Anti-Protestantism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Luther as the Devil's Bagpipes by Eduard Schoen, circa 1535

Anti-Protestantism is bias, hatred or distrust against some or all branches of Protestantism and/or its followers, especially when amplified in legal, political, ethic or military measures.

Protestants were not tolerated throughout most of Europe until the

Henry VIII of England in England, and the launch of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, Spain, Habsburg Austria and Poland-Lithuania. Anabaptism arose as a part of the Radical Reformation
, lacking the support of the state which Lutheranism and Calvinism enjoyed, and thus was persecuted.

Protestants in Latin America were largely ostracized until the abolition of certain restrictions in the 20th century. Protestantism spread with Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism gaining the majority of followers. North America became a shelter for Protestants who were fleeing Europe after the persecution increased.

History

Reformation

Lutheran faith, on 21 May 1559[1]
The Bartholomew's Day massacre
Piedmontese children forced from their parents (October 1853, X, p. 108)[2]

The

Protestant Reformation
led to a long period of warfare and communal violence between Catholic and Protestant factions, sometimes leading to massacres and forced suppression of the alternative views by the dominant faction in much of Europe.

Various European rulers supported or opposed Roman Catholicism for their own political reasons. After the

Counter Reformation program, religion became an excuse or factor for territorial wars (the religious wars
) and for periodic outbreaks of sectarian violence.

The Protestants from the Tyrolean Zillertal valley who had to leave their home in 1837

Anti-Protestantism originated in a reaction by the Catholic Church against the Reformation of the 16th century. Protestants, especially public ones, could be denounced as heretics and subject to prosecution in those territories, such as Spain, Italy and the Netherlands in which the Catholics were the dominant power. This movement was orchestrated by church and state as the

Counter Reformation
.

There were religious wars and, in some countries though not in others, eruptions of sectarian hatred such as the

St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, part of the French Wars of Religion
.

Militant anti-Protestantism originated in a reaction by states and societies alarmed at the spread of Protestantism following the

95 Theses of 1517. By 1540, Pope Paul III had sanctioned the Society of Jesus (Jesuits
) as the first religious society pledged to extinguish Protestantism.

Hapsburg Europe

Protestantism was denounced as heresy, and those supporting these doctrines could be excommunicated as heretics. Thus by canon law and depending on the practice and policies of the particular Catholic country at the time, Protestants could be subject to prosecution and persecution: in those territories, such as Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, the Catholic rulers were then the dominant power. Some anti-Lutheran measures, such as the regional Spanish Inquisitions[3] had begun earlier in response to the Reconquista and Morisco and Converso conversions.

Fascist Italy

Mussolini (far right) signing the Lateran Treaty (Vatican City
, 11 February 1929)

In 1870 the newly formed

Catholicism became the state religion of Fascist Italy.[4][5]

In 1938, the

Pentecostals.[7][8][9] Thousands of Italian Jews and a small number of Protestants died in the Nazi concentration camps.[6][9]

Francoist Spain

In

Spanish State (1936–1975), Protestantism was deliberately marginalized and persecuted. During the Civil War, Franco's regime persecuted the country's 30,000[10] Protestants, and forced many Protestant pastors to leave the country and various Protestant leaders were executed.[11] Once authoritarian rule was established, non-Catholic Bibles were confiscated by police and Protestant schools were closed.[12] Although the 1945 Spanish Bill of Rights granted freedom of private worship, Protestants suffered legal discrimination and non-Catholic religious services were not permitted publicly, to the extent that they could not be in buildings which had exterior signs indicating it was a house of worship and that public activities were prohibited.[10][13]

Ireland

Woodcut showing Luther and the reformers as the Antichrist

In Northern Ireland or pre-

illegitimate
and unworthy of her subjects' allegiance.

The

sectarian antipathy was fueled by the atrocities committed by both sides in the Irish Confederate Wars, especially the repression of Catholicism during and after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland
, when Irish Catholic land was confiscated en masse, clergy were executed and discriminatory legislation was passed against Catholics.

