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United methodist bishop Joseph Sprague publicly denies that Jesus rose bodily, that he is eternally divine, and that he is the only way to salvation. He has been charged four times with teaching heresies, and four times denominational representatives have acquitted him.

This is not a lone incident. For decades before his retirement, Episcopal bishop Jack Spong publicly repudiated nearly every line in the Nicene Creed and yet was never disciplined by his denomination. Examples could be pulled from Congregational, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches. Mainline leaders seem to perceive heresy as somehow an outmoded concept. Or, at least, they see the heresy trial as an inappropriate venue for addressing such teachings.

Whatever their reasons, we are mistaken if we think modern objections to the prosecution of heretics come from sloppy thinking. To put the best face on it, such extreme leniency arises, rather, because many people are repulsed by the ways orthodox Christian belief has been defended—in particular, how heretics have been prosecuted and punished.

Much more has been at work in historical heresy trials, George H. Shriver insists in his Dictionary of Heresy Trials in American Christianity, than a simple desire to protect the faithful from bad doctrine. "Politics, jealousies, power struggles, anti-intellectualism, miscommunication, limits of knowing, grudges, personal animosities, confusion of ethics with doctrine" have all entered into the picture, coloring not only the motivations of would-be defenders of the faith, but their actions as well.

Indeed. One need only think of the closed, secret trials and torture implements of the Inquisition. Shriver's conclusion: "The heresy hunters have…often allowed themselves to pervert Christian ethics in their pursuit of their goal of discrediting persons they have labeled 'heretics.' "

The truth of this objection to "heresy hunting" is only too clear from church history. But those who would use this historical evidence to attack all forms of heresy prosecution find it convenient to ignore one small fact: Apart from Jesus, no one has ever been exempt from mixed motives and unsavory methods.

This means that the process of defining orthodox belief has always been mediated by, as historian R. Scott Appleby puts it in a U.S. Catholic article, "human agents who have a tendency to let their own passions, misunderstandings, and political rivalries intervene."

So?

So, read the Old Testament. Or review the squabble between Peter and Paul over circumcision. The Holy Spirit has always found it necessary to work with the human materials at hand. And those materials have always been the same—not pretty. There was metaphorical (and sometimes real) blood on the floor of every one of the early church councils at which orthodox Christian doctrine was defined and embodied in creeds.

Yes, it does take faith to believe that the decisions of these councils actually reflect belief as God would have it. It is the same act of faith that allows the Christian to look around a church, see the assortment of annoying and downright unsavory characters occupying the pews, and affirm that the church is still, somehow, the "body of Christ."

The popular image presents the heretic as a courageous, powerless loner, exploring what fellow Christians refuse to explore and paying the price at the hands of unprincipled church leaders motivated by entrenched prejudice. This holds no more water than the picture of the heretic as a black-hearted subversive and orthodox leaders as saints riding in on white horses.

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August 2003, Vol. 47, No. 8