Question: "Why didn’t America have so many philosophers that spoke against God like in Europe?" (This question was posed by a Grove City College student studying in France.)
Response: America’s philosophers dealt with American issues (see previous entry) not European issues. The people of the United States experienced neither Crusades nor Inquisitions. One does not address a non-issue.
But possibly this will help to elucidate the European allergy to Christianity.
During the “red scare” of the 1940s, Americans - like Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland & others - were accused of “political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence and the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition;” “those accused during the McCarthy trials had nearly no chance of proving their innocence.”*
The McCarthy trials have been called an “American Inquisition.” These “witch-hunts” lasted from 1950-1956, and in those six long years profoundly impacted the way Americans view government and personal freedom. In the States more than 50 years later, all that is needed to completely discredit a politician is to get the “communist” label to stick.
The Catholic Inquisitions** lasted over 100 times longer, 650 years, and profoundly impacted the way Europeans view Christianity and the Church.
The Spanish Inquisition, for example, was able to keep Protestantism from penetrating into Spain in the 16th century. Like under McCarthyism, Europeans could be turned in on hearsay.
But unlike McCarthyism, the Inquisition was permitted to employ torture to extract confessions, utilizing methods such as the Judas chair, the head vice, the pear, the wheel, the stake, burning at the stake (believers were burned at the stake in Dijon were I live), sawing, disembowelment. (I’ll let you do the research on these techniques, but be warned that they carry an R-rating.)
The Inquisition was a religious Gestapo, the mere mention of which struck terror in Europeans’ hearts.
When a person was found to be a heretic, the Church turned the apostate over to secular authorities for punishment because “the Church does not shed blood.” Thus in some Europeans’ minds, the Church is viewed as the worse kind of hypocrite, having coercing secular authorities to act as its executioner.
In some relational networks, all that is needed to discredit someone is to accuse them of being “clergy” and that person’s views are discredited.*** This greatly complicates “missionary” work!
Now imagine that we are in the year 2426 A.D. and that an evangelical doctrinal gestapo had existed since the birth of the United States.
In order to keep the faith pure, based upon allegations by anonymous witnesses, this special police force traveled from California to Texas to Florida to New York to arrest, torture and turn people over to the civil authorities for capital punishment. The crime? Doctrinal deviation.
And imagine that just this year, after 650 years of inquisitions, that doctrinal gestapo was disbanded. What sort of thoughts and feelings might you and your descendants have concerning the Church and Christianity?
That is a bit how Europeans feel today. And that is why the European philosophers spoke out so adamantly against the Church and religion.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
** There were four distinct though related Inquisitions: Medieval (began by the Pope in 1184 to control heresy in Southern France), Spanish, Portuguese and Roman.
*** Just think of people's pejorative use of the term "televangelist."
