I’ve very often heard people mention the many tragic incidents done by people in Christian history, even with the blessings of priests and popes, and then God seem to be the one to blame. Both the inquisition, witch burning, crusades, wars between Catholics and Protestants, happened with people believed to be doing Gods will, therefore “in the name of God”. In my own country, Christened around 1000-1200 AD, is still said to have been spread by blood. Those with knowledge of history however, know that the Christening of Norway happened as a result of a politics between two men who both wanted to rule. Also there’s none that realize the irony they’re missing when blaming Christianity for violence, after what was done by our forefather in the Viking Age.
Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, sentenced to death by being burned alive stake in 1314, after accusations , extracted under torture, of things from devil worship, sodomy, spitting at the cross etc.
And there’s none that think about the simple words of Jesus of Nazareth, about loving, praying for and forgiving your enemy, turning the other cheek etc. and ask themselves if these really were the basic principles of what has been done by people, by purpose or ignorance, things that are against the teachings of Jesus. Although I can’t remember anyone using the words “It was done in the name of Jesus”.
Most of the time in the West though, it seem clearly to be about the God in Christianity people talk about when using the phrase. Wrongs that have been done in the name of God or in the name of Christianity, not as in having been done some horrible blasphemy, but as if it something related to Christianity.
Example of an American Christian hate group, that behave disgusting in public, with most elders being lawyers, using their right for freedom of speech for offensive public to the uttermost of the law, and believe that what they are doing are in “The Name of God”.
But did Jesus talk about war, swords and conflict as part of his teachings? Yes, he did.
It seem to be an agreement among Christian that spreading peace, not war is a good thing. But Jesus said that he didn’t come to spread peace, but the sword. (as has happened) This is however elaborated, and explained that because of this teaching would split families and friends would turn against each other. (also true, by experience)
In another example he talks to a soldier, not to condemn war, but rather to explain what to do best if you happen to be a soldier. As anyone knew, also Jesus understood that people had always be at war. A centurion was also told to have ha more faith then anyone in Judea.
And he said that there would come times where people thought they did God a service by killing Christians. As has happened.
So did an Apostle later in the bible. He explained that “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. (As happened)
Jesus warned about other people that would come, pretending to be Jesus and false prophets, as has happened. Thousands have died because of this.
Much of the problem arrived with the Catholic Church and reading of the Old Testament. In the old testament there’s a lot of different forms of punishments for people breaking the law. However the bible teaches that all sins are forgivable, that faith in Christ, not ” The Law of Moses, as Jesus said”, is the basic of Christian salvation.
Also by reading it in Latin at church to the illiterate flock, didn’t help much either.
Execution of Mariana de Carabajal (converted Jew), Mexico City, 1601.
The Spanish Inquisition itself caused the death of around 150.000 people. The last pope, Benedict XVI, were the director of the “Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office”, the renaming of the inquisition in 1908. Punishment such as burning and drowning were thought of as “not shedding blood”, and not done by the priests that carried out the sentence, certainly convinced that they were doing God’s will by some perverted logic.
Then, and for sure not as the first with similar opinions, that the pope was in fact the Antichrist (the bible says he will sit on the throne of God and call Himself God). Martin Luther came along and told what was really written in the bible, helped by the movable type invented by Gutenberg that spread his texts faster then the Church could burn them. By the help of a Saxon prince that didn’t take part in the required unanimous vote and helped him escape after the trial, to a remote castle where he venomously continued his sarcastic and condemning remarks against the Catholic Church, such as “the pope should stand up like the stinking sinner he is” or “The pope should restrain himself and take his fingers out of the pie”, a unstoppable, earthly, witty and intelligent provocateur.
But with forces history society beyond his control, and probably seeds of freedom that only needed water to sprout this would really “bring the sword” in the 100-years war, and by the “victory” of the reform in Western Europe in the end. Here too I’m sure both sides were praying to the same God to save them from their fellow Christians that wanted to kill instead of dying.
The notion that Jesus had atoned for all sins on the cross and that only by his grace could we gain salvation by faith in Him, is basic Christianity, clearly written, but at odds with the Catholic Church. Luther also wrote the bible in German, so people could understand the simple facts, and now nothing the church did was needed to save the souls of people. They could find the faith they needed by reading what the clergy said
This shaped the western civilization in a radical way, different from the older civilization of Orthodox Christianity in East-Europe and Russia, that would soon lag behind the new, progressive individualism and critical thinking of Protestant West-Europe and USA.
