Early Protestant writers framed Islam’s rise as divine punishment for corrupted churches.
Evidence
In colonial America, many Protestants associated Islam and Catholicism with the Antichrist. … Indeed, Prideaux related the rise of Muhammad and the bishop of Rome’s claim to reign over all churches. Hence, the “Antichrist seems at this time to have set both his Feet upon Christendom together, the one in the East, and the other in the West.” … How better to reconcile the triumphant truth of Christianity with its historical setbacks beginning in the seventh century than to portray the conquered churches as corrupted? Prideaux viewed Muslims as a tool used by god to punish the sinful eastern churches. God raised “the Saracens to be the Instruments of his Wrath, to punish them for it.” … Simultaneously such an explanation chastised contemporary dissenting Christians with the threat of god’s possible punishment and explained the loss of Christendom’s heartland while denigrating Islam. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 108
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains the providentialist framework that fused anti-Islam and anti-Catholic sentiment in colonial Protestant thought.
- XREF: Connects to contemporary ‘Islam as punishment for apostasy’ rhetoric and to the conflation of Islam with other religious ‘others’ (Catholicism). — connects to: Luther weaponized images of Islam to attack Catholicism as well as Turks — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 154; Luther portrayed Islam as a faith that spreads only by violence — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 151; Muslims were ideologically collapsed into heretics, Jews, and the devil by Christian writers. (+5 more)
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Theological explanations blamed Christian corruption and cast Muslims as God’s punishing instrument
#corroborates(0.95) - Church persecution as doctrine caused the emergence of Muslim monsters
#expands(0.70) - Christians ignored Islam’s actual beliefs because they read Muslim conquests as divine punishment
#qualifies(0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 123 - A Protestant-derived aesthetic of understated realism now underwrites ‘rational’ anti-Islamic prejudice.
#complicates(0.45)