In Christianity, the church from the start has always regarded itself as the custodian of a divine revelation which the church alone was authorized to expound under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Any interpretation that differed from the official one, was necessarily “heretical” and punishable by death.
During those early centuries, the church then categorized their own “red lines” which no one must cross or be burnt at the stakes.
That’s how buzz words like, Docetism, Montanism, Adoptionism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism, amongst others, came up. They were all forms of heresies that the church couldn’t condone.
The Catholic Encyclopedia for instance states that, with the formal recognition of the Church by the State in the early centuries and the increase of ecclesiastical penalties, came an appeal from the church for aid in enforcing the penalties.
Canon 3 of the Ecumenical Fourth Council of the Lateran, 1215, required secular authorities to “exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction, all heretics” pointed out by the Catholic Church.
After they were convicted by the Church, they were turned over to the local government for execution because of religious restrictions that kept ecclesial clergy from actually carrying out the executions.
So people like, Thomas Bagley, a 15th-century English priest, Vicar of Manuden in Essex, was condenmed in 1431 for heresy and burnt at the Smithfield stakes, after declaring that if in the sacrament a priest made bread into God, he made a God that can be eaten by rats and mice.
He pronounced that the monks, and the nuns, and the friars, and all other privileged persons recognized by the church, were “limbs of Satan”.
Also very memorable is the gory story of the Canterbury Matyrs. The martyrs were 16th-century English Protestants. 15 of them were executed for heresy in Canterbury, Kent, and were killed during the reign of Queen Mary I.
While delivering judgment against them, Bishop John Corneford, recriminated their actions in the following words: “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the most mighty God, and by the power of His Holy Spirit, and the authority of His holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, we do here give into the hands of Satan to be destroyed, the bodies of all those blasphemers and heretics that maintain any error against His most holy Word, or do condemn His most holy truth for heresy, to the maintenance of any false church or foreign religion, so that by this Thy just judgment, O most mighty God, against Thy adversaries, Thy true religion may be known to Thy great glory and our comfort and to the edifying of all our nation. Good Lord, so be it. Amen.”
For centuries, the killing and lynching of people in this manner was considered as service to God and a generally accepted standard in Christendom.
Just like Muslim laws which permit the killing of others for blasphemy, Christianity similarly has a brutal history of killing others for heresy, for holding a different opinion and in forced conversions.
But the passage of time and centuries of political changes have helped to shape the intolerant early church to a reluctant accommodator of alternative opinion.
There is four hundred years gap between the founding of Christianity and the founding of Islam. So, I see enough time for Islam too in the future, to tow the same path that Christianity meandered.
Just like the proliferation that marked the revolution in the early church, diverse Islamic groups are also springing up with diverse doctrines and dogma, that holds more appeal amongst the younger generation of Muslims as against the predominant Wahhabism.
With sustained funding and spread of these moderate Islamic doctrines, time will also avail the world a more liberal form of Islam in the future.
While we nurse that hope for the future, we must also not forget that both religions are traced to the same loins of Pa Abraham or Prophet Ibrahim.
If it is true that both were products of the Abrahamic lineage, then there is something inherent about Pa Abraham’s sperm that carries violence.
The seeds of violence in the Abrahamic spermatozoa have now been successfully exported to all corners of the world purportedly as the most improved and best available seeds, which alone can germinate sufficient salvation to sustain the entire universe, yet the congenital violence that comes with them makes that mission more illusory and contradictory.
So, whether you call it heresy or blasphemy, Pa Abraham has the greater blame for both.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
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