The Penal Laws against Catholics (and also

Presbyterians) were renewed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries due to fear of Catholic support for Jacobitism after the Williamite War in Ireland and were slowly repealed in 1771–1829. Penal Laws against Presbyterians were relaxed by the Toleration Act of 1719, due to their siding with the Jacobites in a 1715 rebellion. At the time the Penal Laws were in effect, Presbyterians and other non-Conformist Protestants left Ireland and settled in other countries. Some 250,000 left for the New World alone between the years 1717 and 1774, most of them arriving there from Ulster
.

Sectarian conflict was continued in the late 18th century in the form of communal violence between rival Catholic and Protestant factions over land and trading rights (see

Orange Institution). The 1820s and 1830s in Ireland saw a major attempt by Protestant evangelists
to convert Catholics, a campaign which caused great resentment among Catholics.

In modern

Home Rule or Irish independence. In Northern Ireland, since the foundation of the Free State in 1921, Catholics, who were mainly nationalists, suffered systematic discrimination from the Protestant unionist majority.[14] The same happened to Protestants in the Catholic-dominated South. [not in citation given][15]

The mixture of religious and national identities on both sides reinforces both anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant

sectarian
prejudice in the province.

More specifically religious anti-Protestantism in Ireland was evidenced by the acceptance of the Ne Temere decrees in the early 20th century, whereby the Catholic Church decreed that all children born into mixed Catholic-Protestant marriages had to be brought up as Catholics. Protestants in Northern Ireland had long held that their religious liberty would be threatened under a 32-county Republic of Ireland, due to that country's Constitutional support of a "special place" for the Roman Catholic Church. This article was deleted in 1972.

During

Provisional IRA and none other."[17]

Eastern Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodoxy had comparatively little contact with Protestantism for geographic, linguistic and historical reasons. Protestant attempts to ally with Eastern Orthodoxy proved problematic. In general, most Orthodox had the impression that Protestantism was a new heresy that arose from various previous heresies.[citation needed]

By the 19th century and later, some Eastern Orthodox thinkers, such as

proselytization in predominantly Orthodox countries.[citation needed
]

"Hostility" to Evangelicals

In the United States, critics of the policies adopted by the Religious Right, such as opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion, often equate evangelicalism as a movement with the Religious Right. Some critics have even suggested that evangelicals are a kind of "fifth column" aimed at turning the United States or other nations into Christian theocracies.[18]

See also

References

  1. . Retrieved 14 October 2013 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ "Piedmontese Children Forced from their parents". The Wesleyan Juvenile Offering: A Miscellany of Missionary Information for Young Persons. X. Wesleyan Missionary Society: 108. October 1853. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  3. ^ "The Spanish Inquisition – History of Spain – don Quijote". www.donquijote.org. Retrieved 2019-10-05.
  4. ^ .
  • ^ .
  • ^
    Auschwitz
    .
  • ^ .
  • ^ .
  • ^ a b c "Risveglio Pentecostale" (in Italian). Assemblies of God in Italy. Archived from the original on 1 May 2017. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  • ^ .
  • . Retrieved 2023-06-19.
  • ^ "Religion: Protestant Persecution". Time. 21 April 1941. Archived from the original on June 24, 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  • .
  • ^ Lord Cameron (September 1969). "16". Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland (Report). Belfast: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The Cameron Report – Disturbances in Northern Ireland (1969)
  • ^ Lord Cameron (September 1969). "16". Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland (Report). Belfast: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The Cameron Report – Disturbances in Northern Ireland (1969)
  • ^ McKittrick, David, Lost lives: the stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles (Edinburgh, Scotland: Mainstream, 1999), p. 612
  • ^ Moriarty, Gerry, "IRA blamed for 'sectarian slaughter' of 10 at Kingsmill", Irish Times, 22 June 2011, p. 7.
  • .
  • External links