““Real Christianity” is probably best defined in the Sermon on the Mount.”
Agreed.
“Nothing in there about torturing, burning, beheading and drowning “heretics”, or forbidding the people to have the Scriptures in their own language.”
Then why did Protestants so often do those things? Protestants tortured and burned and beheaded and drowned and smothered Catholics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_martyrs_of_the_English_Reformation
And why would Protestants leave the Mass as people wanted it in the language they wanted it in? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_Book_Rebellion
“The Roman Church tortured and murdered professing Christians just as vigorously as any emperor in the preexisting Roman Empire.”
No. That is a logical impossibility. That would take an empire and a massive standing army. The Church had neither.
“Whether you believe their profession was genuine or gave them a relationship with Christ is immaterial.”
What would be material would be heresy and the violence it causes.
“Now, as far as I can tell, the church in Europe hasn’t done anything like this for about 300 years.”
Actually, Protestants were allowing Catholics to starve to death during the potato famine if they did not renounce their Catholicism. That was only in 1848. Why were the Protestants so blood thirsty as to do that? I guess they knew nothing of the Beatitudes, right? That would have to be your explanation would it not?
“The biggest blow for freedom was struck by the Pilgrims when they left brutal Europe for the New World and started the movement that would give us genuine Freedom of Worship.”
That “brutal Europe” was actually Protestant England - that’s where the pilgrims were really fleeing from you know.
However, we do have ample evidence of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church ordering the things done to non-catholics....for which the pope has yet to officially apologize for. Nor has the office of inquisition been liquidated. Yes the name has changed, but the office remains.
I suspect there are some in the rcc today that would love to re-open the inquisition. No doubt, there are some on this board that would love to do so.
I am not a “protestant”.
I am a Christian.
I abhor Luther’s hatred of the Jews and Zwingli’s burning of “heretics” as much as the unspeakable slaughter of the Huegonots and Mennonites at the hands of the Roman Church and the brutal persecution of Christians and Jews at the hands of the Borgia popes and their infamous henchman Torquemada.
Erasmus said, after reading a Greek Bible, “Either this is not the Bible, or we are not Christians.”