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Harland
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But Joseph Smith was linched for his beliefs.
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a_priori
Guest
There are stories to be dug up all across Christendom. As we have established, some of the reformers whacked people they were unhappy with as well.
The Quakers probably played pretty nice though…
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Kevan
Guest
And the Baptists (if you don’t count the Munsters) (and you shouldn’t). They are conspicuous by their absence from the history of bloody persecution.
I mean, absent as perpetrators. As victims they were as plentiful as mice, and treated just about as well.
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a_priori
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They’re much too latter-day to have had periods of crankiness like the rest. Maybe they just haven’t been around long enough to get sideways from time to time. I guess there are benefits to being newbies to the party.
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Sixtus
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Protestants and Catholics share the guilt because Protestants were Catholics at the time
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CCM08
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Joseph Smith died with a pistol, hot from discharged rounds, in his hands. That’s not a lynching, it’s a gun fight.
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CCM08
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Of course the Baptist sect in the United States was very actively pro-slavery and Southern Baptist was another name for a Klan member for quite some time. Nobody’s as innocent as they’d like to believe.
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mozart-250
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I would add the Methodists and their descendents as well.
Weren’t the Munsters sort of heretical anabaptists. And Michael Sattler (quoted earlier) was an orthodox anabaptist. I say that because it is my impression that the logical descendants of the anabaptists today are the Mennonites and related churches.
(although I would agree that I have not observed bloody persecution coming from the Baptists either)
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Harland
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This is an excerpt from a biography on Joseph Smith I copied form a Mormon web site. I thought he was hanged but never the less he was murdered. He did have a gun but I read it as he was diffending himself. As I said this is from a Mormon site.
When the disguised militiamen approached the jail, the guards on duty did nothing to impede their progress. As they mounted the steps of the jail, the vigilantes fired several shots. Joseph, who had a six-shooter, opened fire on the first vigilantes to reach the second floor. He wounded several of the attackers: then his pistol was emptied.
As the vigilantes came on unopposed, Joseph ran for a window. As he straddled the window sill he was shot from behind by vigilantes inside the jail. At the same time, he was shot by their comrades on the ground below. Calling out, “Oh, my God!” Joseph fell to the ground. He was still alive when he hit the earth. Vigilantes standing over him put several more shots into him, ending his life at age thirty-eight.
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Kevan
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No, they appear in the Reformation Era, just like the Lutherans and the Church of England. They just didn’t believe in killing those whose religion disagreed with their religion.
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Kevan
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Indeed, it would have been out of character for the Methodists to act like the others we’re remembering. But the Methodists only came into being in the 1700’s and only became a distinct denomination after the death of John Wesley in 1791. So they really were too late to take a turn, even had they wanted to. But I dare say you’d have a hard time finding one who defends burning heretics.I would add the Methodists and their descendents as well.
When I called them “Munsters,” I was making a play on the name of the TV family. They were Anabaptists in the town of Munster in Germany and, yes, they were wacky :whacky:
More or less. In those days, when people were trying to find true Christianity, it was getting off to a shaky start.
Organically, that is true. But ideas spread like pollen and today’s Baptists are descended from English Baptists who arose somewhat independently of the Anabaptists, but there was some overlap.
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Kevan
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Setting aside the wild and inaccurate slanders, I’ll kindly point out that slaveholding and Klan misbehavior have practically nothing in common with killing people who won’t convert to your religion.
Nobody in this thread, including me, has claimed that Baptists are good people.
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Protestant101
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I cannot believe that I am reading this!! To think of all the accusations of being “anti-Catholic” I have had to endure on this forum, as well as in other settings; and then read here that some Catholics actually do believe it is "OK to buther and kill anyone; Huss included, just because they did not “recant.” Catholics who actually believe and publicly promote this; are guilty of promoting not only “hatred” but also muder and torture. In many areas of the world, this is a “war crime.” What is it when a “Church” does it?
It was through the writings of Wycliffe that John Huss, of Bohemia, was led to renounce many of the errors of Catholics, and to then enter upon the work of reform. Thus in these two countries, previously, so widely separated, the seed of truth was sown. From Bohemia the work extended to other lands. The minds of men were directed to the long-forgotten word of God. A divine hand was preparing the way for the Great Reformation. With the criminal butchery of Huss; the grand truths of the Reformation was extended even further; rather than slowed down or prevented in any way.
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Kevan
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I’ve seen that position reflected in some antimormon literature, but I have to disagree with it and agree with Harland: Smith’s death was a lynching. He was in jail for good reasons, he’d made many enemies and had evaded punishment for many misdeeds, the mob was right to want him punished, but they had no right to storm the jail to kill him.
