The Triumph of Christianity (40 page)
It was this mess that the Inquisition was commissioned to sort out. The inquisitors were able to stifle much of the mob action and disorder, but could not forge a lasting peace, with the tragic result being the edict of 1492 ordering that Spain’s remaining Jews either convert or leave. However, the Inquisition eventually dissipated the conflicts over “crypto-Jews.” It did so largely by failing to discover many offenders. Although many cases were tried, the actual total was far below what would have been expected given the huge and angry literature on the topic, which often seems to suggest that most
conversos
were dragged before the inquisitors. The data for the Inquisition in Aragon (1540–1640)—one of the two divisions of the Spanish Inquisition, and the one for which executions are broken down by offense—show that only 942 or 3.6 percent of all the cases tried involved charges of being a Marrano, far below the numbers tried for being Moriscos or Luteranos (Protestants). Some of these alleged Marranos were exonerated. Not only that, but only 16 of the 942 defendants (1.7 percent) were executed.
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So much then for claims such as that by Cecil Roth (1899–1970), who wrote that Marranos “furnished a disproportionately large number... of those condemned to death,”
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of Netanyahu’s fraudulent charge that the Inquisition “burned them by the thousands.”
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Moriscos
Morisco
refers to a Muslim who falsely converted rather than leave Spain subsequent to the Christian Reconquest. Moriscos posed a far more serious threat than did Jews or converts from Judaism. They were far more numerous, they had a distinctive geography wherein they often constituted the majority of residents, they spoke their own language, and their conversions often had been compelled. Indeed, the Moriscos mounted several bloody insurrections.
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Even so, many Jewish historians have claimed that Moriscos were treated far more leniently than Marranos by the Inquisition: “far fewer Moriscos than conversos [crypto-Jews] were sentenced.”
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Wrong! The Inquisition in Aragon tried 7,472 cases based on accusations of being a Morisco, or 29 percent of all the cases it heard. Of these, 181 were executed, or 2.4 percent, which was slightly more than the rate for Marranos.
Luteranos
The various Protestant Reformations made little headway in Spain. In large part this was because earlier attempts at church reform had been extremely successful in Spain. As Yale’s celebrated Roland Bainton (1894–1984) put it: “Spain originated the Catholic reformation before ever the Protestant had begun.”
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The result was a remarkable increase in popular support for the church and the lack of the substantial discontent that elsewhere favored Lutheranism and Calvinism. In fact, most who embraced or even dabbled in Protestantism (referred to in Spain as
Luteranos
) seem to have been clergy. In any event, 2,284 people were brought before the Inquisition in Aragon charged with being Luteranos, or 8.8 percent of all the cases heard. These cases resulted in 122 executions, or 5.3 percent of those charged—more than twice the rate as for those charged as Moriscos.
During the life of the Spanish Inquisition all European nations persecuted religious minorities and dissenters.
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In addition to hunting for Lollards and Lutherans, the English searched high and low for undercover Catholic priests and executed those they found. The French martyred thousands of Huguenots and the Dutch Calvinists also hanged priests. Anabaptists were harassed in both the Lutheran and the Catholic parts of Germany, while in Geneva Calvin persecuted both Anabaptists and Catholics. But somehow, these activities have been treated as “different” from the Spanish Inquisition’s persecution of Luteranos
.
Sexuality
T
HE INQUISITORS ALSO CONCERNED
themselves with sexual misbehavior, dividing the offenses into four main categories.
Solicitation
involved a priest using the confessional and his powers of granting or withholding absolution to have sexual activities with a woman. Of the 44,701 cases in the main database, there are 1,131 cases of solicitation, or 2.5 percent of all cases. A priest convicted of this offense could at the very least expect a severe flogging, followed by lifelong shame. Those discovered to have had an extensive career of solicitations were sentenced to long terms of penal servitude, and several notorious cases resulted in executions.
Bigamy
probably was quite widespread in this era when divorce was nearly unavailable, but only rarely did it become such a public scandal as to attract the attention of the Inquisition (on grounds that it was sacrilegious). Even so, the major database includes 2,645 cases of bigamy (or 5.9 percent of the total). In addition to cancellation of the second marriage, the usual penalty involved only public disgrace and a period of banishment from the community of residence. Women made up 20 percent of those convicted of bigamy.