So I strongly disagree in both the wars and crimes of the last two millennia, as being “in the name of God”, and that Christianity have instead the laws and values our civilization is based on, that we cherish and protect, fought over by the blood of martyrs and young men forced to leave their home and go to war.
An animated video from Business Insider about the spread of the 5 world religions, from 5,000 years ago to today.
I want to go through the film with further description, to understand religion, from ancient times, until today and especially the 3 monotheistic religions, with the main points in their development.
Before Hinduism Shamanism and Animism were dominant in the world, and idea that the world around was inherently spiritual in the nature and people an integral part of it, as well as Ancestor Reverence. For example in Canaan, in one of the first agricultural areas, where wheat was cultivated and grounded to flour to bake a type of bread, communities had a custom of burying the heads of the elders under the middle of the floor in the huts.
Romanian religion philosopher Mircea Eliade believed that in all parts of the world shamanism had developed similar rituals and concepts independently, where the sea and and other geological formations separated them from each other for thousands of years. A shaman was usually an important member of the tribe who through trance had contact with the spirit world, to use medicine, lead rituals ad perform soul journeys to find lost pets. The trance was induced by psychotropic drugs or steadily beating of a drum. This form of early religion believed in different gods and even monotheism, was prevalent in shamanism forward to Europe – mainly Portugal, Spain, England and France – colonized America and changed the religion to Christianity – mostly Catholic in South-America and various denominations of Protestantism, many of witch view on Christianity made them persecuted in the old world – like the Amish – and found a place for themselves in the New World. Also after Christians and most other religions have tried to supress the native religions, often forcibly “convertes” natives, Shamanism lasted as a religion until today, especially in various indigenous communities.
Mircea Eliade also did not use the term homo sapiens = wise man, but Homo Religiosus=religious man, something that might make sense if we look at the world.
Depiction of Siberian Shaman in traditional outfit.
Archaeological finds have revealed graves with grave goods 100,000 years back in time, which seem to refer to a belief of a world after this, where the deceased could bring the grave goods to this new spirit world. Neanderthal Graves going back as far as 120.000 years, bear witness of the same. So religion outside the “5 official world religions” have not only been around to 5000BC, but at least 20 times as long.
Even in a recent discovery, in the Cradle of Humanity, South-Africa, in the Rising Star Cave, there’s been found massive numbers of fossilized hominid remains, with the only logical explanation that they were carried in there by other hominids and not by animals, since no predator has been known to hunt only for hominids and in all other such caves there’s been bones of mostly other animals, and a few cases of hominids. In addition there’s no signs that such a number could reach such a spot by some natural accident. So it could be an example unheard of earlier, with “abstract thoughts” such as religion have gone 2 million years back into prehistory.
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Hinduism and polytheism spread not only from the Indus civilization to become the dominant religion in India until today, with their 330 million gods, but also westward polytheism was spread all through the Fertile Crescent, with Sumeria first in Mesopotamia, up the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, south along the Jordan River in the Levant, to Lower- and Upper Egypt and south along the Nile. In Canaan they venerated such gods as Baal, El and Astarte, with animal sacrifice and other offerings, like grain. There the Phoenicians and Canaanites also started sacrificing children, a well talked about historic even, where by Roman times prominent sources, the Phoenician city of Cartage where said to practice children sacrifice to Moloch. Something that have been confirmed in archaeology.
The Fertile Crescent (also known as the Cradle of Civilization)
Into this world came Abraham, who is known as the forefather of the 3 monotheistic world religions. He was told by God to go to from Ur, one of the first cities in the world, between the Euphrates and Tigris, in the south of today’s Iraq – to Canaan, with his flock and clan. There he was tested by God to see if he would sacrifice his only son, but was given a ram to sacrifice instead when he passed the test. Abraham and the sacrifice and the ram, have resonance in Christianity as a reference to God letting his son be a sacrifice for the world, and in Judaism first, and then in Islam this place of sacrifice are known as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is called so, because inside, in the middle of it, is the rock said to be the outcrop Abraham and Isac was at, in addition King David placed the tabernacle here, and Solomon built the Temple there and placed the Arch of the Covenant from the tabernacle there – Containing the 10 commandments written by God, the blooming rod of Arron and manna in a jar – all part of the Exodus from Egypt that in turn created the land of Israel. The Temple was then destroyed and rebuilt one more time, then utterly destroyed by Titus the general of Roman emperor Caligula 70AD, only decades after Jesus was crucified.
