Religious Violence in Perspective
Few people with any awareness of history deny that considerable violence has been carried out under the banner of Christianity.
Nothing in Christianity justifies arbitrary violence by Christians, who when they engage in it are either misguided about the teachings of Jesus, swept up in movements that consciously or unconsciously appeal to their baser motives such as greed, or use religion in the service of psychopathology.
A line of thought within Christianity, going back at least as far as Augustine in the fifth century, allows for a “just war” but in the interest of peace. Christians do not promote peace to give them an advantage when they decide to go to war, but decide to go to war only to promote peace.
All religions have good and not-so-good people, who often have mixed motives, ranging from benevolence and altruism, on one side of the ledger, to the lust for wealth and glory on the other. With billions of people on the planet claiming to be Christians, how could Christianity not include virtuous saints as well as ruthless predators?
The Crusades that primarily occurred during the two centuries from 1095 to1291 are often cited as examples of Christian violence and predation. Those who participated in them had various motives. Some believed that Islam was a threat to Christendom, since Islamic forces had long been threatening the West on different fronts. Others wanted to take back the Holy Lands, recover religious relics now in the hands of Muslims, enhance military prestige, fulfill feudal obligations, or simply raid the wealth of the East, sometimes to get around primogeniture. This was the feudal European practice by which the eldest son became sole beneficiary of the estate of his father when the father died. Few wanted to force Muslims to become Christians, because it was widely held that conversions to Christianity had to be voluntary.
Some crusades to the Middle East were sanctioned by the Church. Pope Urban II initiated the first crusade, in part to offer military support to the Byzantine Emperor against the Turks. Other Crusades were carried out against organized groups the Church proclaimed to be heretics, or the longstanding attempt to eject the Moors from Spain. Through much of the Middle Ages, the Church was the unifying force throughout Europe. Because it alone enjoyed widespread allegiance throughout Europe, it was almost inevitable that it would take on both governmental and military functions.
The Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517, was intended to encourage spirituality and improve behavior, but it led to considerable violence by fanatics. The Counter-Reformation within Catholicism ensued soon after but it too led to considerable violence. A century later, the Thirty Years War took place. Although allegedly between Catholics and Protestants, it was more about politics, territory, and wealth than about religion, with each side including both Catholics and Protestants.
Few people today would deny that Conquistadors in Central and South America ravished and killed off large numbers of indigenous peoples as well as their cultures, or that settlers in North America engaged in life-or-death struggles with Native Americans over property. These settlers ultimately prevailed because of their sheer numbers and superiority of European firearms.
There was also the unspeakable barbarity of the slave trade that caused the involuntary servitude of millions, and often their death before they even reached the New World. Nothing in Christianity can justify this and it remains an irremovable stain on white Europeans who, in large numbers, subscribed to pseudospeciation, the belief that people from other lands, in this case Africa, were genetically inferior and therefore not not human.
Some have argued that Christianity was responsible for what happened in Nazi Germany during WWII, but most people in America would regard it as a necessary and therefore a just war. Some members of the German clergy, probably out of a desire to save themselves or to end up on what they believed would be the winning side, supported and encouraged persecution of Jews. It is doubtful, however, that many of them were aware of the existence of death camps in which millions were slaughtered. Their dispositions toward Jews cannot be called even remotely Christian. Hitler used the German church when it served his purposes, but privately he believed Christianity to be dangerous if not detrimental to his ambitions.
The use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially the latter, continues to be debated. Some argue that such use prevented the inevitable loss of tens of thousands of American troops who, in order to end the war, would have had to invade Japan. Others argue that their use was, on its face, immoral.
When evaluating whether Christianity has encouraged or discouraged violence, it is important to view it against the backdrop of how other religions have fared.
The gladiatorial games of the Roman Empire caused the deaths of over a million people.
The Mongols killed between thirty and forty million of those they vanquished.
Power struggles in China over the centuries resulted in the deaths of well over one hundred million people, and in the twentieth century, of between forty-five and seventy-five million.
The French Revolution is a glaring example of mass homicide carried out by those openly antagonistic to Christianity and the Catholic Church.
Early in the twentieth century, over a million Armenians were executed by the Turks.
Although it is difficult accurately to determine the number of casualties, many tens of millions were executed during the Russian Revolution.
Christianity has had a strong tempering influence on western culture. Even among those without religion, it continues to have major impact on their values. Whether or not they recognize it, people in the West have internalized from Christianity the value of a high level of social capital, the tendency to place the well-being of society ahead of the well-being of one’s tribe, clan, or family.
Despite the glaring favoritism often shown toward the privileged, no one in western society is regarded as categorically above the law. There iw a widespread belief in fair play, and as a society we have an aversion to cruel and unusual punishment. We believe in human dignity, individual freedom, and the right of everyone to own property.
Where, we might ask, did these values originate? How and when did they become institutionalized, if not in halls of monasteries, churches, and medieval universities?