arguably the Protestant forces were the ones fighting for their lives in their own doorways. Of course, I have no interest in defending a single Protestant atrocity committed against his erstwhile enemies, but rather condemn them wherever they may be found, in explicitly moral terms. But the fact is, there were few Protestant invasions or attempted invasions of Romanist lands (as over against, e.g., the Spanish Armada vs. England).

It is in the 18th century that we see a most incredible exhibition of human brutality, but again it is the work of the avowed atheists. Once France reneged on the almost 100yr toleration of Huguenots, revoking the Edict of Nantes (late 17th c., 1685), the industrious and intellectual Protestants fled the country by the thousands, and France began to regress, and pursue typically disastrous economic policies (precursors to modern shenanigans). The secularist door was flung wide, and the anti-religious element (ala Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.) began undermining the Ancien Regime and its religious pretensions, through the literate classes by satire and parody, in particular of the RCC.

The most militant, atheist wing of the Revolution eventually eliminated not only the monarchy, but also their competition within the revolutionaries. The most amazing internecine bloodletting followed, as the upper classes were targeted for death, and the rural-religious peasantry (virtually all RCC now) was also purged. The story of the annihilation of the Vendee (fellow Frenchmen, of all classes, ages and genders living in a region the size of an average U.S. State.) has to be read to be believed; and much of the detail comes from the pens of those who carried out the carnage. It was a war explicitly against the religious, who were "for God and King;" all in the name of Reason and Revolution. "Egalitie" is never more evident than in the tombs. France continued to destroy the flower of its manhood in its subsequent wars against all of Europe for the next 100yrs.


Either there is a true religion, or there isn't. And if there is, and Christianity as the Bible defines it is that religion, then that same Bible tells us that human nature is incorrigible. Whether it manifests itself in self-deification and religious repudiation, or in some form of false-religion, natural man continues to be religious--he just doesn't want to deal with the True God. He can call his aggression and will-to-dominate whatever he likes, and dress it up in philosophic dress, or anti-philosophic nihilism and a stubborn refusal to find coherence in a world of survivors and failures. He can hope and try to function in a kind of "live-and-let-live" manner, when some preexistent society gives him that luxury. But the consistent power-seekers will eventually eat his lunch. Man cannot defy nature, even his own nature, forever.

Wars are an inevitable blot on the sinful human race. War is simply Cain vs. Abel writ large. It is a philosophy, a religion, a belief that man will (or some "have") evolved out of this tendency. It is self-serving propaganda that religion has started all the wars, and further that eliminating the religious "element" from the human psyche will eliminate murderous conflict. "Religion" in that sense is a modern, western, analytic construct. It bears little functional resemblance to the real world.

Individuals and societies have exercised themselves (in various degrees) "devotionally," even as they have "emotionally," "energetically," "sensually," "rationally," and "relationally"--all these (and more) are fibers of a yarn that constitute mankind. There is no way to "pick out" religion in such an understanding, so as to detach it, or artificially neuter its effects on the warp and woof. "Religious" people (however defined) fight all the time; and so do "irreligious" people. Tagging one common motive to human action as "culprit" for aggression is typical of demagoguery.

 

[SolaScriptura]

As is not so unusual, my comments on the topic do not stay focused on the question.... Still, I hope I have something to contribute.



A lot of these conflicts were more about princes fighting for control of various territories. Religious differences could often be simply a pretext for the assertion of control.

At certain times in this world, we see that religion is a very influential factor in society. Today, we are seeing (in the west) public influence of religion on the decline. So, are people any less belligerent? Absolutely not; they simply transfer their rationale for aggression to their new philosophy, often political/economic ideology: so for example Fascism, Marxism, Democracy, etc.

Atheists who like to blame religion as the main cause of the world ills turn a blind eye to the 20th "century of death" led by the officially atheist governments of USSR, ChiCom, Cambodia, and the like. Not that the "religious countries" were blameless, of course; but that the atheists put several centuries of "religious war" in the shade with their incredible body-count. It is laughable when ChristopherHitchens publishes his "god Is Not Great" book, and sanitizes his "atheist camp" by self-serving redefinition of the warlike atheist-regimes as failing by being overly "religious." Perfect example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Great rhetorician, but what a phony.

Why can't the atheist be more honest? I think its because he's emotionally committed to the notion that its religion that's to blame; and he's not that interested in a problem that is rooted in human nature--a nature that he shares. It's just as bad when a Christian "excuses" vicious behavior by Christians, by redefining them as "no true Christians." A proper anthropology doesn't commit him to that kind of self-serving tripe. The problem isn't religion (per se), but the tendency of sin-warped humanity to justify whatever they do by postulating whatever ultimate Justice they believe in must be on their side.


