Butler’s entry for Zoticus is short, and I am offering it here in its entirety:

He first detected, zealously confuted, and condemned the errors and impostures of the Cataphryges or Montanists with their false prophecies, as Eusebius [one of the earliest historians of Christianity] mentions. To this triumph over heresy and imposture he added the crown of martyrdom, which he received in the persecution of Severus, about the year 204.

Here’s why it is important to take the time to discuss Zoticus–it is because of the putative heretics that he took such strong measures against. You see, the Montanists held the strange idea that anyone could be chosen by God to do God’s work–women could be called into ministry; enslaved persons could be prophets; uneducated peasants could be leaders; poor people could make godly decisions and hold forth views–that might well differ from Command Central in Rome!

Please understand that suppressing these Montanists was a WATERSHED MOMENT in Christian history! It signaled a definitive (and, sadly, virtually irrevocable) choice by the Church hierarchy to consolidate its power–at the expense of holy spirit moving freely and fully throughout the entire communion of saints. The Church turned its back on the Jesus Movement’s origins among fishers, tax collectors, prostitutes, and the uneducated, and–in the supposed interest of quality control and unity (code words for power consolidation among males of a certain class and caste)–Zoticus and his ilk worked strenuously to ensure that the only way that people could proclaim that God was working among them was if the Church hierarchy agreed.

Certainly there’s an argument to be made that it’s a slippery slope when just anyone can up and say, “I know what God wants, so follow me!” After all, Michele Bachmann declared that God wanted her to be president of the United States of America. And, yes, there truly is value in education and in an understanding and appreciation of the histories of one’s faith community.

But to decide that only the Chosen Few, who must be approved by the already powerful, can be called by God, can be empowered by God, can be commissioned for the work of God, can be entrusted with their own spiritual awareness–this is perhaps one of the most regrettable, damaging, and damning choices that Christianity has ever made and that it continues making to this very moment.

For crying out loud, the two largest Christian bodies in the United States (the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists) deny off the top that God could call a single person from among the majority of human beings (i.e., women) into priestly or pastoral leadership. This idea that those already ensconced in power in church circles are the best ones to decide whom God has chosen or may choose (!) is institutionally sound and morally bankrupt.

Some Christian traditions–perhaps most notably the Pentecostalists–have made room for God’s spirit to work outside of the straitjackets of Roman Catholicism or mainstream Protestantism. Yet even the vast majority of Pentecostalists deny that the Holy Spirit could come upon LGBT persons and raise them up to positions of ordained ministry (here joining, sadly and ironically, the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists and denying the originating tenets of their own movement).

Until Christianity deals with the disconnect of, on one hand, affirming that humanity has been created in God’s image and, on the other, that only some human beings actually are able to appropriately or properly represent that Divinity, it can never reflect the life and ministry of the Nazarene and will continue its systemic devaluation (and worse) of what should be the Good News of limitless, liberating, life-loving salvation!