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I disapprove of what you say, but
will defend to the death your right to say it.
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S. G. Tallentyre's summary of Voltaire's
attitude to Helvétius
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Perhaps the most spectacular example of Christians imposing
their views on others is censorship. Pope Gelasius issued a
list of prohibited writings as early as AD 494, although there
had been specific prohibitions before that. Soon Christians
were burning anything that did not agree with their own beliefs.
They would burn whole books because of a single passage with
which they disagreed. As the edict of Worms explained in 1521:
we want all of Luther's books to be universally prohibited
and forbidden, and we also want them to be burned. We execute
the sentence of the Holy Apostolic See, and we follow the
very praiseworthy ordinance and custom of the good Christians
of old who had the books of heretics like the Arians, Priscillians,
Nestorians, Eutychians, and others burned and annihilated,
even everything that was contained in these books, whether
good or bad.
Within a century of the introduction of printing in Europe
a formal process was required to keep track of books that the
Church had ordered to be destroyed. In 1557 Pope Paul IV established
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of prohibited
books, usually known simply as the Index. A vast range
of books was put on this Index, scientific, philosophical, religious
and artistic. Jewish books were placed on the Index under Pope
Clement VIII in 1596.
Specific authors whose works have been put on it include most
of the great names of Western literature and learning. Amongst
them have been Galen, Chaucer, Bacon, Erasmus, Milton, Dante,
Montaigne, Rabelais, Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes,
Voltaire, Goldsmith, Locke, Gibbon, Hume, Rousseau, J. S. Mill,
Darwin, and Victor Hugo. Also placed on the Index were writings
that told the truth about the forged documents that the Church
had produced to support papal claims and, more recently, books
about family planning. On the other hand works such as Mein
Kampf have never been prohibited. The Index was abolished
in 1966. Now the Church
has to be content with censoring the writings of its own priests.
Their work is reviewed by censors and given an imprimatur only
if the sentiments conform to the current official line.
Uncomfortable public statements by Roman Catholics scholars
continue to be suppressed. For example, in 1985 the Vatican
banned Father Leonardo Boff from making public statements. Some
Roman Catholic countries maintained their own equivalent of
the Index. The Irish Free State, as then was, banned all of
the works of Synge and Yeats, along with other dangerous books
such as Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, The Origin
of Species by Darwin, and a book about fairies by Arthur
Conan Doyle. In Eire, the successor to the Free State, the Irish
Censorship Board, assisted by the Catholic Truth Society,
continues to uphold the faith. Although now regarded as a figure
of fun in educated circles, its decisions could still cause
offending authors to lose their jobs at the end of the twentieth
century*. Christians in
secular states have often managed to ban respectable works,
again well into the twentieth century: Webster's Dictionary
for example was banned in Arkansas because of its entry on Darwinian
evolution. Information about family planning and birth control
has been banned in many Christian countries.
Over the centuries the Christian Churches have burned countless
thousands, perhaps millions, of books of which it disapproved.
The Protestant record may not be quite as bad as that of Roman
Catholics, but it is not much better. English Parliaments and
juries were keen book burners, and the Public Hangman was kept
occupied burning political and religious "naughty writings"
as well as their naughty authors. The Commons had them burned,
the Lords had them burned, bishops had them burned, judges had
them burned and magistrates had them burned.
Some writers destroyed their own unpublished works, fearing
the consequences of discovery. Thomas Hobbes, who had been lucky
to keep his life after publishing Leviathan in 1651,
is known to have burned some of his papers while under threat.
Even sceptical ecclesiastics were vulnerable. Edmund Gibson,
Bishop of London, destroyed an incriminating manuscript in the
early 1730s. Theologians sometimes published posthumously for
fear of the consequences. The atheist priest Jean Meslier left
manuscripts to be published after his death. Voltaire published
extracts , but Meslier's work was not published in full until
the nineteenth century.