The Siege of Jerusalem 70AD by Francesco Hayez
Christendom were based on Judaism, but shorty dropped many laws not considered relevant anymore, such as those according to temple-laws and sacrifice, even food-prohibitions left, and included thus everyone instead of just Jews, with a message that anyone could be saved by believing in the teachings of Jesus of a free entry into heaven, even to the slaves that half of Rome consisted of, and thus manage to spread quickly within the Roman Empire and beyond, until the faith became the state-religion in Rome by Emperor Constantine, in this new Rome called Constantinople, a strategic location that would make it stay Rome for another 1000 years, in the form of the Christian Byzantine Empire, after the western, original Rome got sacked by barbarians.
The Jews themselves spread through the whole of the world, without roots for almost 2000 years.
The Spread of Christianity, before Islam.
After this centuries passed, the Byzantine Empire, with the reach of Christianity, spread further then the original empire had been at the height of it’s power.
Then Islam spread like a fire from the Arabian Peninsula, in the cities Mecca and Medina, where the revelations of the prophet Muhammad were the main force behind this new movement in world history.
When the Muslims came to Jerusalem, they found a Byzantine, Christian city, with the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where they eventually built the Al-Aqusa mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the rubbish dump that the old temple had been reduced to, and connected this with the night-journey Muhammad took when he was flying from Mecca to Jerusalem and taken up into heaven.
This is really the time where the clash of civilizations started. The today’s “War of Terror” should really be called, just like the last 1400-years, a war between Christianity and Islam, that is still going on today.
The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the 4 caliphates following the death of the prophet Muhammad, that took the whole southern part of the Byzantine Empire and Ostrogoth Spain.
The Reach of the Umayyad Caliphate at its greatest extent, between the 6th and 7th Century AD
The Islamic caliphate from Al-Andalus (Today’s Spain) were pushed back from invading further into Europe, in The Battle of Tours (Also called the Battle of Pointers) in France by Charles Martel 10 October 732.
The Battle of Tours 10 October 732
After the Battle of Tours started the Reconqnista, a war about Spain that lasted centuries but for the first time, in a rare time of reconciliation between Christians, Jews and Muslims living in this period , there developed a combined wisdom and science that started the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, by the rediscovery of the original Greek classics, Arabic Maths, Astrology and Medicine.
Forces of Muhammed IX, Nasrid Sultan of Granada, at the Battle of La Higueruela, 1431
The Reconquista seems to be officially over the marriage between Isabella I of Castille and Prince Ferdinand, the younger son of John II of Navarre. Castille and Navarre joined together and at the same time as both the Moors and the Jews got the choice of conversion or exile, the unique culture between the 3 monotheistic religions ended. Under Isabella I the Spanish Inquisition began, that went much further then the Inquisition by the Church, was state-sponsored and were specially cruel towards Jews that often made a quick conversion by baptism, but in reality continued their own faith – these were doomed to torture and horrible deaths. On the other hand Age of Exploration began and European preeminence in ship-building, specially from Portugal, brought eventually all the main naval powers to America, where Christianity would become the main religion, with Catholicism in South-America and Protestantism of all variants in North-America
The Crusades, as mentioned, is considered an especially savage war. Endorsed by Pope Urban II, as a Holy War. In the 1st Crusade, The Siege of Jerusalem, 1096-1099, were in a desperate situation, with possible reinforcements on the way to defend Jerusalem from the Muslim side, had the choice to die in the siege from want of thirst and food, or to conquer the city. A fleet with reinforcements from Genova that supplied timber for siege weapons, saved the crusaders. When finally inside the attackers committed such heinous acts of violence, both against Muslims and Jews, that it’s been said that they rode with blood up to their bridles. It’s also said that the corpses were so many that nobody buried them, so the stench of death hung over Jerusalem for a long time after, in this “Holy War”.
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon – or more commonly known as The Knights Templar used the Dome of the Rock (believing it was the temple of Solomon) as a base, hence their name as “Templar’s”, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque were believed to be the stables where Solomon once had his war-chariots and thus used as stables.
Needless to say, when Saladin first reconquered Jerusalem, he ordered massive amounts of rosewater used to cleanse these two among the most holy places in Islam.
