One of my private affectations is the Huguenot Cross. French Reformed Christians wore it in contrast to their Romanist contemporaries. The pendant dove represents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Late in their history, the dove was often replaced with a golden tear. Suffering became the Huguenot grace. In 1998, I adopted the cross in admiration of the Huguenots, and as an exhortation for myself as a Christian with social privilege.
As the dignified apoplexy about Xian Nat'ism (no trademark) has arisen of late, I wondered when the Huguenots would be thrown under the bus. They died well in persecution, not as reliable theologically as Geneva, and some of their later descendents went wackadoodle; like all the dumb old people, they held to Xian Nat’ism (no trademark). Of course, we are modern, we invented buses, and they now are 100% emission free! Oh, the places we’ll go!
If madmen are on the loose, care for the common good calls for their comeuppance. It is the internet. It is America. Such fellows there are; but, no, not the Huguenots. Discernment is wanted. "Wars of religion" is a chilling phrase, recently rung as a clarion call to mock advocacy for “Christian Princes.” Now the Huguenots are besmirched for the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and their own Xian Nat’ism (no trademark).
R. Scott Clark has put his back into heaving the Huguenots wheels-ward. He stretched out the shock value, making part 1 end with both a cliffhanger (what would follow in part 2?!) and with a bit of dry wit about academic rivals. Such rivalry is more thoroughly perpetrated against men already dead, and commonly by historical revisionism– though it can be just as high-minded. Just as noble. Citing the Huguenots in a tackle-the-boogieman attempt to squelch Xian Nat’ism (no trademark), well, that is the kind of repression that always fit them. Plain false.
It does seem that American Christians may catch up with the rest of the international church. Those who don’t learn from history, couldn’t even repeat the good parts. Shall the Christian Church in the United States thrive for the next hundred years, or should we forget the Huguenots (by misrepresenting them) and fast-forward to the crushed-with-both-boots part? This is why in 2022 I read again The Huguenots; or Reformed French Church: Their Principles Delineated, Their Character Illustrated; Their Sufferings and Success Recorded.
It was published in 1870. It isn't up-to-date; it was written "only 150 years later." Many dissertations have since been sustained. Or, perhaps, it was written "more than 150 years later . . . likely legendarium and hagiography.” As a scholar who spent time in that period once, I commend it to you as more than an introduction to the Huguenots. It does suffer from piling on evidence and examples, so it takes slogging.
The Wars of Religion were truly horrific. They are well remembered. In the French Revolution they were rhetoric for expunging the Christian faith. The high-minded hegemony from Stalin and Mao employs similar logic about old-fashioned European religious hubris. The Chinese Church today might well envy the French Reformed. The Huguenots' military conflict with the French Crown played out over the second half of the 16th Century, and was followed by an entire century of the French Reformed Church thriving and persisting until the death blow was dropped. This is a cautionary tale?
They had 100 years of legal toleration, with persecution both stipulated and spontaneous, government and citizenry. Early on, the crown forbade their preeminent theologians from attending the Synod of Dort. Their Theological Academies played a significant role in international Reformed discussion, despite legal limitations. Congregations thrived. Synods exercised effective authority over pastors and congregations. Much as Geneva, French jurisdictions had become Reformed by the action of local magistrates. Baptized children grew up to communicant membership, with their grandparents. All with government hostility.
Dr. Clark does not disdain the martyrs. He disdains the nobles who failed in the palace intrigue typical of the era. He blames high born Huguenots for scheming "to get their hands on the levers of civil power to enforce religious orthodoxy on their neighbors." He tracks the inner ring of murder and lies that directed the French Wars of Religion until the conclusion of field hostilities with the Edict of Nantes. And what is the proper conclusion in his academic opinion?
“What does it all mean? One thing it means is that the state enforcement of Christianity, insofar as people still believed that God had ordained a state-church, is necessarily a nursery for violence.”
The Huguenots would not be able to follow the logic. Greater attention to the history before and after the Edict of Nantes should replace such disembodied logic. Clark’s grasp of the obvious produces a blood-curdling non sequitur: the Huguenots cultivated violence and chaos with Xian Nat’ism (no trademark). Two historical observations about the Huguenots commend Xian Nat’ism (no trademark) as a trajectory to ponder.
First, a well ordered Reformed church produced communities ready to defend themselves against military adversaries. Parents would baptize sons with the names of those dead uncles. Thanksgiving is a cure for the vapors. Second, securing a hundred years of thriving Church life was a victory. The Huguenots had something to fight for– that is why their enemy attacked. The Wars bore long enduring fruit for the French Reformed Church– that is why Clark sounds profoundly empathetic but realistically silly. Unlike us, Huguenots could employ without explanation the Bible’s words about “my children’s children’s children.”