Philosophers were also obliged to publish posthumously or anonymously,
for fear of the consequences. Blaise Pascal published his Lettres
écrites à un provincial secretly and anonymously
in 1656-7 because they exposed Jesuit morality. Spinoza's Theologico-Political
Treatise, which attacked Christian supernaturalism, was
published anonymously in 1670. In France, Denis Diderot had
his rational encyclopaedia suppressed, and he himself was imprisoned
in 1749. The Paris Parliament had burned his Pensées
Philosophiques in 1746 , and he felt obliged to publish
his Pensées sur la Religion anonymously in 1763.
Some of his work, such as Rameau's Nephew and D"Alembert's
Dream, were published only posthumously.
Voltaire ridiculed conventional Christian ideas in his novel
Candide and other works. His Letters Concerning
the English, published in France as Lettres Philosophiques,
were burned by the public executioner, and an order was made
for his arrest. Fearing Christian retribution from a number
of countries, he lived on an international border, so that he
could escape, whichever authorities proceeded against him. David
Hume worked for 25 years on his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, a critique of the religious Argument from Design.
Because it was likely to be regarded as seditious it could not
be published during his lifetime. It was published, in the teeth
of fierce opposition, three years after his death.
It is more than likely that contributions from other philosophers
were suppressed or destroyed by Christian friends and relatives
to avoid posthumous criticism from the God-fearing classes.
All manner of existing works needed tailoring to meet Christian
sensibilities. The devout Dr Thomas Bowdler produced an expurgated
version of Shakespeare's works in 1818. He also bowdlerised
Gibbon's monumental work The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, probably the most thoroughly researched, best-written,
and authoritative history ever produced. He expurgated all the
religious material, judging, perhaps correctly, that Christians
would not wish to learn the truth about the early history of
their faith. In the USA Noah Webster was more considerate still.
He produced an expurgated version of the Bible. It is a mixed
blessing that he could not have done this in England. In England
he would have needed a special licence from Parliament to publish
a translation of the Bible.
Because of contemporary Christian mores, Dr James Murray felt
unable to include a number of ancient English words in the Oxford
English Dictionary, so marring one of the greatest works of
English scholarship ever undertaken. The omissions had to be
rectified in supplements by Dr Robert Burchfield in the twentieth
century. In the USA the position is the same as it was in England.
Webster's Dictionary omitted these words and still omits them.
Even at the end of the twentieth century there was only one
American dictionary that included what publishers call the "big
six" four-letter words*.
Christian sensitivities extend to many areas of life. The Bishop
of Wakefield burned Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure
because it did not support the Church's current view of the
sanctity of marriage. Not until well into the twentieth century
was it possible freely to publish works describing abortion
or birth control. In England, the USA and elsewhere, books on
the subject were regarded as pornographic and those involved
in their publication could be, and were, prosecuted under obscenity
legislation. In Roman Catholic countries offending books were
placed on the Index, and sympathetic governments like Hitler's
suppressed them by force*.
In England all conventional media have been controlled at one
time or another. Plays for example were strictly regulated.
By the fourteenth century the only performances permitted in
England were religious ones such as morality plays, miracle
plays and mystery plays. By the sixteenth century the monopoly
had been broken, and to the Church's irritation it was possible
to stage public plays. Theatre censorship was introduced in
1551, but this was not enough. In 1642 Puritans closed the London
theatres altogether. They opened again in 1660 when the Puritans
had fallen from power.
From 1843 the law required new play scripts to be submitted
to the Lord Chamberlain, who would issue a licence for public
performance only if the play was deemed suitable. Many playwrights
had to amend their work in order to get it staged. George Bernard
Shaw had problems with a number of plays, including Mrs
Warren's Profession (1894). Ensuring suitability often
involved sanitising history. For example, a play in 1966 was
denied a licence unless it was amended to include a favourable
view of the papacy's wartime record with respect to the Jews*.
This prior censorship, as it was called, ended two
years later. By then the unfortunate Lord Chamberlain had become
a laughing stock to all but the keenest moralists.