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Sodomy
primarily consisted of male homosexuality, but some cases of female homosexuality also were tried, as were some cases involving heterosexual anal intercourse (usually based on accusations by a wife). Sodomy is not broken out in the statistics based on the 44,701 cases because in 1509 the
Suprema
ordered that “no action be taken against homosexuals except when heresy was involved.”
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That is, action was to be taken only when claims were made that sodomy was not a sin. Consequently, the Inquisition of Castile “never again exercised jurisdiction over sodomy,”
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although the Inquisition of Aragon continued to do so. However, the published data are based only on the cities of Barcelona, Valencia, and Saragossa (1560–1700). Of the 1,829 cases of sexual offences in these three cities, sodomy prosecutions made up 38 percent.
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In the execution data, also based only on the Aragon Inquisition (1540–1640), 167 were executed for “Sodomy,” as compared with 12 for “Superstition and Witchcraft” and 122 for being “Protestants.”
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Even so, the Inquisition was more lenient toward sodomy (and most sexual offenses) than were the secular courts. Most of those convicted of sodomy by the Inquisition were whipped or given short terms in the galleys, and even many of the death sentences were commuted. By contrast, in this era the secular courts in most of Europe treated homosexuality as a capital offense.
71
For example, from the twelfth century on, civil courts in France and Italy sent “sodomites” to the stake. Henry VIII requested that parliament pass an “anti-buggery” law and in 1533 a statute was passed making sodomy punishable by hanging. In 1730 Holland also made sodomy a capital crime. In practice, however, the general public was reluctant to accuse people of sodomy, and the courts, both secular and religious, were not eager to bring them to trial.
Bestiality
accounted for 27 percent of the cases of sexual offences in the three cities, although sometimes bestiality was included in the sodomy category rather than being separated. This offense usually involved young, single men, often those employed as herders, although several women also were convicted of sex with pet dogs. Bestiality was “almost invariably punished ruthlessly”
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by the Inquisition. But even here, as in all other cases involving sexual offences, “penalties to women remained far milder than those punishing male sexuality.”
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Book Burning
I
T IS TRUE THAT
the Inquisition did burn some books. Many of these contained theological heresies such as Lutheran doctrines, but very few, if any, scientific books were burned—the Spanish never even put Galileo’s works on their list of forbidden books.
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It seems of particular interest that of the books that the Inquisition did burn, most were condemned as pornographic!
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It seems that although the first printed books were Bibles and prayer books, quite soon printers discovered an eager, if underground, market for smut.
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Conclusion
G
REAT HISTORICAL MYTHS DIE
hard even when there is no vested resistance to new evidence. But in this case, many recent writers continue to spread the traditional myths about this “holy terror” even though they are fully aware of the new findings.
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They do so because they are determined to show that religion, and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity. So these writers casually dismiss the new studies as written by “apologists”
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and go on as before about the sadistic monsters in black robes.
Chapter Twenty
Pluralism and American Piety
C
HRISTIANITY WAS TRANSFORMED AND RENEWED
by crossing the Atlantic. Not in Latin America, which until recently was a replica of the superficial piety of Europe (see chapter 22). But in North America, Christianity encountered invigorating new conditions.
Even in early times, Europeans marveled at the high level of religious commitment in America, despite the fact that it was very low by today’s standards. In 1776, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, only about 17 percent of those living in one of the thirteen colonies actually belonged to a religious congregation
1
; hence more people probably were drinking in the taverns on Saturday night than turned up in church on Sunday morning. As for this being an “era of Puritanism,” from 1761 through 1800, a third (33.7 percent) of all first births in New England occurred after less than nine months of marriage, and therefore single women in Colonial New England were more likely to engage in premarital sex than to attend church.
2
Nevertheless, in 1818 the radical English journalist William Cobbett (1763–1835) was astonished by the number and size of the churches in American villages: “and, these, mind, not poor shabby Churches, but each of them larger and better built and far handsomer than Botley Church [the lone church in his English village], with the church-yards kept in the neatest order, with a headstone to almost every grave. As to the Quaker Meeting-house, it would take Botley Church into its belly, if you were first to knock off the steeple.”
3
A few years later the famous French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) noted that “there is not a country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”
4
At midcentury, a Swiss theologian observed that attendance at Lutheran churches was far higher in New York City than in Berlin.
