From: allegra!lieuwen@allegra.att.com (Dan Lieuwen)
Subject: Re: Schisms
Organization: Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 14:09:22 GMT


[Quotes come from Keith Tookey]
#
#[A press release posted earlier had stated:]
#
#>> ... among world religions, only the Baha'i Faith has remained free
#>> of sectarian division and schism.
#
#In article <46064@ogicse.ogi.edu> allegra!lieuwen@allegra.att.com (Dan
#Lieuwen) writes:
#
#>Please.  You have your schismatics.  I forget the name, Bahais under the
#>Covenant or some such name.  One of my best friends is a Bahai, and when
#>I saw a poster for them at UW-Madison, I told him you're postering more.
#>He asked questions, and then said "oh, them.  They're not real Bahais."
#
#Hi, Dan, nice to hear from you.
#

Hi, Keith.  For the info of those reading this, Keith is the friend
mentioned above.

#     Baha'is do not deny that there are a few people who were thrown
#out of the Baha'i Faith.  However, quite aside from the fact that
#sheer numbers indicate these are in fact a few individuals expelled
#and not a group separated from the main body, and aside from the fact
#that these people have made only a couple of converts, while the main
#body continues to grow by leaps and bounds, (MAIN POINT)the expulsion
#was done by the explicit authority of Baha'u'llah's Writings according
#to a method He set up to protect the unity of His Faith.  By the
#definition of Baha'i used by the Central Figures, these people cannot
#possibly be Baha'is.
#     It is not possible to maintain unity in a religion without being
#able to expell people who try to usurp authority from the institutions
#established by the Founder.  If you wish to call throwing out
#troublemakers who try to seize control without authority a schism,
#then I will just have to come up with a new way to say that there has
#been no split in the body of believers, only a couple of troublemakers
#expelled with just cause.


Have you ever heard of an anathema--the official expulsion of someone
from the church.  Paul did it in his letters.  (I know Baha'i's following
Islam generally do not think very highly of Paul, but consider what Peter says
about Paul before making your decision about Paul. I know you Keith
have done so.  This is a challenge to the rest of you.)  There was a procedure.

#>Any religion can claim that it has no schisms by just declaring its
#>heretics not of the fold.  The first major schism in Christianity
#>didn't occur until the council of Chalcedon in the middle to late
#>400s.  All the little heretical sects of Christianity up to that
#>point have died out.
#
#     Sorry Dan, but in the class I took, the little 'heretical sects'
#of Christianity were wiped out as opposed to died out, which is a
#whole different thing.  Also, as one Christian scholar (was it you?)
#pointed out, the same ideas keep reappearing in later groups, so I
#would hardly say they were dead history.

Yes, I have made the point that there really aren't any new heresies.
Protestantism revived most of the old heresies unfortunately (I wonder
if Martin Luther and John Calvin would have gone through with it if
they could see some of the lunnies who claim to be their spiritual
descendants.  It would at least give them pause.)

Most of the Christian heresies had Roman emperors as sponsors--the
Arians for example (the heresy rejected at the Council of Nicea, the
1st Ecumenical Council, the council sponsored by Constantine).  
The last pope to be martyred was in the
500s or 600s--killed by an Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire trying
to replace Orthodox Christianity with his favorite heresy.

I believe that the church during the first 500-600 years at least did
not use physical harm to eliminate heresies.  The first big drive
to do so that I can think of was the destruction of the Albigenisians,
but that was in the Western Church, and after the split with Orthodoxy.
During the time of the Crusades (which by the way, the Orthodox
look on with as much revulsion as Jews do.  Crusaders sacked
Constantinople too.)

The Roman emperors allowed pagan temples to remain open during the
time period described.  There were costs to being a heretic or a pagan--
economic and political posts (much like being a Roman Catholic in
England before 1830).  However, this does not qualify for my definition
of "wiped out".  So wiped out is not accurate unless you can
supply better information.

#     I wish that Christianity had had some way established by Christ
#to throw out people to far out, but it didn't.  There were early
#fights over questions like requiring the gentiles to be circumcised,
#over the nature of Christ, and other questions, some of which were not
#decided until the Emperor Constantine put the weight of the Empire
#into the equation.  (And there were political shenanigans over that
#that leave me unconvinced God or theology had anything to do with it.)
#Despite my respect for your orthodox position, schisms started earlier
#than Chalcedon.

I note that the Roman emperors after Constantine came down on the
side of the Arians (the heretics condemned by the council called
by Constantine), and that Constantine tried to force the Orthodox
Church to accept Arius back.  (He died before the official date.
The Orthodox said it was the hand of God.  The Arians claimed poison.
Who knows?)  I would hardly say that constitutes the Roman empire
deciding the question.  The Roman empire would have had the church
become Arian.

#>So, you have about 250 years to go until you can claim to have met
#>Christianity's level of unity.  I would imagine that similar examples
#>can be found in other religions.
#
#Islam, for example, split upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
#
#(out of order from the original post)
#>Reading statements in newsgroups by people who consider themselves
#>Bahais, but make up their religion as they go also belies this claim.
#
#I do not think Baha'is expressing ideas, even wrong ones, means
#anything more than that some Baha'is have strange ideas.

If they deny Baha'i teaching on matters of sexual morality and similar
issues and urge others to refuse to accept the authority of the
Baha'i faith (one or two urged setting up schismatic feasts on some
newsgroup, some time earlier this year), then they are schismatics.

#This is not a schism by anybody's definition, until someone tries to
#impose their idea/interpretation on the rest of us.

How about encourage others to follow them into what an "orthodox Baha'i"
must consider error?

Dan