The mantra "wars of religion" doesn't tell you about the French Reformed Church. The Huguenots won the battles, until the Crown slowly went nuclear. For 45 years, the Huguenots defended with the sword not just their doctrine and practice but their place in society. The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes, as complicated and duplicitous as any bureaucratic design might be, subject to moments of legal whim and events of straight-faced perfidy. The Huguenots were not surprised when the crown finally yanked the edict of toleration 100 years later. A hundred years later. Is that three generations or four?
Would you admonish the Huguenot example for overweening nationalist ambition? You will need to diminish the profound results of gospel preaching in the south of France before the Wars of Religion. After that divine kindness of some 30 years, it was too late to explain how a Christian social order is a deviant ambition and a perverse accomplishment. Just such a purported travesty provoked the Crown’s violence, surely we must fault it too. The miscreants were likely reading Bucer. Didn’t Calvin read Bucer?
The Huguenots did adhere to Xian Nat’ism (no trademark), just as they already had developed geographical communities characterized by a formal religious confession. Perhaps the admonition against a confessional magistrate would be more soberly received in the disappointed and chastened aftermath of the Wars of Religion. But winners don’t listen, no matter how bloodied they be.
The French Wars of Religion secured extraordinary privileges for the Huguenots which American believers may soon envy.
French localities with Reformed worship, established before a recent date, could continue divergence from the Romanist order, as could individuals who lived in most of France (Paris, its nearest environs and some sections excepted), and the nobility adhering to the "said religion called reformed" could continue their domestic religious assemblies. Is this a somewhat dour analogy for our best worst case scenario? Is it worth a fight with the weapons God condones?
The removal of children from Reformed homes for Romanist education and baptism was prohibited. That's pretty close to the "good old days in America" presently being eroded by the magistrate in a few of our States. Is it worth a fight with the weapons God condones?
The Reformed were allowed to establish their own school system, and no religious test was allowed for admission to other institutions of higher learning in France. We would like to secure something similar for homeschooling and private education. Is it worth a fight with the weapons God condones?
Reformed publication was freely allowed, within the same allowed localities. How many ambitious little Christian publishing ventures cranked up in the last five years, and will Pronouns scuttle them? Is it worth a fight with the weapons God condones?
The military forces of the Reformed from the French wars of religion were allowed to maintain their various fortified centers, and fortified cities like La Rochelle. Is it worth advocating for elected officials-- federal and local-- to retain and exercise their legitimate powers to stave off destructive and invasive initiatives from the federal government or perverse entities?
It was faithful localism that got the Huguenots into the fight that they won, and we would do well to understand their success before we try to ponder the long-term logistics of their ambition. What took them where we simply would not go? Pacificism is not part of the Reformed Confession, but fighting like the Huguenots is not part of our Reformed imagination. How does our Confessional array and doctrinal orientation differ from theirs? The French Wars of Religion are not a reason for us to think poorly of them, but reason to wonder if we are impoverished. Who us?
The animated discussion of late is much closer to a Parisian sort of Xian Nat’ism, rather than a lesser magistrate’s simplicity when tipped-off about approaching royal troops. As evangelism does, eventually the blood of Christ mingled with the responsibilities falling on nobles of royal blood. Do you call this Xian Nat’ism, or the humility of converted princelings: they read Romans 13, and said the quiet part out loud: Noblesse oblige.
Stop bad mouthing the Huguenots. I know the Camisards were as crazy as Kenneth Copeland's Private Militia. Stop pretending like the Wars of Religion are a self-explanatory argument. Make a case for why the Huguenots didn’t win their military conflict, and why those combatants were wrong to take the field. I agree: Xian Nat’ism (MEGATRON) frightens me just as much as Xian Nati’ism (GAYALLDAY). It’s 2024, the whole spectrum is already a sober man’s hallucination.
The case against Xian Nat’ism (no trademark) at the most raises questions about what they will do with the first table of the law after they have protected their families and jailed officials taking bribes from Rome for all the things. Good questions; better asked with your children still under your roof and expecting that catechizing them will mean better answers in 50 years. Or, just ignore the Huguenots, they are neither modern enough nor coward enough for your extensive podcast series– unless you just want to go on talking trash about dead men with whom you are not on speaking terms.
Oh, and to head off a bit of rhetorical suspense:
You have heard of suicudee by cop, yes?
Servetus was suicide by Confessionalism.
Tragic, but not worth shooting a single cop.
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ruditus ruditusque
Nurmerorum 24:30
Neither Scott Clark nor Brad Isbell can be taken seriously on this issue. Neither of them is interested (capable?) of having a substantive discussion.
Isbell, in his defense, at least has something of an excuse, in that he's a newspaper photographer turned insurance broker. In an ideal world, he'd understand this and keep many of his non-ecclesiastical opinions to himself. But that's not the world we live in.
Clark, on the other hand, has zero excuses whatsoever. He's a professional academic who really ought to know better. Personally, I find it very difficult to believe that he does not, in fact, know better. That he has achieved the degree of influence he has is a testament to the contemporary debasement…