Books had also been subjected to prior censorship (i.e. review
and possible suppression before publication). The first notable
essay arguing "for the liberty of unlicensed printing"
was Areopagitica, published by the Unitarian John Milton
in 1644. His ideas were espoused by the philosopher John Locke.
On Locke's advice Parliament repealed the Licensing Act in 1695,
so ending the practice of prior restraint. It was possible to
push through this repeal largely because the then censor, one
Bohun, had already become a figure of fun — just as the
Lord Chamberlain was to become a figure of fun for the same
reason almost three centuries later. Cinema films have been
subject to prior censorship since 1912 and still are, having
been joined by video films in 1984. For many years the American
film industry was constrained by the US Production Code, the
infamous Hays Code, inspired by God-fearing Christians.
So it was that from 1934 to 1968 cinema storylines had to have
"moral" endings, kisses could not last more than three
seconds , and people were allowed onto a bed only in the most
innocent circumstances. By 1968 the Hays Code had become such
a joke that, like the British Lord Chancellor's role, it had
to be abandoned, despite vocal Christian protestations.
In the late Middle Ages, Christian authorities had been keen
to prevent unauthorised translations of the Bible getting into
the hands of the public. Secret printing was heavily penalised,
but public demand ensured a thriving black market. Printers"
apprenticeships were strictly controlled. Printing was limited
to Oxford, Cambridge and London. Laws were introduced to permit
the search of imports for concealed bibles. But none of it worked,
and bibles became ever more common. Once the bible battle was
over the censors" focus changed to political and religious
sedition; and when that battle was lost too, it changed to sex.
The traditional Christian obsession with sexual matters resulted
in prosecutions for obscenity not only against books about birth
control, but also against respectable literature and even books
on psychology. Amongst the victims of obscenity prosecutions
have been Flaubert's Madam Bovary, Havelock Ellis's
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, James Joyce's Ulysses,
and Norman Haire's Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge.
Christian morality suffered a setback in 1961 when D. H. Lawrence's
last book Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in
paperback. Innocuous as it now seems, it caused outrage at the
time, selling three million copies to top the best seller lists
thanks to the publicity. So too, Hubert Selby's Last Exit
to Brooklyn incurred the wrath of Christians and landed
his British publishers in court, though they won the case on
appeal. In 1968 a play called The Romans in Britain
was prosecuted for obscenity. In 1977 a piece of poetry by Professor
James Kirkup, The Love that Dares to Speak its Name,
was found to be criminally blasphemous*.
Christians still seek to impose their views on others. Because
of Christian sensitivities the film Monty Python's Life
of Brian was banned by some local authorities in Britain
when it was released in 1979. The Independent Broadcasting Authority
also banned it, so that it could not be shown on British commercial
television*. The film's
subject is not explicitly Jesus or Christianity, so it is not
clear why Christians should be so sensitive about it, but in
any case people are being prohibited from seeing a film that
they want to see, both in Britain and in other Christian countries
around the world*. Neither
is this a lone example. In Britain and the USA attempts were
made to ban Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ
when it appeared in 1988*.
In 1989 a 20 minute video Visions of Ecstasy was banned
in Britain because it was held to be blasphemous, although it
was based on St Theresa of Ávila's own accounts of her
visions. Eastern Churches have similar attitudes. For example
when Theodore Angelopoulos started shooting The Suspended
Step of the Stork in Greece, a local bishop condemned the
film, inciting violence against the set and crew.
Since it has become impossible for Christians to deny the existence
of atheists, they have taken to denying the possibility of atheist
morality. Many Christians seem to be offended by the idea that
atheists might be capable of leading fulfilled and morally upright
lives. In 1955 the BBC decided to allow rationalists a voice.