The Siege of Jerusalem during the 1st Crusade 1096-1099
However the clash between these two religions went both ways, just like the atrocities did, such as the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of both the landmass of the Byzantine Empire – and in the end the Byzantine capital of Constantinople itself (Today’s Turkish Istanbul) with the worlds largest church. The Ottomans continued to grow in size and power, took Greece and continued north into Europe.
The Ottoman Empire at it’s height.
In the end they got defeated by the heavily strained Holy Roman Empire that in the end they got reinforcements from the King of Poland, at the gates of Vienna 11. September 1683 , then the gradual fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire continued for centuries and became known as the “sick man of Europe”, until Turks were pressured into Anatolia by the loss in WW1 and the rest were partitioned up into French and British slices. By then, there were no more Caliphate to threaten Europe, until now, in these days, where the extremist Islamic group IS have declared a new Caliphate, and terrorist-activities have had an deep impact on the 15 first years of the Millennium.
The Battle of Vienna 11.September1683
Jews had been inspired by Theodor Herzl’s Zionism from the start of the 20th century – the idea that the Jews needed a homeland from where they could live and defend themselves and although there were suggestions of a state in such places as Uganda, for the Jews there could really be no other place then the nation they once had to leave. After almost two thousand years Jews had been a foreign group on other peoples soil, with their own, strange religion and customs. They had been put in Ghettos and through the Spanish Inquisition. With the spread of the idea of Zionism came waves of immigrants fleeing from Russian Pogroms, into the Palestinian part of The Ottoman Empire. There were systematic work on how to buy areas from absentee landlords that gladly sold above price and to shape settlements into clusters (the famous N-shape) that later could form the basic of a nation. This beginning infrastructure of a state was what Jewish survivors from the Holocaust (that had proved Herzl’s idea beyond any comprehension), fled into, tragically often to have ships filled with survivors from Nazi-Germany’s Holocaust turned back, because of British troops trying to manage the bureaucracy from London with limits on 50,000 immigrants each year. Something that met hard resistance from Jewish underground organizations, causing for example the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where the British had their Headquarters. With the UN majority vote for the partition of Palestine, and the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion and recognition of the declaration both from USA and USSR became a nation in one day.
However neither the Arabs already living in Palestine for countless generations under the Ottoman Empire and earlier, nor the Arab countries surrounding the new Israel, wanted any Jewish state. So when the Israelis for the first time in two millennia were dancing in the streets to celebrate the almost miraculous birth of the rebirth of the lost nation, attacks against the fledgling state began almost instantly with an invasion from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Irregulars and foreign volunteers such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli were at first virtually without weapons, but a last minute deal with Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia secured them another almost miraculous ability to not only defeat the enemy forces, but also to expand the territory enormously and again they had the Temple Mount in their possession. But what to do with the Arab refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and by then ancient Temple Mount is a question that is huge importance to the world as a whole today.
A Reconstruction of the Temple on Temple Mount, During King Herod 0BC
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When Buddha was born in India, Buddhism spread gradually not mostly into India although it contained elements of Hinduism, such as an ascetic life, meditation, enlightenment and reincarnation – but throughout East and South Asia in general it had an enormous growth, possibly because of China already had a belief built up by sages like Confucius and Laozǐ, and that the transition thus was easier. Because Buddha taught that the gods were not essential to attain nirvana, and thoughts of, or believing in gods was also not needed for enlightenment. Yet there is religious elements in it, for example with the demon named Mara keeping people in locked in ignorance of the enlightenment, in a wheel of life, that repeats itself for each reincarnation, forever. There’s also veneration of large statues of Buddha in South-Asia and with Shamanistic elements in for example Tibet, but Buddha said in his teaching that he was no god, but merely a human, and his enlightenment was gained by the following of the noble truths by understanding the suffering. That we humans have our own inherent salvation. As he said: “Look, you are Buddha”, and we just have to wake up to this, by teaching and meditation. So many consider Buddhism to not really be a religion, since it is Atheistic the same time. At the same time, it’s not always easy to define religion, since it inhabits so many conceptions of life and death.
Mara, and the wheel of life, and the illusions of human life through it.
Execution of Mariana de Carabajal (converted Jew), Mexico City, 1601.
Forces of Muhammed IX, Nasrid Sultan of Granada, at the Battle of La Higueruela, 1431
The Siege of Jerusalem during the 1st Crusade
The Clash of Civilizations 