By William Sierichs Jr.

Similarly, in 1092, the Hungarian King (St.) Laszlo prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews. At least through the 1880s, Hungary barred civil marriages (ferociously opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, a powerful lobby), and continued to prohibit an unconverted Jew from marrying a Christian. The Hungarian Parliament rejected an attempt to enact civil marriages in 1881.

The theme that marriage with a non-Christian polluted a Christian was exemplified in a tale by the English writer Bede, who said the Northumbrians were converted after King Edwin made a political marriage to the daughter of another king, Ethelbert. When Edwin suggested the marriage in 625, he “received the reply that it was not permissible for a Christian maiden to be given in marriage to a heathen husband, lest the Christian Faith and Sacraments be profaned by her association with a king who was wholly ignorant of the worship of the true God.” Bede said Edwin agreed to consider conversion — which he later did — and not to hinder Christian attempts to convert his people. Christians never reciprocated this tolerance to other religions.

Similarly, an 11th-century English biography of the 7th-century (St.) Rumwold said his mother, the Christian daughter of King Penda of Mercia, was to marry an unnamed pagan king of Northumbria. She brooded on how she could live with one not “cleansed with the washing of the holy spring …,” praying, “ ‘O Lord, the creator and redeemer of all, do not allow my body to be polluted by a man estranged from You …’ ” She refused to sleep with her husband until he was baptized; once he was, she became pregnant with Rumwold. “When the baby was born, he immediately cried out with a loud voice: ‘I am a Christian, I am a Christian, I am a Christian!” Scholars say that King Penda, as far as is known, was a pagan, not a Christian.

Something similar appears in U.S. history, in courts on Indian reservations. In a Nov. 1, 1883, report, Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller explained the logic behind these courts, to “civilize” Indians and end their “savage and barbarous practices.” He said, “Very many of the progressive Indians have become fully alive to the pernicious influences of these heathenish [pagan] practices indulged in by their people, and have sought to abolish them; in such efforts they have been aided by their missionaries, teachers and agents … yet a few, non-progressive, degraded Indians are allowed to exhibit before the young and susceptible children all the debauchery, diabolism [devil worship], and savagery of the worst state of the Indian race.” Teller complained about Indian attitudes toward marriage — couples entered and abandoned the relationship easily — and urged that the Christian version of marriage be forced on them.

These prejudices were included in Aug. 27, 1892, court rules that banned polygamous marriages and allowed judges to solemnize marriages in the American (i.e. Christian) tradition. The report’s emphasis on Indians’ “heathenism” and “diabolism” indicate a Christianity-based prejudice against Indians’ native customs, whether religious or not.

Down into the 20th century, U.S. officials pressured Indians in various ways to send their children to non-Indian schools, often run by Christian groups that had no hesitation about trying to impose their beliefs on their pagan charges. American Indian journalist Tim Giago recounted his experiences: “I saw children severely punished by priests, prefects and nuns for speaking in their native tongue … I listened to lectures giving us clear warning that if we did not embrace the Catholic faith, we would never go to heaven. That the spirituality of our ancestors was built upon heathenism.”

Similar abuses were committed against pagan Australian Aborigine children. Beginning in 1905 and ending in 1970, Australian officials seized children of mixed Aborigine-European descent and imprisoned them in schools, some run by church officials, others by the state. The children were brought up to be servants to white Australians.

So non-Christian belief systems were suppressed to block contacts with pagans, making “mixed” marriages impossible.

In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council, in Rome, issued canons that Christian governments were supposed to obey. Canon 68 had obscene echoes in the 17th and 20th centuries. “A difference of dress distinguishes Jews or Saracens from Christians in some provinces, but in others a certain confusion has developed so that they are indistinguishable. Whence it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians join with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews or Saracens with christian women. In order that the offence of such a damnable mixing may not spread further, under the excuse of a mistake of this kind, we decree that such persons of either sex … are to be distinguished in public from other people by the character of their dress …”

Obviously, enough Christians rejected decrees against sex outside of marriage that the Church could not ignore unions with non-Christians. The council’s order presumed that relationships with Jews and pagans must be prohibited, based on the traditional obsession with purity. They meant “damnable” literally.

