Why Do Protestants Get A Free Pass?

[DarthKoopa]

So I am finishing up my western civ class this week. We are currently studying the Protestant reformation.

Whenever you bring up things like the inquisition or the crusades Protestants are quick to point out that these things were done by the Catholics and not by true Christians. Indeed I used to say the same thing to people.

 

Well first of all the Protestant movement was drivin by political motivations. It was embraced by local rulers who wished to free themselves from the rule of the Catholic Church. The anabaptist formed an army and sacked a city. Calvin had people executed for heresy. In fact this movement led to over 100 years of warfare in Europe.

 

Oh and Martin Luther was the biggest Jew hater. He is like John the Baptist of Hitler.

[Thurisaz]

Yeah if someone wants to claim that protestants are/have been good people that someone better have some good points to state on the 30-year-war in Europe. Actually it raged mostly in Germany. If memory serves some 75 % of "our" population perished in that war.

 

Even if you try and make the basically valid point that the war only started as a religious pissing contest and then quickly got political in nature, still both side, yes cocklicks and protestants, didn't exactly try to be good christians like their jebus supposedly told them... otherwise that war wouldn't have lasted nearly as long no?

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

They don't get a free pass in my opinion. Christianity is a poison, regardless of which version of it people believe in. Liberal types of Christianity are like drugs that give people a good high, while the extreme fundamentalist types make people insane.

[Deva]

I will never give them a free pass.

 

In addition to the above mentioned atrocities, their views of man/nature led them to destroy many species of bird and animal in this country and basically wipe out the southern forests of the US. Not to mention their treatment of the Native Americans and the slavery issue.  Its a fact that the slavery issue led to the creation of the Southern Baptists.

[leopardus]

Don't forget Martin Luther's taking sides in the Peasant revolt.

Don't forget the Salem witch trials.

American "Manifest Destiny" anyone?

Anybody familiar with the defenders of slavery?

How about... who was most committed against interacial mixing of any sort?

Admitedly the Catholics do have bigger numbers, but damn man! they had a 1500 year head start!

[directionless]

It just occurred to me that using the name "Protestant Reformation" implies Catholic corruption.  Do the Catholics have a different name for it?

[RipVanWinkle]

Deva: You beat me to it. The protestants murdered many Catholics and other protestants in the religious

wars in Europe.

Also, the American Indians genocide was no small thing. Look and the condition of moat of the Indian

nations today in America. The only "good" thing that has happened to the Indians since we quit

murdering them is that a few of the nations can make a bunch of money running gambling casinos. But

that money has not found its way back to improve the lives of the vast majority of the nations who

continue to live in squalor, as they have for over 200 years.

 

Moreover, the Holocaust occurred with the passive and sometimes active concurrence by the protestants

in Germany, France, Austria, Poland and other countries the Nazis controlled. The protestants can't

wash the blood off of their ancestors' hands by denial.

 

There was no other Xtian Church in Western Europe after the gnostics died off (2 or 3 hundred years

after Christ's death) until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, or about 1200 to 1300 years after the death of Christ. Beginning in the 1500's with Martin Luther, the protestants believed that

faith in Jesus and baptism were all that is necessary for salvation. But the Catholics believed that

in addition to belief in Jesus, one must satisfy the Catholic Church's mandates to be saved. Christ

alone was not enough (and still isn't).

 

Of course protestants contend that the Catholics are dead wrong, that it is Jesus alone who saves.

CATHOLICS BELIEVED THEY NEED A CONFIRMATION OF THEIR SALVATION FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

IN ORDER TO BE SAVED. SO THE PROTESTANTS CONTEND THAT THE MILLIONS OF CATHOLICS SINCE THE BIRTH OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ARE DOOMED TO HELL.

 

Protestants position is that nobody could have been saved from the beginning of the Catholic Church

until the Protestant Reformation, because before the Reformation, everyone was Catholic and believed

the wrong things about salvation. Then it follows that the masses, almost all of whom could not read or write and who lived in abject poverty, went to spend eternity in hell because the only "christian"

church in existence didn't teach them right. And that continues to this day.

