What is a heresy? That all depends on which side is looking at whom and what one believes or does not believe. According to the Wikipedia heresy is defined as:

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one’s religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion.

• Are my beliefs controversial?
• Are my beliefs a change from the church’s system of beliefs?
• Do my beliefs conflict with established dogma?

So if my beliefs are contraversial, change from or conflicting with established beliefs and dogma, that makes my beliefs heretical. And therefore that makes me a heretic, but that does not make my beliefs false.

This does not make my beliefs wrong nor does that make me an evil person. On the contrary, if the beliefs and dogmas of religious establishments that are different than my beliefs are wrong then what I am doing is actually a good thing. I am being a light in the midst of darkness. Holding beliefs that are contrary to established religion does not make the beliefs false. A heretical belief may also be and is very frequently true.

In old times heresy was punishable by law and death. And even today, in many countries heresy is punishable by imprisonment and/or death. Thank God we live in America where we have the freedom of speech and religion and are not persecuted or executed.

Brief history of heresy in the church
The use of heresy was begun by Ireneus around the beginning of the second century. The Jewish christians were considered heretics by the roman church since they disagreed with the new doctrines that orthodoxy had invented which caused much bickering and debating.

The Catholic church considers heresy many of Protestantism’s beliefs while Protestants considered the Catholic church to being in apostasy. The Catholics have their belief system from the dogmas that have developed over the span of hundreds of years by popes and church fathers. To the catholics, the Protestants are the heretics. The Protestants claim their faith is based soley on the authority of the bible. To the Protestants the Catholic church is in heresy.

Branded as heretics, persecuted, and executed or murdered as heretics were protestants, Jews, Cathars, Muslims, and others were at least by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” by John Foxe gives a gruesom account of Christian martyrs tortured and murdered by the catholic church from the first to the 16th centuries. However, execution of heretics was not limited to the Catholic Church, Protestants also executed many of those who they considered heretics.

The most famous of heretics executed for his teachings and beliefs was Jesus Christ himself.
Did he not teach controversial change that conflicted with the established Jewish dogmas of his day? He certainly did! By definition, then, Jesus would be a heretic in the eyes of many of the leaders of the Jews.

He was falsely accused of blasphemy by the Jewish authorities, but was falsely convicted by the romans of setting himself up as a king and sedition to arouse insurrection against established legal authorities. Even Pilate himself did not find Jesus guilty of this, but Pilate was pressured by Jewish leaders of the day because Jesus was so popular among the people and the Jewish leaders were afraid that they would lose their power over the people, their prestige and their lucrative business of animal sacrifice. However, the Christian churches would never, in their eyes, consider Christ as a heretic.

So it all depends on whose side you are on and who is judging whom as to who is the heretic and  whose dogma is “authorized” or established. It all depends on what side you are judging from and what system of belief you base your opinion or belief on.

The famous Martin Luther was branded as a heretic…
by the Roman Catholic Church for rejecting many of the church’s tenets and was excommunicated from the church. He was declared an outlaw and the church perrmitted anyone to kill Luther without any legal consequence.

Luther’s response to whether he stood by the contents of his books was the following:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.

What I believe and publish publicly may be against the dogmas of the Catholic and Protestant churches, but as far as I can see my belief system is based all on logic and fact and not hearsay or blind faith.