As some of my readers will be aware, for the last few weeks I have been teaching, by virtual means, a course on Heresy and the Church for the Cathedral at St Albans. I should confess straightaway I am not a theologian but as the title of my blog page proclaims I am an anthropologist and historian. Although years of university teaching Late Roman and Byzantine history does give me some credibility in talking about the innumerable heresies that plagued the early church. Although the concept of heresy tends to be associated with opposing ideas of doctrine and behaviour in Christianity when beliefs contrary to the ‘true Church’ challenge orthodoxy (‘the correct view’), I have been thinking about a more general definition of heresy. A wider interpretation of the term heresy might be: a challenge to established thought and authority - what I mean by ‘authority’ is when a set of beliefs becomes the official line, the orthodox position, which is enforced by political persuasion or coercion so that it becomes a publicly shared perception. Heretical thinking then would be a canon of opinions and views which are judged by the authorities, those wielding power at that moment, as false and dangerous. As often quoted, “history is written by the winners” and the same can be said of orthodoxy. The ‘false’ beliefs are anathematised, banned, and even in some cases scrubbed from the record by the authorities. Wherever, we find totalitarian ideology the dissenters assume the status of heretics and are duly punished, removed from society and the authorities may even try to obliterate them from history.
Many of you will recall seeing images of Leon Trotsky alongside Lenin and then the doctored photos with Trotsky edited out on the orders of Joseph Stalin. Once a key member of the Russian Revolution Trotsky was not only wiped from the records but was hunted down and assassinated. Trotsky could have, of course, have just been labelled by Stalin a traitor in the way Putin denounced Sergei Skripal “a traitor to the motherland” and “a scumbag”. However, at that time there was a fierce ideological battle within the Party, which involved fundamental communist ideas and beliefs, which would have a major impact on the future direction of the Soviet Union.
This conflict of ideas went beyond a disagreement over policy and in the same way heresy in the past threatened to divide the Christian Church, so Trotsky’s concept of permanent worldwide revolution threatened Stalin’s nationalist approach to communism and as the latter had control of power, his view determined orthodoxy. Of course, some heretical thinking maybe ‘bad’, harmful and dangerous to society: one only has to think of the beliefs that drive terrorists and extremist groups. However, heretical thinking should be thought of as a vital part of democracy, challenging the established beliefs and behaviour of authorities, so that heresies become orthodoxy - and we can all think of examples of where that has happened and some are now very much in the news!
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