The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism [Hardcover]

A marvellous and scholarly book making explicit a whole range of human motives for intolerance of heresy, through a big historical view. 20th century totalitarian terror-mongering has rigorously demonstrable roots in one strand of Christianity, beginning with such Fathers as Tertullian and resulting in the Inquisition, a machine for enforcing 'ideocracy' (rule of unquestionable ideations) with torture.

The combination of the prosecuting and judging roles into one body makes the Inquisition a very modern-looking institution anyhow, but Versluis proves this is more than coincidence. This becomes a precise demonstration of how conservative Catholicism could inspire very different later figures and philosophies who also claimed a 'one right answer' with a similar itch to smoke out the wrong-thinking and put them to the poker. That yen pops up everywhere from the obvious (Pat Robertson) to the less expected but no less deserving (Theodor Adorno).

Key in Versluis is that mystical experience, in the form of Gnosticism, becomes a whipping boy in early Christian agendas. It can then play the same role in modern materialist ones which dislike it equally. From the beginning Christian imperialism there was speculation that those who followed anything like a Gnostic path were in some way foul, and finding things foul was a part of early Christianity in any case as readers of Ramsey MacMullen will know. Again and again Versluis corrects the record and shows that the mystics are likely completely free of blame but almost never free of slander. Definitions of mysticism by those who hate it are often not merely incorrect but 180 degrees wrong.

The links in the chain include many writers I didn't know such as Joseph de Maistre or Georges Sorel. Examining them in their due order down the ages, Versluis makes crystal clear their influence on later writers such as Carl Schmitt. He pinpoints telling details in Eric Voegelin and others which show how easily, in a materialist-dogmatic environment, "Gnosticism" or "occultism" or "esotericism" can be thoroughly straw-manned and seen as a pervasive "disordering influence" in need of correction. In every passage quoted the lack of any backup or reasoning signals the danger of yet another auto-da-fe.

Left and right are equally wrongheaded. The filthy enemy could be anyone from the Illuminati to the Cathars to the Satanists to the counter-revolutionaries. Most ordinary folks will happily join in a public lynching rather than wonder where the truth lies. The cure for that, which is the capacity to think and feel for oneself, is rather rare and corresponds to psychological self-actualisation which is itself usually a big part of mystical practice. Versluis gets that.

The value of the book lies in its anatomisation of what makes state torture and marginalisation of freedom possible, and indeed necessary, respectable, and right, in the eyes of mad-eyed fanatics and supposedly insightful intellectuals alike. Why it has taken so long to correct the record about the nature and influence of mysticism I'm not sure, but Versluis is clearly part of a movement doing that with some panache. It's a fun read, not least because people I always suspected were talking out of anatomical areas other than their mouths are caught absolutely bang to rights. Dostoevsky with his "Grand Inquisitor" turns out to be ahead of numerous academic theorists.

A very enjoyable survey, teaching affably and indefatigably some very worthwhile lessons, I recommend this book to anyone whose interest it piques.

The author's primary purpose in this polemic is to place blame for aggressive oppression of those expressing opposing world views at the feet of Christianity, a thesis which is staggeringly ignorant! Aggressive opposition to people with opposing viewpoints is as old as Cain's murder of Abel as recorded in the book of Genesis in the Bible. It was present with the school of Pathagoras in ancient Greece; the book of Daniel records several incidents where religious motivations of the dominant religion of emperor worship attempted execution of some Jewish officials in first Babylonian and then Persian government; Jesus was executed by Roman authority in response to Jewish political pressure; the Bolsheviks executed millions to establish their control of Russia; Islamic countries continue to execute those who choose to leave Islam, or those who even challenge the sayings of Mohammed; Hindus in the state of Orissa recently (2008) conducted a program of killing and burning against Christians; and the list goes on and on. The book "Slaughter of the Dissidents" by Jerry Bergman documents the persecution faced by any who challenge the popular secular naturalism of our day and its creation myth of evolution. Persecution of opposing viewpoints has a long and distinguished history quite apart from Christianity, and is alive and well today in both secular and religious domains.

There have certainly been those in history who have used Christian organizations as a vehicle for persecution of others, exemplified by the murder of Wm. Tyndale in the 16th century for the crime of translating the Bible into English. This was done as part of the political struggles between the secular kings of England and the Catholic Church, using the local religious authorities. A few short years after this event the English kings saw it to their advantage to divorce the English local church from the Catholic Church and authorize the translation of the Bible into English, which was done in 1611 and resulted in the well known King James Version of the Bible. So it is ill considered to even place the blame on religious organizations in general--there are many other factors. This reminds me of attempts to claim that Columbus discovered that the world was round, or that the Galileo was persecuted for disproving Biblical tenants. Both have been ably shown to be false, despite their propagation in popular culture.