Theological religion is the source
of all imaginable follies and disturbances: it is the
parent of fanaticism and evil discord. It is the enemy
Voltaire (1694-1778), Philosophical
Dictionary of Religion
For the first three centuries the Church was relatively powerless
and did little harm. It taught brotherhood, tolerance, peace,
love, justice, mercy, and so on, to the extent of encouraging
Christian soldiers to desert the Imperial armies. For the next
1,500 years it was extremely powerful and harmful throughout
Europe. It caused division, persecution, war, hatred, and injustice,
and practised the most spectacular viciousness and brutality.
The Church, in its numerous guises, has a less than enviable
record on a wide range of social issues. It has befriended and
supported totalitarian, authoritarian, and extreme right-wing
regimes. It has abused its power and opposed legal, political
and educational reform. It has also opposed liberties and human
rights. It has opposed science and rational medicine and taught
a wide range of nonsense, insisting that illness was caused
by evil spirits, witchcraft and sin. For many centuries the
Church maintained its position by a combination of fraud and
terror, opposing advances in learning and suppressing the truth.
Where Christian dogma has been strongest, so has poverty, misery
and ignorance. Christian Churches were wholly responsible for
the deaths of millions whose only crime was to dissent from
their current version of orthodoxy.
In its heyday the Christian Churches practised routine persecution.
They tortured, mutilated, branded, dismembered and killed as
a matter of course. They condemned to death any who questioned
their dogmas. They burned Jews, heretics, apostates and pagans
in large numbers. They imagined enemies everywhere and had them
exterminated. Among their countless victims were women whose
chief crimes seem to have been living alone, looking old, keeping
pets, and knowing something about herbs and midwifery. Christians
even persecuted their fellow believers. It is sobering to reflect
that over almost 2000 years Christians have never been persecuted
by any of their supposed enemies as viciously as they have been
persecuted by fellow Christians.
the last 200 years the Churches have been losing power and have
become relatively harmless again in proportion to their diminishing
influence outside the USA. They have sought to obliterate the
evidence of their behaviour, substituting sympathetic histories
with their members as heroes. In this they have been largely
successful. Most people in the developed world, even non-Christians,
have a largely positive view of Christianity and its historical
Once again Churches preach brotherhood, tolerance, peace, love,
justice and mercy. One is reminded of a dangerous recidivist
criminal. When in custody he is mild, reasonable, plausible
and friendly. But as soon as he is at liberty he commits the
same crimes again and again. At the moment he is in the custody
of secular society, but he is looking forward to his next parole.
At all times and in all parts of the world, mainstream Churches
have oppressed people exactly to the extent that they have been
able to. This pattern could continue in the future. There is
no reason to doubt that it will.