We Killed Less People than They Did

I am often annoyed by the things that the Traditional Values Coalition does. When they call for a boycott of Walmart I don’t expect much damage to be done except to the general reputation of Christians.

But today I got an alert e-mail from them that strikes me as celebrating Christmas by stirring up hatred. This alert, available online and titled Atheism Has Fueled Greatest Mass Murders In World History is apparently a reaction to some recent comments from various people who object to religion in general and Christianity in particular.

The response, however, is less than constructive. It appears to be largely an attempt to smeer atheists by linking them with militant Muslims and blaming them for various historical slaughters. After quoting some of the attacks on Christianity, Sheldon says:

The Christian-haters should turn their attentions to militant Islam and Atheism as the most serious dangers to the world.

One of my many questions is simply which group of atheists right now is behaving in a manner at all similar to militant Muslims? This strikes me as simply striking out at people one would like to hate without any consideration for the facts or the consequences. (Note that at the same time as I am opposed to demonizing atheists, I would suggest watching out for demonizing Muslims.)

The attacks to which this alert supposedly responds are a collection of the rather standard attacks on Christianity–responsibility for the crusades, the inquisition, and the Salem witch trials, for example. And what is the response to this? Apparently it is that not nearly as many people were killed as some people claim were killed.

Now I’m quite certain that one can exaggerate particular events. It’s possible and people have done it. Non-historians float all kinds of very poorly considered numbers. But arguing about the numbers is hardly the issue here.

I think the crusades are a special case, because this was a war. There were wrong actions on both sides, though I believe one should remember that the Muslims were in the process of conquering lands previously held by Christians. That Christian nations across Europe, themselves in no great moral or material condition, should have expended their lives and resources over the issue is questionable. Much of their behavior when they got there is not merely questionable but definitely wrong.

But when it comes to the inquisition and the Salem witch trials, I don’t think it’s a matter of numbers. I recall as a freshman in college citing the figure 70,000,000 people as the human cost of revolution in Russian, relying on Solzhenitzyn’s citation. This was during the cold war. My professor, a communist sympathizer, responded with some condescension that my numbers were terribly exaggerated and that he believed it was more likely that only 40,000,000 people had been killed. He was very disappointed that I remained unconvinced that the price was acceptable. Personally I find it amazing that one can collocate “only” with “40,0000,000 killed” in the same sentence and do so with a straight face.

So when someone tries to cut the cost of the inquisition from millions to 10s or 100s of thousands, I’m not impressed either. Now it’s “only 10,000” executed and 100,000 dying in jail. Again, the word “only” is being abused! I never believed that the cost of the inquisition was in the millions. But more importantly, I believe that the inquisition was horribly, horribly wrong. I have zero sympathy for the motivations, purposes, or methods in any form. The attitude behind the inquisition is itself destructive. As a Christian, I believe our best course is the same as it is with any sin–confess and repent. That means to acknowledge what was wrong and repent of it. If we want to prove a moral value for Christianity, then that is the way to do it. It happened, it was wrong, we have taken steps to prevent it from happening again.

Of course there appears to be an alternate view, and that is that we should instead turn people’s hatred against other groups. Thus, according to Sheldon:

The fact is that while religious wars have been fought for centuries, militant atheism has slaughtered more people than religious zealots ever have. The greatest mass murders in history have been committed not by Christians but by Communists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. More than 100 million have died at the hands of these militant atheists since the early 20th century.

I do not believe that atheism was responsible for those slaughters, but I’m going to leave debating that to historians of the appropriate regions and times. But I would simply note that just as there have been Christians across the political spectrum, including a few communists, so there have been atheists. Communism is not a characteristic of atheism; rather, atheism was just one, and not the major characteristic of communism.

I am not in any way an apologist for communism. In fact, I retain the same view of communism that I had when I was an 18 year old college freshman. I think the cost would have been too high, even if it had done tremendous good. Since it was actually destructive in itself, and left cultural and economic devastation behind it, it was in fact simply criminal. But atheists are not to blame for communism.

One of the attacks on Christianity is the claim that Hitler was a Christian. Now I know he said he was at various points, but I think one can be fairly certain that he was not a follower of Jesus, at least. But there is the more plausible claim that Christian antisemitism prepared the soil for the holocaust. For this second claim Christians must take some responsibility. Our hands are by no means clean. It’s easy to say that those people weren’t good Christians or weren’t “real” Christians, and in my view they weren’t, yet I don’t know what good we think such a claim will do. If the people coming at you to kill you call themselves Christians, it’s unlikely you will check their credentials.

It is equally or more plausible to argue that Christianity is responsible for the holocaust than it is to argue that atheism in responsible for the slaughter in Communist Russia.

All of these events have various causes. There is political and economic pressure involved generally. There are the simple requirements of tyrants for obedience. You can draw a parallel between the Russian and Chinese revolutions and the actions of the Nazis in Germany in that in all three cases tyrannical rulers needed enemies, these enemies justified their rule, and slaughtering them was part of enforcing their tyrrany. Yet the ostensible religious and philosophical backgrounds of the three groups were different. Even the communism practices in China was not identical to that in Russia.

In a final case of trying to minimize Christian moral failures through numbers, Sheldon comments that the Salem witch trials killed less than 25 people. But again, that is not the point. The Salem witch trials, the superstition behind it, and the willingness to lie and kill are evil. As Christians that should be our primary focus. How can we avoid killing any people who do not justly deserve such a fate?

And to do that we need to do something better than point out events that in someone’s imagination can be blamed on a scapegoat group–atheists in this case. We need to look positively at attitudes that will help us reach out to people. Since we have undergone persecution, we should be even more sensitive to the persecution of others. Since we have been demonized, we should be even more sensitive to the demonization of others.

But what is critical is this: Since we have fallen into the temptations of hatred and persecution ourself by persecuting others while seeking our own freedom, we should be even more wary of that temptation and flee from it.

At Christmas we will celebrate God’s willingness to experience human life as a baby, an experience that would lead him through hatred and persecution. Jesus knew what it was to be demonized. Though he harmed nobody, struck nobody, and killed nobody, he was seen as a threat by the dominant power of the day, the Romans, and for that they nailed him to a cross. As he was being nailed to that cross he asked his Father to forgive them. Somehow I just can’t see how that Jesus would appreciate his followers fomenting hatred of others.

It’s right to respond to militant Islam. When Muslims behave violently, when they deny education to women, when they sentence people to hundreds and even thousands of strokes of the lash, or even to be stoned, we need to be outraged, and where possible we should take action. At the same time we need to be certain that we don’t use those actions to foment hatred against people who are not doing those things.

When it comes to atheists, however, I don’t even know of any groups who are advocating or doing such things. The Chinese government could be, though I hardly consider it representative. I do, however, condemn Chinese persecution of Christians and other religious minorities. But again, there do not appear to be substantial numbers of atheist terrorists, and there do not seem to be substantial numbers of atheists requesting violence against Christians.

As such, there is little to nothing against which to defend. And even if there were such groups, we would still have no basis for fomenting hatred against the group as a whole.

As Christians, we have been on the receiving end of persecution enough to know better. We have persecuted one another enough to know the consequences. We have no business fomenting hatred against any group.