Having said that, it is still true that defensive war is justified, as upholding the 6th commandment. Truly reluctant killing (and not more self-serving apologies for aggression) is not a violation of the law, but an attempt to limit the damage to the innocent targets of aggressors. Zwingli saw himself as a patriot, defending his home. Was he in the right? We'd need a comprehensive look at the politics of the day to attempt a provisional answer. But the fact is that he was killed in battle, against flesh-and-blood, wielding non-spiritual weapons.

What is greatly ironic in my view is that decades earlier at the very dawn of the Reformation when he was a young, brilliant priest, pursuing the new Humanist learning with great vigor (and wholly independent of Luther), Zwingli was an open, vigorous opponent of the mercenary trade. He preached incendiary sermons against the recruiters, who came to his free but poor valleys to siphon off bodies for the wars of distant nobles, including the Pope himself. You know why the Vatican's soldiers are called "Swiss Guards, don't you?

If they came home at all, it was usually maimed. But, next year there were always fresh young men willing to go off with promises of money, glory, and papal indulgences ringing in their ears. Zwingli was fulminating against this abuse of his flock long before 1517. And yet, on the battlefield he was slain himself in an inglorious defeat of his hometown forces by another political alliance (with religious affinities to Rome).


Bottom line: any attempt to analyze the "religious wars" of the 16th-17th centuries that only asks religious questions--as if the whole matter were new to that era, as if the uniformly RomanCatholic princes of previous centuries weren't warring with one another, when they weren't warring together against the Turk(Muslims)--is dealing in a reductionist historiography. The religious differences simply made it easier to engage in "scorched earth" policies against whole populations.

Since most of these wars were engaged either on nominally "Protestant" soil, or as civil wars of mainly Papist monarchs against Protestant minorities (e.g. Spain against the Low Countries; France against the Huguenots), arguably the Protestant forces were the ones fighting for their lives in their own doorways. Of course, I have no interest in defending a single Protestant atrocity committed against his erstwhile enemies, but rather condemn them wherever they may be found, in explicitly moral terms. But the fact is, there were few Protestant invasions or attempted invasions of Romanist lands (as over against, e.g., the Spanish Armada vs. England).

It is in the 18th century that we see a most incredible exhibition of human brutality, but again it is the work of the avowed atheists. Once France reneged on the almost 100yr toleration of Huguenots, revoking the Edict of Nantes (late 17th c., 1685), the industrious and intellectual Protestants fled the country by the thousands, and France began to regress, and pursue typically disastrous economic policies (precursors to modern shenanigans). The secularist door was flung wide, and the anti-religious element (ala Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.) began undermining the Ancien Regime and its religious pretensions, through the literate classes by satire and parody, in particular of the RCC.

The most militant, atheist wing of the Revolution eventually eliminated not only the monarchy, but also their competition within the revolutionaries. The most amazing internecine bloodletting followed, as the upper classes were targeted for death, and the rural-religious peasantry (virtually all RCC now) was also purged. The story of the annihilation of the Vendee (fellow Frenchmen, of all classes, ages and genders living in a region the size of an average U.S. State.) has to be read to be believed; and much of the detail comes from the pens of those who carried out the carnage. It was a war explicitly against the religious, who were "for God and King;" all in the name of Reason and Revolution. "Egalitie" is never more evident than in the tombs. France continued to destroy the flower of its manhood in its subsequent wars against all of Europe for the next 100yrs.


Either there is a true religion, or there isn't. And if there is, and Christianity as the Bible defines it is that religion, then that same Bible tells us that human nature is incorrigible. Whether it manifests itself in self-deification and religious repudiation, or in some form of false-religion, natural man continues to be religious--he just doesn't want to deal with the True God. He can call his aggression and will-to-dominate whatever he likes, and dress it up in philosophic dress, or anti-philosophic nihilism and a stubborn refusal to find coherence in a world of survivors and failures. He can hope and try to function in a kind of "live-and-let-live" manner, when some preexistent society gives him that luxury. But the consistent power-seekers will eventually eat his lunch. Man cannot defy nature, even his own nature, forever.

Wars are an inevitable blot on the sinful human race. War is simply Cain vs. Abel writ large. It is a philosophy, a religion, a belief that man will (or some "have") evolved out of this tendency. It is self-serving propaganda that religion has started all the wars, and further that eliminating the religious "element" from the human psyche will eliminate murderous conflict. "Religion" in that sense is a modern, western, analytic construct. It bears little functional resemblance to the real world.

Individuals and societies have exercised themselves (in various degrees) "devotionally," even as they have "emotionally," "energetically," "sensually," "rationally," and "relationally"--all these (and more) are fibers of a yarn that constitute mankind. There is no way to "pick out" religion in such an understanding, so as to detach it, or artificially neuter its effects on the warp and woof. "Religious" people (however defined) fight all the time; and so do "irreligious" people. Tagging one common motive to human action as "culprit" for aggression is typical of demagoguery.

Ben likey.