Defense Laboratory / Is Christianity responsible for historical violence?
1. The objection
“Look at the record. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the wars of religion, the burning of heretics, the forced conversions in the Americas, the persecution of Jews, and the defense of slavery by Christian preachers. Christianity has been used to justify violence for centuries, and the church was usually in charge when it happened. A religion that claims to follow the Prince of Peace but has left this record has either failed to change people, or the teaching itself is a danger. Either way, it cannot claim to be the moral guide of humanity.”
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That the actions of Christians and of church institutions show what Christianity itself teaches.
- That religion was the main cause of these events, rather than politics, economics, land, power or ethnic rivalry that used religious language.
- That the violence of Christian societies was greater than the violence of comparable non-Christian or secular societies.
- That the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament supports the use of force for religious ends.
- That a belief system must be judged by its worst events and not also by its best.
Evidence and historical claims
- What did Jesus teach about violence, enemies and the sword? Read Matthew 5:38-48, Matthew 26:51-52 and John 18:36.
- What did the early church teach about military service and the use of force in the first three centuries, and what changed after Constantine in the fourth century?
- What were the Crusades, what did the popes who called them say, and what motives do historians find among those who joined? Where do historians disagree?
- How did the medieval and Spanish Inquisitions actually work, how many were executed, and what do recent historians say that older accounts got wrong or right?
- What part did Christians play in ending practices such as slavery (for example in the abolition movement), and what part did Christians play in defending it?
- How do historians count the deaths of the twentieth century, including those under officially atheist states, and how do they treat the question of what caused them?
Philosophical and theological claims
- How should a belief be judged: by its founding teaching, by the conduct of its followers, or by both? What do you do when they conflict?
- If an ideal is abused by people who claim to follow it, is the fault in the ideal or in the people?
- Does the fact that Christianity gave the West its own standards for judging cruelty make the criticism more or less fair?
- What would a fair comparison of religion and secular ideology look like, and who decides which cases count?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: Many Christians and Christian institutions have committed or approved of serious violence in the name of the faith.
- Premise 2: If a belief system leads its followers to commit serious violence, it is responsible for that violence.
- Conclusion: Therefore Christianity is responsible for historical violence and has no moral authority.
- Test each premise separately. Premise 1 is largely a matter of historical record, though the details of each case need checking. Premise 2 is the weak point: it needs a way to separate what a belief actually teaches from what people do under its name.
3. Christian responses
Response A: Admit the record and call it a betrayal of the teaching (the common Christian answer)
Most Christians, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, agree that serious crimes were committed by Christians and by church authorities. In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II publicly asked forgiveness for sins of Christians in the past, including violence done in the service of truth. Protestants have also acknowledged violence among their own, such as the persecution of Anabaptists by other Protestants and Catholics in the sixteenth century.
On this answer, the teaching of Jesus about loving enemies is the standard by which these actions are judged, and the same standard is what makes it possible to condemn them. Many of the strongest critics of religious violence, such as Bartolome de las Casas in the sixteenth century, argued from Christian principles.
Response B: The picture is more complicated than the popular story (many historians)
Many historians argue that popular accounts of the Crusades and the Inquisition contain a good deal of exaggeration. The Crusades are generally understood by many scholars as a response, in part, to the expansion of Muslim rule and to appeals from the Byzantine emperor, and they involved a mixture of religious devotion, family honor, land and politics. Historians still disagree about how much weight to give each of these. They agree that the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland in 1096 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 were grave atrocities.
On the Inquisition, recent historical work suggests that the number of executions was far smaller than the figures often repeated in popular writing, and that its procedures were in some ways more regulated than those of secular courts of the time. This does not make the institution just, since it used coercion and torture over belief, but it affects the scale and the picture. Historians also stress that the wars of religion in Europe had strong political causes, and scholars debate how far religion alone can be called the cause.
Response C: The just war and pacifist traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Anabaptist views)
Catholic and many Protestant writers developed the just war tradition from Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas as a way of limiting violence by requiring a just cause, legitimate authority and proportion. The Orthodox tradition has often been reluctant to bless war as good, and some Orthodox canons treat even a soldier who has killed in a just cause as needing a period of penance. The historic peace churches, such as the Mennonites and the Quakers, hold that Christians should not use violence at all, and they point to Jesus’ words to Peter in the garden.
These are different answers to the same difficulty, and they show that Christians have not agreed that the faith demands or permits violence. The existence of all three positions suggests that Christianity does not teach one simple attitude to force.
Response D: Religion is not the unique cause of violence (secular and scholarly views)
Some historians and political scientists argue that the claim that religion is a special cause of violence does not hold up well, since the same human motives of power, fear, land and tribe appear in violence with or without religion. They point to the large death tolls of twentieth century regimes that were officially hostile to religion. Others reply that this does not clear Christianity, since the question is not whether others killed as well, but whether Christian teaching or institutions encouraged killing in particular cases.
Some secular writers also hold that the claim of a religion to possess final truth can make coercion easier to justify than in a society which treats beliefs as matters of opinion. The question remains debated among scholars.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Responses A, B and C is that they can look like a way of keeping the credit and dodging the blame. When Christians do good, the faith is said to have inspired it, and when Christians do harm, they are said to have betrayed the faith. A critic asks for a standard that would count against Christianity if the facts turned out differently. The reply also notes that many of the people who did the harm cited the Bible and the church, and so did their critics, which suggests the sources can support more than one conclusion. It is not enough, the objector says, to say that the teaching of Jesus is peaceful when other parts of the Bible, such as the conquest narratives of Joshua, were used for centuries to justify violence.
The strongest reply to Response D is that it can slide into the argument that others were worse. The question asked of Christianity is not whether it was the only cause of violence, but whether it deserves the moral authority it claims. A reply that names other violent systems does not answer that. The defender of Christianity has to show that there is something in the teaching itself, such as the command to love enemies and the dignity of every person, which has acted as a check on violence and not merely a cover for it.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words, and say whether it is a claim about the teaching of Christianity or about the conduct of Christians.
- List the premises hidden in it using the logic outline above, and mark the one you think is weakest.
- Read Matthew 5:38-48, Matthew 26:51-52 and John 18:36. In two or three sentences, state what Jesus teaches about force.
- Choose one event named in the objection (for example the First Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition or the wars of religion). Read at least two accounts by historians who disagree, and write a paragraph on what is firmly established, what is debated, and what remains unknown.
- Write a short paragraph on the just war and pacifist positions, each stated so that its supporters would accept it as fair.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State how you think a belief should be judged and what you say about the record of Christians in history.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Finally write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.