5
If European visitors were amazed at American religiousness, Americans who travelled in Europe were equally amazed at the lack of religious participation they observed there. For example, Robert Baird (1798–1863), the first major historian of American religion, reported in 1844, after spending eight years on the continent, that nowhere in Europe did church attendance come close to the level taken for granted by Americans.
6
But why? Why did America become so well churched? What are the effects of the extraordinary religious pluralism that exists in the United States, and how do these many faiths manage to coexist peacefully? These questions are the focus of this chapter.
Colonial Pluralism
T
HE VERY LOW LEVEL
of religious participation that existed in the thirteen colonies merely reflected that the settlers brought with them the low level that prevailed in Europe. Keep in mind that few of the colonists were members of intense sects who had come to establish Zion in America—Puritans did not even make up the majority of persons aboard the
Mayflower
. That the Puritans ruled Massachusetts, imposing their morality into law, has tended to mask the fact that, even in Massachusetts most colonists did not belong to a church congregation—only 22 percent did belong.
In addition, some of the larger denominations, such as the Anglicans and Lutherans, were overseas branches of state churches and not only displayed the lack of effort typical of such establishments, but were remarkable for sending disreputable clergy to minister to the colonies. As the celebrated Edwin S. Gaustad (1923–2011) noted, there was constant grumbling by Anglican vestrymen “about clergy that left England to escape debts or wives or onerous duties, seeing [America] as a place of retirement or refuge.”
7
The great evangelist George Whitefield (1714–1770) noted in his journal that it would be better “that people had no minister than such as are generally sent over... who, for the most part, lead very bad examples.”
8
Finally, most colonies suffered from having a legally established denomination, supported by taxes. The Anglicans were the established church in New York, Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. The Congregationalists (Puritans) were established in New England. There was no established church in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and, not surprisingly, these two colonies had higher membership rates than did any other colony.
9
Therein lies a clue as to the rise of the amazing levels of American piety. Recall from chapter 17 that Adam Smith explained that established religions, being monopolies, inevitably are lax and lazy and that ever since Constantine embraced the faith, European Christianity has suffered from a lack of effort to arouse popular commitment. But these lazy monopolies did not survive in the United States.
Following the Revolutionary War, state religious establishments were discontinued (although the Congregationalists held on as the established church of Massachusetts until 1833), and even in 1776 there was substantial pluralism building up everywhere (see table 20.1). This increased rapidly with the appearance of many new Protestant sects—most of them being of local origins. With all of these denominations placed on an equal footing, there being no government favoritism, there arose intense competition among the churches for member support. That was the “miracle” that mobilized Americans on behalf of faith with the result that by 1850 a third of Americans belonged to a local congregation. By the start of the twentieth century, half of Americans belonged, and today about 70 percent belong.
10
Table 20.1: Number of Congregations in the Thirteen Colonies by Denomination, 1776
Sources: Paullin,
Atlas of the Geography of the United States
(1932), and Finke and Stark,
The Churching of America, 1776–1990
(1992; 2005).
Throughout the nineteenth century, there was widespread awareness that it was competitive pluralism that accounted for the increasingly great differences in the piety of Americans and Europeans. The German nobleman Francis Grund (1798–1863), who arrived in Boston in 1827, noted that establishment makes the clergy “indolent and Lazy,” because
a person provided for cannot, by the rules of common sense, be supposed to work as hard as once who has to exert himself for a living.... Not only have Americans a greater number of clergymen than, in proportion to the population, can be found on the Continent or in England; but they have not one idler amongst them; all of them being obliged to exert themselves for the spiritual welfare of their respective congregations. The Americans, therefore, enjoy a three-fold advantage: they have more preachers; they have more active preachers, and they have cheaper preachers than can be found in any part of Europe.
11
Another German, the militant atheist Karl T. Griesinger, complained in 1852 that the separation of church and state in America fueled religious efforts: “Clergymen in America [are] like other businessmen; they must meet competition and build up a trade.... Now it is clear... why attendance is more common here than anywhere else in the world.”
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Pluralism Misconceived
O
DDLY, THE RECOGNITION THAT
competition among religious groups was the dynamic behind the ever-rising levels of American religious participation withered away in the twentieth century as social scientists began to reassert the charges long leveled against pluralism by monopoly religions: that disputes among religious groups undercut the credibility of all, and hence religion is strongest where it enjoys an unchallenged monopoly. Thus Steve Bruce claimed that “pluralism threatens the plausibility of religious belief systems by exposing their human origins. By forcing people to do religion as a matter of personal choice rather than as fate, pluralism universalizes ‘heresy.’ A chosen religion is weaker than a religion of fate because we are aware that we chose the gods rather than the gods choosing us.”