Historian Ronald Modras says Medieval Poland, a Roman Catholic state, was a haven for Jews from persecution in other parts of Christendom, with Jews allowed to intermingle with Christians in Polish cities and enjoy legal protections unavailable elsewhere. After the council’s decree, Poland’s clergy began demanding that Jews be separated from Christians, be forced to wear distinctive clothing and be driven from any office where a Jew might have authority over Christians. The clergy feared Christians would “fall an easy prey to the influence of the superstitions and evil habits of the Jews living among them.” Fortunately for Jews, Poland’s rulers found them too useful and productive to suppress, so the clergy were ignored for many years. But over the centuries, Christian prejudice slowly rose, and Jews were subjected to pogroms, discrimination and segregation.

Protestants differed little from the Catholics they despised. For example, in 16th-century Scotland, more than 30 Scottish nobles supported “The Book of Discipline.” Although not officially adopted, it reflected how hardline Protestants saw the relationship between church and society. Their doctrines were offered because religion in Scotland had been “utterly corrupted,” and to correct this, they would require the “true” gospel be taught in all churches, while “all doctrine repugning to the same be utterly suppressed as damnable to man’s salvation.” Among other demands, marriages would be “solemnised” in churches on Sundays. Thus, as only a government-approved version of Protestantism could be practiced, marriages could only be between the “right” kind of Protestants.

Marriages between Quakers and non-Quakers were hampered by the fact that some American colonies simply expelled their Quakers — Massachusetts actually hanged four in the mid-17th century — or made their lives as difficult as possible. However, even when Quakers were tolerated, they themselves took steps to keep separate, including making marriages “with ‘the world’s people’ as difficult as possibly it could be made,” historian Frederick B. Tolles says.

The Roman Catholic Church holds the record for longest theocracy. This tyranny began disintegrating in recent centuries, provoking papal demands that governments restore Church edicts as laws. For example, in a June 29, 1881, encyclical, on the origin of civil power, Leo XIII declared: “… Let princes take example from the Most High God, by whom authority is given to them … On this account they are warned in the oracles of the sacred Scriptures, that they will have themselves some day to render an account to the King of kings and Lord of lords; if they shall fail in their duty, that it will not be possible for them in any way to escape the severity of God …

“To princes and other rulers of the State … We earnestly exhort them in our Lord to defend religion, and to consult the interest of their Lord to defend religion, and to consult the interest of their States by giving that liberty to the Church which cannot be taken away without injury and ruin to the commonwealth.”

This theocratic mindset led Leo XIII to issue a Feb. 15, 1882, encyclical on conditions in Italy. It complained in Orwellian terms: “… the condition of the Civil State itself disastrously imperils the freedom of religion. … In the midst of the populations of Italy, which have always been so constant and stedfast in the faith of their fathers, the liberty of the Church is wounded on all sides; everyday efforts are redoubled in order to efface from the public institutions that Christian stamp and character which has always, and with good reason, been the seal of the glories of Italy. … [thus are] marriages contracted in despite of the laws and without the rites of the Church, the position of the religious authorities as to the education of the young utterly ignored …” “Liberty” and “freedom” meant the government should force Catholic beliefs on everyone.

Protestant theocratic beliefs are still manifest in the 21st century. In one example, in August 2002, Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, George W. Bush’s brother, nominated former Family Research Council president Jerry Regier for secretary of the state Department of Children & Families. Regier was co-author of a 1989 essay on “The Christian World View of the Family,” which declared: “We deny that the Bible countenances any other definition of the family, such as the sharing of a household by homosexual partners, and that society’s laws should be modified in any way to broaden the definition of family or marriage beyond the Biblically understood definition of heterosexual marriage, blood relations and adoption.” It also said Christians should not marry non-Christians.

Finally, Louisiana has fought efforts by a gay couple in New York, who adopted a La. child, to get both their names on the child’s birth certificate. The couple say that, for legal purposes, they need both names, otherwise one parent might be barred from making decisions for the child in some situations. A federal judge agreed with them, but the state has refused to issue a new birth certificate and is appealing the ruling despite the injury it could cause to the child.

So Christianity’s paranoia and hatred hurts not only lovers but innocent third parties.

Christian bigotry took multiple forms, sometimes not obvious. For example, the theological basis of Western racism became obscured by a pseudoscientific biological belief. Sometimes, though, the theological basis sticks out.

In the 15th century, Spanish Christians adopted what we would call a racist doctrine, “limpieza de sangre” — “purity of blood” — directed mainly at “conversos,” Jews who were forcibly converted. It arose from a fear that these “converts” remained covert Jews and would introduce subversive ideas among Christians. Initially a practical concern about the forced converts, it became a racist idea because it was extended to their descendants, as if merely having a Jewish ancestor made one eternally “polluted.”

To be continued