 

Of course Catholics believe that all non-Catholics go to hell. God! What a beautiful plan our lawd in

heaven made for us. So perfectly thought out. No human could come close to that perfection. bill

[Bhim]

So I am finishing up my western civ class this week. We are currently studying the Protestant reformation.

Whenever you bring up things like the inquisition or the crusades Protestants are quick to point out that these things were done by the Catholics and not by true Christians. Indeed I used to say the same thing to people.

 

Well first of all the Protestant movement was drivin by political motivations. It was embraced by local rulers who wished to free themselves from the rule of the Catholic Church. The anabaptist formed an army and sacked a city. Calvin had people executed for heresy. In fact this movement led to over 100 years of warfare in Europe.

 

Oh and Martin Luther was the biggest Jew hater. He is like John the Baptist of Hitler.

 

Actually it may be a bit strong of a statement to say that John Calvin had "people" executed for heresy.  There was only one such person that I'm aware of, Michael Servetus who did not subscribe to Trinitarian doctrine or paedobaptism.  Calvin certainly helped the authorities convict him of heresy, using his correspondence with the man as evidence.  Even here, he petitioned for Servetus' sentence of burning be reduced to beheading.  And lest we engage in sanctimonious outrage, Calvin was probably more evolved than his contemporaries, who had all sorts of cruel and unusual means of executing heretics.

 

I don't point this out because I like Protestant Christianity in general or Calvinism in particular.  I hate both and wish for the utter destruction of Protestantism.  All the more reason we should always make sure our arguments against Christianity are fact-based.

[DarthKoopa]

 

So I am finishing up my western civ class this week. We are currently studying the Protestant reformation.

Whenever you bring up things like the inquisition or the crusades Protestants are quick to point out that these things were done by the Catholics and not by true Christians. Indeed I used to say the same thing to people.

 

Well first of all the Protestant movement was drivin by political motivations. It was embraced by local rulers who wished to free themselves from the rule of the Catholic Church. The anabaptist formed an army and sacked a city. Calvin had people executed for heresy. In fact this movement led to over 100 years of warfare in Europe.

 

Oh and Martin Luther was the biggest Jew hater. He is like John the Baptist of Hitler.

 

Actually it may be a bit strong of a statement to say that John Calvin had "people" executed for heresy.  There was only one such person that I'm aware of, Michael Servetus who did not subscribe to Trinitarian doctrine or paedobaptism.  Calvin certainly helped the authorities convict him of heresy, using his correspondence with the man as evidence.  Even here, he petitioned for Servetus' sentence of burning be reduced to beheading.  And lest we engage in sanctimonious outrage, Calvin was probably more evolved than his contemporaries, who had all sorts of cruel and unusual means of executing heretics.

 

I don't point this out because I like Protestant Christianity in general or Calvinism in particular.  I hate both and wish for the utter destruction of Protestantism.  All the more reason we should always make sure our arguments against Christianity are fact-based.

 

 

 

Sorry perhaps I need to look into this deeper, and maybe it was unfair to blame Calvin directly. I was just going off my history book. Here is what I was referring to and the context of this was the strict rules enforced by the Calvinist.

 

 

“During the first four years after Calvin gained control in Geneva, there were 48 executions in this city with a population of only 16,000."

 

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

My family were catholics that moved to America in part because of Protestant vs. Catholic conflict. Then they all became baptists and methodists. Go figure! Then again, maybe the children already had before the move.

 

Can't blame the catholics today for the crusades either. Though there were more political than religious reasons for the crusades. After a time of peace in Europe, they had large armies they didn't know what to do with that would terrorize local populations, the crusades were just a way to terrorize someone else and make their oversized army problem someone else's problem.

[ExCBooster]

Ah, Thurisaz! You beat me to it: the Thirty Years War is a great example. Vicious enough to create an entire new genre in Western art. It's also one of the reasons the Swiss are neutral, to this day (using Swiss mercenaries was common practice, but the use of them was later declared a war crime).