13
Long before Bruce ventured these lines, this view had been formulated into elegant sociology by the prominent Peter Berger, who repeatedly argued that pluralism inevitably destroys the plausibility of all religions because only where a single faith prevails can there exist a “sacred canopy” that spreads a common outlook over an entire society, inspiring universal confidence and assent. For, as Berger explained, “the classical task of religion” is to construct “a common world within which all of social life receives ultimate meaning binding on everybody.”
14
Thus, by ignoring the stunning evidence of American history, Bruce, Berger, and their many supporters concluded that religion was doomed by pluralism and that to survive, therefore, modern societies would need to develop new, secular canopies.
But Berger was quite wrong, as even he eventually admitted quite gracefully (see chapter 21). It seems to be the case that people don’t need all-embracing sacred canopies, but are sufficiently served by “sacred umbrellas,” to use Christian Smith’s wonderful image.
15
Smith explained that people don’t need to agree with all their neighbors in order to sustain their religious convictions; they only need a set of like-minded friends—pluralism does not challenge the credibility of religions because groups can be entirely committed to their faith despite the presence of others committed to another. Thus, in a study of Catholic charismatics, Mary Jo Neitz found their full awareness of religious choices “did not undermine their own beliefs. Rather they felt they had ‘tested’ the belief system and been convinced of its superiority.”
16
And in her study of secular Jewish women who convert to Orthodoxy, Lynn Davidman stressed how the “pluralization and multiplicity of choices available in the contemporary United States can actually strengthen Jewish communities.”
17
But if they have been forced to retreat from the charge that pluralism is incompatible with faith, critics of pluralism now advance spurious notions about the consequences of competition for religious authenticity. The new claim is that competition must “cheapen” religion—that in an effort to attract supporters, churches will be forced to vie with one another to offer less demanding faiths, to ask for less in the way of member sacrifices and levels of commitment. Here too it was Peter Berger who made the point first, and most effectively. Competition among American faiths, he wrote, has placed all churches at the mercy of “consumer preference.”
18
Consumers will prefer “religious products that can be made consonant with secularized consciousness.” For “religious contents to be modified in a secularizing direction... may lead to a deliberate excision of all or nearly all ‘supernatural’ elements from the religious tradition... [or] it may just mean that the ‘supernatural’ elements are de-emphasized or pushed into the background, while the institution is ‘sold’ under the label of values congenial to secularized consciousness.”
19
If so, then the successful churches will be those that require no leap of faith vis-à-vis the supernatural, impose few moral requirements, and are content with minimal levels of participation and support. In this way, pluralism leads to the ruination of religion. Thus did Oxford’s Bryan Wilson (1926–2005) dismiss the vigor of American religion on grounds of “the generally accepted superficiality of much religion in American society,”
20
smugly presuming that somehow greater depth was being achieved in the empty churches of Britain and the Continent. In similar fashion, John Burdick proposed that competition among religions reduces their offerings to “purely opportunistic efforts.”
21
Successful Religious “Firms”
T
HE CONCLUSION THAT COMPETITION
among faiths will favor “low cost” religious organizations mistakes price for value. As is evident in most consumer markets, people do not usually rush to purchase the cheapest model or variety, but attempt to maximize by selecting the item that offers the most for their money—that offers the best value. In the case of religion, people do not flock to faiths that ask the least of them, but to those that credibly offer the most religious rewards for the sacrifices required to qualify. This has been demonstrated again and again. For a variety of reasons, various Christian churches have greatly reduced what they ask of their members, both in terms of beliefs and morality, and this always has been followed by a rapid decline in their membership and a lack of commitment on the part of those who stay. Thus were the dominant American denominations of 1776 overwhelmed by the arrival on the scene of far stricter denominations such as the Methodists who had, by 1850, become by far the largest denomination in America. Then, by the dawn of the twentieth century, the Methodists had greatly reduced the moral requirements to be a member in good standing and their decline already had begun. Meanwhile, the Southern Baptists continued to be an unflinchingly “expensive” religion and soon replaced the Methodists as the nation’s largest Protestant body—and so they remain.
22