He did have a gun and tried to defend himself from being lynched.
The original question asked if it would have been better for him to be executed (that is, executed sooner) instead of being free to create Mormonism.
I figger y’all should only be allowed to kill them if they can get a turn and kill you also. Fair is fair.
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BelFarfalla
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What was it when Protestants did it? Do you denounce the protestant inquisition, witch burnings and other killing of those who do not believe as they did?
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BelFarfalla
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History shows that the reformation did not fix anything… the protestants ended up doing the exact same types of things they claimed that was wrong in the CC. It is was indeed a divine hand that guided the reformation, I’d expect that divine hand to do a bit better…. With 3000 protestants sects, which do not agree with each other it hardly seems to have accomplished thing but split Christianity into confusion.
Yet despite the clime of yours of the reformation being lead by a divine hand… it seems that it is in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches that the promise is being kept to protect them from the gates of hell and to sure the growth of the mustard seed.
The reformation did not direct any one to the ‘long forgotten world of God’. Catholics and orthodox had and followed the word of God from day one. How can anyone return to something they never turned away from? Instead the reformers reinterpreted the word of God to fit their desires.
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Mirdath
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Nobody here has defended Protestant killings in the name of religion; it is simply that it is Catholic murders for God that are being discussed. I would not imagine any of us arguing that the Church erred would hold those Protestant acts anything less than utterly abhorrent – particularly Publisher, as a member of the Society of Friends.
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Zooey
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No? You don’t think that being “hanged from town to town” was worse than being killed & having it done with?
It wasn’t torture to have parts of your body cut off, and forced into your mouth until you choked? Or having your entrails cut out while suspended by your arms??
How about the Seige of Drogheda in Ireland, when the British soldiers cut open the bellies of all the pregnant women, yanked out the babies & stuck them through with swords, carrying the murdered infants off as “trophies” while their mothers died of shock in the street?? ( Irish correspondents who visited the Nazi death camps after they were liberated, described them in the press as “Drogheda in the 20th Century”.)
I am not defending the death penalty. I have said that–
repeatedly! . I am simply pointing out, that putting all this blame on the Catholic Church, as though there were some unique occurrence,chargeable to Catholics, is totally foreign to the facts of history.
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Zooey
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Well, I certainly do! Admittedly, it is easier for me, as a Methodist, to do so, since we were not around yet, during all this. I think that they were totally wrong.
The reason I am here in this thread at all, is that I firmly believe that Catholics have been given an unfair rap for all that happened at a stage in history when people were being executed for all manner of things.
Stealing a loaf of bread when you were starving, was a hanging offense back then… Do you all know where the old saying comes from “might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb”? We use it to mean something like, if you are going to get in trouble for one thing, it might as well be two or more. But it was literal: Celtic law prescribed compensation for animals stolen or injured according to size; English law changed this to hanging for stealing, period…And my ancestors in Ireland & Wales promptly stopped pinching the wee sickly lamb (who probably wasn’t going to live long enough for a court case to be worth it anyway), and started grabbing the fattest & healthiest of the flock instead…
because you might as well be hanged, etc, etc…We are forgetting the times. We are applying modern sensibilities to the Middle Ages. It’s not fair, and it’s not right, and it borders alll too close to outright lying, to blame the Catholic Church for something that was being carried out by a tyrannical government. Regardless of the religion professed by the ruler in question. (Have I mentioned recently, that my ancestors didn’t exactly come to America for the weather???)
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Mirdath
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Want to hear about some devices used by Catholic Inquisitors? There are entire museums devoted to these, including large sections of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!
- the Judas Chair, a sharp-edged pyramid upon the apex of which the victim was forced to sit and pushed down
- the Pear, a device that could be inserted into any orifice (mouth, vagina, anus) and expanded, sometimes into razor-edged ‘petals’
- the old standards of the rack, thumbscrew and wheel
- crocodile shears, a scissor-like device ending in a cylinder the inside of which was lined with spikes, to be closed upon an offender’s penis to tear it off; typically used for regicides, however as the king was considered God’s anointed it was also a religious crime
- the boot, a device to crush the victim’s legs, ankles, and feet into pulp (and considered a fairly minor apparatus!)
- abacination, blinding by placing red-hot metal plates over the eyes
If modern moral sensibilities cannot apply to the Middle Ages, one or the other is wrong – assuming a morally absolutist point of view (ie, a Catholic one).
As to blame, flinging that around isn’t so much important as what we do now – except for the purpose of historical accuracy. Like any child, we have to learn from our mistakes in the past; some of those were made by individuals, some by governments, and some by religions.
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