Margaret Knight, an eminent psychologist, gave a talk in which
she suggested that people could lead honest and meaningful lives
without the aid of religion. The reaction from Christians was
powerful. Mrs Knight was attacked for immoral and seditious
teachings. Since then, the BBC has never again dared to give
rationalism a fair hearing, preferring a safe diet of religion
produced by its Religious Department. At the time of writing
you can “listen again” to twice as many Radio 4
religious and "ethical" broadcasts as science broadcasts.
No philosophical or genuinely ethical broadcasts are available
at all. Many of the religious and ethical programmes are thinly
disguised religious propaganda but are never identified as such,
and no right of rely is available to those attacked in the course
of these programmes. One such programme, Thought For The
Day, is smuggled every weekday morning at prime time into
the Today programme, the UK's premier morning news
programme. It is never identified as a production of the Religious
Department or even as a separate programme. It annoys the audience
as much as it does the Today broadcasters. Again, the
Today programme used to run a competition each year
to identify the most popular and most unpopular person in the
world — but stopped the latter competition after the Pope
won it two years in a row, eliminating any possibility of him
winning it again. In effect, public opinion has been censored
to protect religious sensitivities.
Even television advertisements are censored because of Christian
sensitivities. Tunes that happen to resemble hymn tunes seem
to cause especial offence. In 1988 Volkswagen had to redub a
television commercial because it had used an Alan Price song,
Changes, the tune of which also features in the song
What a Friend We have in Jesus*.
An advertisement for Quality Street chocolates had to be withdrawn
because its tune sounded like that of the hymn When the
Roll is Called Up Yonder, I"ll Be There*.
Cardinal Basil Hume's office felt compelled to report Tatler
to the Press Council because an advertising feature, based on
a genre of 1950s Italian films, included religious artefacts*.
Christians also routinely complain about television advertisements
for condoms and tampons, which have been permitted on British
television only since the late 1980s. Earlier advertisements
by the Family Planning Association had been removed
from the London Underground because of Roman Catholic sensitivities.
In Britain the police will also step in to enforce religious
compliance and suppress dissent — as for example in April
2005 when football fans were arrested and charged with hate
crimes for declining to join in one minutes" silence for
a recently deceased pope*.
European television has never benefited from the distinctive
brand of Christian morality characterised by the Anglo-Saxon
low churches. Christians in Britain are now concerned at the
quantity of European satellite TV programming now being seen
by British viewers. Similar low-church attitudes are popular
in the USA. In some areas the USA is well ahead in religiously
inspired censorship. Fundamentalists in California have managed
to ban schoolbooks that deal with a wide range of subjects,
including the theory of evolution, race relations, nuclear war,
sex discrimination, human sexuality, birth control and the Holocaust.
In the USA so-called "Comstock laws" (ch. 258 17
Stat. 598 enacted March 3, 1873) had been passed in 1873. They
prohibitted the sending of any matter through the mails which
the Postal Authorities choose to call "obscene". But
the target was not just pornography. It was any mention of anything
that offended Christian sensibilities, from sex education to
irreligious philosophy and birth control. The laws were used
against, for example, book sellers who sent medical textbooks
through the US mail. As Margaret Sanger put it the Comstock
laws were “designed and enforced to destroy the liberty
of conscience and thought in matters of religion and against
the freedom of the press.” Anthony Comstock had been Secretary
and Special Agent for the Society for the Suppression of Vice
since 1873 and U. S. Post Office Inspector from the same year.
He recorded that he had destroyed 160 tons of literature and
brought 3,760 "criminals" to "justice".
Because of its history, book burning is generally regarded
with horror in the West. But many Christians still regard it
as acceptable. After the Scopes trial in 1925, a Christian High
School superintendent in Meridan, Mississippi, organised a public
bonfire of pages torn from textbooks dealing with evolution.
Following public burning of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic
Verses in the 1980s, an Iranian fatwah was issued calling
for the killing of the author. All secular opinion concurred
that this was intolerable. The only influential Western voices
raised against Rushdie and in favour of censorship came from
the Christian Churches.
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Buy the Book from Amazon.com
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Buy the Book from Amazon.co.uk
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