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One of the most troubling aspects of Christianity is its violent history. Many barbaric acts have been made in the name of the prince of peace. Christians have not only acted violently toward non Christians, but also toward members of different Christian sects.
The trouble is that since religion and there for Christianity is divorced from logic and rational thought, it becomes possible to justify any act no matter how atrocious to the religious mind. After all, if you believe that God has compelled his followers to murder in the past it is not such a stretch to believe that God may be compelling you to murder now.
Below I have provided a bit of information about some of the atrocities carried out in the name of god. The information below is just a starting point however. If you are interested in a topic please do further research in order to find out more. |
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The Killing God |
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The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe during 1095–1291, most of which were sanctioned by the Pope in the name of Christendom. The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred "Holy Land" from Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia. The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories outside, the Levant usually against pagans, those considered by the Catholic Church to be heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons. Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rum during the Fifth Crusade. The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions (such as the Fourth Crusade) were diverted from their original aim and resulted in the sack of a Christian city, Constantinople (finalizing the Great Schism), and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the Crusaders. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Church, establishing the precedent that rulers other than the Pope could initiate a crusade. |
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The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabel II. The Inquisition, as an ecclesiastical tribunal, had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians. However, since Jews (in 1492) and Muslim Moors (in 1502) had been banished from Spain, jurisdiction of the Inquisition during a large part of its history extended in practice to all royal subjects. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts known as conversos, or marranos. García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560-1700--about 2%--the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, very probably this total should be raised keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively. It is likely that the total would be between 3,000 and 5,000 executed. Other documents, discovered in the Vatican Archives in 2004 put the toll of heresy cases tried by the Spanish Inquisition at 44,647, of which 1.8% led to an execution, while another 1.7% were burned in effigy because they had somehow escaped before the sentence was carried out. If this information is correct, the death toll for the entire Spanish Inquisition lies closer to 800. |
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The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates, and county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693. The hearings in 1692 were conducted in Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover and Salem Town, Massachusetts. The trials in 1692 were all held in Salem Town by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, with the Superior Court of Judicature hearing cases in 1693 in the individual county court seats: Salem Town, Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown. Between February 1692 and May 1693, over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted 29 people of the capital felony of witchcraft, 19 of whom (fourteen women, five men) were hanged. One other man, having refused to enter a plea, died under judicial torture to extract one from him, and at least five more of the accused died in prison. While not the first or only witch-hunt in New England or Europe, the sensational story of these particular individuals has secured its place in the cultural imagination of the United States of America. |
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Some organisations in the United States which oppose abortion either explicitly or implicitly advocate violence against abortion providers in contrast with the majority of the pro-life movement. Two such organizations are The Army of God, an underground network of activists who believe that the use of violence is an appropriate tool for fighting against abortion, and the American Coalition of Life Activists, who published the Nuremberg Files. The Nuremberg Files was a controversial anti-abortion web site which published the names, home addresses, telephone numbers, and other personal information of abortion providers – highlighting the names of those who had been wounded and striking out those of which had been killed. The site was accused of being a thinly-veiled hit list intended to incite violence; others claimed that it was protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision finally shut the site down in 2002 after a prolonged debate. In August 1982, three men identifying as the Army of God kidnapped for eight days Hector Zevallos (a doctor and clinic owner) and his wife, Josalee Jean. In 1993, law enforcement officials found the Army of God Manual, a tactical guide to arson, chemical attacks, invasions, and bombings. The Army of God justified the actions of Paul Jennings Hill on the grounds that "whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child... if in fact Paul Hill did kill or wound abortionist John Britton, and accomplices James Barrett and Mrs. Barrett, his actions are morally justified if they were necessary for the purpose of defending innocent human life" |
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Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a controversial church, considered by many to be a hate group and a cult, headed by Fred Phelps, and based in Topeka, Kansas, U.S.. It runs the websites GodHatesFags.com, GodHatesAmerica.com and others expressing condemnation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBT), Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews, as well as populations it considers to support the forementioned groups, including Swedes, Canadians, Irish and Americans The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League, and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Although well-known in LGBT communities for picketing gay pride events and funerals, the group achieved national notoriety due to its picketing of funeral processions for soldiers killed in Iraq war combat, which functions as an extension of the Phelps' anti-United States beliefs. While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the church is an independent church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations, nor does any Baptist institution recognize the church as a Bible believing fellowship. The church describes itself as following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles. Its first public service was held on the afternoon of Sunday, 27 November 1955. The church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, "God hates fags", and expresses the idea, based on its Biblical eisegesis, that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality – specifically society's increasing tolerance and acceptance of the so-called "Homosexual Agenda." The group maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of "sinners" and that homosexuality should be a capital crime. On 2 November 2007 the official website of Westboro Baptist Church was taken down after a complaint filed by Iridius Izzarne of Seattle, Washington with the hosting company, The Planet. The site violated The Planet's acceptable usage policy. It remains to be seen if the site will return. |
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The Crusades |
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The Spanish Inquisition |
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The Salem Witch Trials |
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Anti Abortion Violence |
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Westboro Baptist Church |
