Religion - Christianity - Killings for Christianity

Killings for Christianity

The Church started killing unbelievers as early as the 4th century . The killing (often with torture) of heretics, church splinter groups, dissenters, atheists, agnostics, deists, pagans, infidels and unbelievers was supported by almostmainstream Christian theology for over a thousand years, starting with the intolerant St. Augustine (died 430 AD).

See also Killings for Islam.

Much (but not all) of Christianity's killing is in the past. Christianity had a long run as the world's most violent religion. But I think it is clear that the world's most violent religion is now Islam.

This hilarious scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail perfectly captures the "logic" of the centuries of "witch" torturing and killing by Christianity.This crime was supported at the highest levels, up to The Papacy.





The burning alive of a man accused of "witchcraft".From The Devils (1971).In fact, this is mild. The Christian religious maniacs burnt women and children alive too.Search for more









Democide in the Americas, Africa and Australia

I agree that much of the democide and slavery in the New World and Africa after the 15th century was driven by politics and profit as much as by religion. I am not blaming Christianity for all of it.

The West has changed for the better. And the Christian churches have changed for the better. I am interested in the failure of the Christian West to recognise the rights of non-Europeans, the failure of the Christian churches to condemn it, the slow awakening of both church and society, and the long road towards the West becoming today the greatest defender on earth of universal human rights.





The Spanish executing the last Inca Emperor Atahualpa in 1533.He was threatened with death by burning, which, in his beliefs, would prevent his soul going to the afterlife.He was offered death by strangling if he would convert to Catholicism. He agreed, and was killed that way.Image from here





Slavery in the Americas and Africa

A lady being carried by her slaves in Brazil , c.1860.From here





"An Atheist Reads the Bible - 4 - Slavery".

Support for slavery in the Bible.





Sir Thomas More is killed for his beliefs.He himself burned alive people forbeliefs.





"Brief Lives" by John Aubrey (late 17th century) tells this amusing story about how Thomas More displayed and gave away his daughter Margaret to William Roper.





Bishops Against Iraqi Freedom, Mark Tooley, January 13, 2006. 96 United Methodist bishops called the liberation of Iraq "unjust and immoral". Another bishop called the liberation "morally lamentable" and "theologically reprehensible."