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The Trial of Michael Servetus – May 24, 2015 by David Green

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The Trial of Michael Servetus – May 24, 2015 by David Green The Trial of Michael Servetus – May 24, 2015 by David Green I’ve met a lot of people who were very serious about their religion. I may have mentioned this guy before, but I’ll never forget the street preacher who held court every day on a busy corner at the University of Texas when I was a student there. He was big and burly, dressed head to toe in black, had a long black beard – way before long black beards were cool – and a powerful, booming voice. All the while he spoke, he waved a very thick, very large Bible. He always drew a crowd, and about lunchtime students would sit around – at a distance – just to watch. It was like street theatre. He had one consistent message: the threat of eternal damnation, and there did not seem to be anyone – any group, any passerby – he would not condemn and warn about their fate. Every so often some brave student – or foolish student, depending on your perspective – would try to engage him in a debate, which would turn into a screaming match. And on one occasion the street preacher became so enraged, he threw his Bible at a student, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. But he kept right on preaching. Someone called the police, the student filed an assault charge, and the street preacher was absent for several weeks. Apparently, he was confined to preaching to his fellow inmates. One thing struck me about that street preacher. As wild as he was, and as much as I might have disagreed with his theology, I was grateful we lived in a time and place where someone like him was free to share his religious views. As long as no one got hurt, and he wasn’t causing a disturbance, he could stand on a public corner and preach until his lungs gave out. It was only when he actually did hurt someone by thumping him on the head with a Bible that he got in trouble. And even then, he did not get in trouble for his religious views. It’s just understood. It’s the law. One of the things you and I should all appreciate – even cherish – is the First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing our right to practice and express the religion we believe – or not – without the fear of anyone condemning us, putting us on trial, in jail, or worse. It’s not called the First Amendment for nothing. Freedom of religious expression was of course one of the main reasons – if not the reason – boatloads of Europeans braved the journey to North America, leading eventually to the establishment of United States. When the U.S. Constitution was written, it had only been 230 years earlier that people in Europe who had religious ideas that differed from the status quo, were being hauled before kangaroo courts, charged with heresy, and burned alive at the stake in the public square. That’s hard for us to imagine today, but it was still relatively fresh in the minds of those who drafted the Constitution. It also might be hard for us to fathom today that anyone would be serious enough about his or her religion to condemn anyone to death for questioning it. Or, that anyone would be serious enough about his or her religion that they would actually be willing to die for it. At least, here. Tragically, we know this kind of thing still happens in places where fundamentalist forms of religion are practiced. And where there are no legal guarantees of religious freedom of expression. The combination of those two elements: religious fundamentalism of any kind, and the lack of legal protection for those who don’t agree, inevitably leads to persecution and death. Unless you ever took a course in the history of Christianity, or Europe at the end of the Late Middle Ages, or the Protestant Reformation, it can be kind of shocking to learn just how brutal things could be for anyone who dared to speak their own mind in those days. Especially about religion. The early 1500s – 1517 to be exact – marked the official kickoff of the Reformation, although for hundreds of years there had been mumblings and grumblings about the way the Roman Catholic Church was doing business. The very word “catholic” means universal. So, it was the and only church, the one true faith that tolerated no dissent. It was deeply woven into the fabric of society, politics, every aspect of everyday life. There was little distinction between religious law and civil law. And in many ways the church was corrupt. Popes and cardinals and bishops with incredible power, wealth, ambition, and influence ruled it. The doctrines of the church and the enforcement of those doctrines held sway over your daily life and whatever hope you had for an afterlife. To ever question its authority meant risking your very existence, and condemning your soul to eternal punishment. If you ruled a region or ethnic group, to go against the doctrines or wishes of the church meant going to war. But over time, at the dawn of the renaissance – and usually for reasons that had more to do with political power than religious belief – some local rulers increasingly chafed at the power of the church. Especially those who were more isolated from Rome, geographically. These rulers wanted greater independence, and to achieve that they began supporting local priests who questioned the church’s authority. One such priest, Martin Luther, is credited with starting the Reformation in 1517 by publicly posting a list of grievances against church practices. Among other things he protested the idea of purchasing your way out of hell, and he believed people ought to be able to read the Bible for themselves and not have to follow the Pope’s interpretation of things. This did not make him popular down at the Vatican. But local leaders protected him, and for the first time in centuries, the concept that there might be different ways of thinking about Christianity really took hold. Over the next 20 years or so, more and more local theologians, priests, and politicians also decided to challenge the authority of the Catholic Church. One such person was John Calvin, originally from France. Because of his outspoken views he had to flee to Switzerland and set up shop in Geneva where he was offered protection from angry Catholics. And, if you’re going to start a new movement anywhere, it might as well be in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The unfortunate thing about both Martin Luther and John Calvin was, the more influential their ideas became, the more sure they became about the absolute rightness of their doctrines. And their movements became more intolerant of competing ideas, and more repressive. And again, these were in the days when there were few distinctions between religious and civil law. Until the start of the Age of Enlightenment, over a hundred years later, no one openly challenged the assumption that there even should be a separation of church and state. Meaning, if I’m John Calvin, and have proclaimed through my writings and my preaching to know the one true way of believing and practicing Christianity, and I have the support of the folks in political power to enforce my ideology, I’m not just a religious leader. I’m effectively in charge of the courts. I get to define what’s legal, and what’s not. I get to decide who’s a heretic and who’s not. So, the protest against what had been the established church – the Catholic Church – fractured into a handful of movements that were also very certain about the absolute rightness of their doctrines. And they followed the model already established by the Catholics of not tolerating any dissent. The Catholics really had a problem on their hands, because the Protestant Reformation was like having an old house in a thunderstorm. Every time you looked around you discovered a brand new leak coming from somewhere. There’d be some priest or other educated person with the annoying habit of thinking for themselves, and maybe even started a movement. You could kick them out of the church – excommunicate them – but that didn’t do a whole lot of good because once the genie’s been let out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back in. One of those troublemakers was Michael Servetus. He was a Spanish physician whose hobby was theology. He was highly educated, he was a good writer and he knew the Bible inside and out. And his interpretation of the Bible led him to different conclusions than what was being taught as Catholic doctrine. In 1531, when he was 22 years old, he published a book that got a lot of attention. It was called the Errors of the Trinity. Which pretty much had the same effect on the world, as telling a three year old on Christmas Eve that Santa Claus has died and there won’t be any presents tomorrow. And it’s because Michael Servetus questioned the Catholic idea of the Trinity, modern Unitarians have adopted him as a kind of hero. The first Unitarian. It is true he challenged a particular view of the Trinity, but to be honest if you look at his writings, by today’s standards he still had pretty traditional Christian beliefs. It’s just that his beliefs were different enough at the time; they were a real poke in the eye to Catholics.
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