Violence, Primate Psychology, Mass Movements in Religion and Politics

Violence is common to our species. We still follow alpha males (sometimes alpha females too) in religion and politics. And everyone wants to claim more for themselves or their beliefs, secure more territory. The poor many want something for nothing, but it seems the rich will stop at nothing till they get everything. And each group or mass movement desires more converts, more power and influence. Churches have continued to seek power in various ways from the time of Christian Roman Emperors and Medieval rulers to todayʼs Religious Right. But deistic rationalism and scientific advances dethroned the authority of certain biblical tales and helped defang religion in the West. Still we are primates who desire greater control to assuage our fears about lifeʼs uncertainties, and we are eager to join our egos to mass movements, political parties, or to become enthralled with nationalistic fervor, or racist fervor, or other kinds of fervor and lose ourselves in such fervor, a trait we should question if we want greater peace on earth.

Some mass movements claim to hold the key to paradise on earth or in heaven and seek to outlaw all the rest. Marx promised a workerʼs paradise on earth. Religions promise eternal paradise. One at least understands the attraction of grandiose promises—especially when they are accompanied by grandiose fears as well, like eternal hell.

Some apologists for Christianity fear competition from something they call ‘scientism.’ Science has at least greatly increased our food production, introduced vaccines and antibiotics, and along with health and safety and plumbing regulations, increased the average human lifespan by several decades in many countries. Can science create utopia? I doubt any scientist is liable to make such a promise as they are also aware of all the ways nature bites back and ways nature can kill us. Though there are some who promise a singularity is near. But most scientists admit they remain worried about how things can go wrong, how our future technologies can create problems, not only solve them. Science is generally humbler than say, Marxism.

I hold no grudge against any belief system that encourages acts of kindness toward others and eschews violence. But when speaking about the horrors of say, communism, itʼs good to at least level the playing field and also consider the long Criminal History of Christianity (a multi-volume set with that title is available but only in German).

Christians persecuted Hellenists, Jews and rival Christians for centuries.

And the one continent most heavily steeped in Christian churches and prayers for the most centuries was Europe, the same continent that proceeded to blow itself up with a Thirty Years War, and endless smaller wars before and after that one, wars between nations whose people agreed on such beliefs as the Trinity and even creationism. During the 20th century Europe also suffered two World Wars. Germany was still quite Christian at that time, maybe not in the cities as much as the countryside, but there was more countryside back then as well. The votes of Christians in the countryside put Hitler ahead of the rest of the other candidates who were all neck and neck in the cities. Christians elected Hitler to power. The Nazi party itself was founded in a heavily Catholic (and Jew-hating) city in Germany.

European nations have seen more relative peace in the seven or so decades after the second World War, i.e., after the average Europeanʼs religious faith had grown far weaker, than it ever saw during its previous centuries when its religious faith remained much stronger. Of course there has been more peace around the world in general after World War II, with the larger nations concentrating on business ventures rather than military ones.

As for the French Revolution, the Russian communist revolution, and the Chinese communist revolution, true they were all mega-bloody. And often took place in peasant economies where resentments had risen far past the boiling point such as in pre-industrial France, and nineteenth-century Russia and China.

In comparison the American Revolution was also bloody but benefited from the fact that Britain was so far away, and France and Britain had been fighting for centuries, so the revolutionaries in America were able to get France to help them. Also, after the revolutionaries won they were only able to throw out the British soldiers but could not then sail to Britain to overthrow that king and other royals. That is because our revolution did not take place on the same continent or inside the same country like in the French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions. Also keep in mind that America did suffer a bloody war insider her own borders, a Civil War, with Christian ministers being some of the loudest in favor of secession. And the toll of all the Americans killed in that conflict exceeded all the U.S. soldiers killed in both World Wars, Korea, Nam and the first Gulf War. And letʼs not forget all the natives of North and South America and all the African natives who were enslaved persecuted or killed by European colonists for centuries. Europeans who came from the continent with the most churches and most prayers echoed for the most centuries since the birth of Christianity has plenty of blood on its hands. And one can only wonder what the Thirty Years War would have been like if the Catholics and Protestants had had access to modern weapons communications and transportation and if the cities back then were just as populated as in the 20th century.

I suggest reading Eric Hoffer for more information on the similar psychological drives that animate adherents of mass movements be they Christian, Fascist or Communist.

One should also read about Christianityʼs past, because it was Christian rulers who instituted the idea of thought control, who attempted to force specific theological beliefs upon the whole populace, and who claimed that denying such specific theological beliefs was tantamount not just to heresy but to treason. Right at the beginning of the Roman Emperor Justinianʼs famed book of Laws are his declarations concerning religion and how non-Trinitarian Christians must be judged demented and insane and worthy of the Emperorʼs temporal punishment. Theologians for their part pointed out that spreading heretical views was tantamount not just to murdering childrenʼs bodies, but murdering their souls eternally. And a father had a biblical right to protect his child against murder, even the right to kill anyone who dared attack his child. And the ruler was the father figure for his people. Christian popes, as well as the great Reformers Luther and Calvin agreed that magistrates MUST persecute heretics. Click on the highlighted words at the beginning of this list.

See also these declarations by theologians.

Also see, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (received Christianity Todayʼs Book Award of Merit for 2015).

And see, Is Religion Connected to Violence?

Also check out, The Uniqueness of the Christian Experience?

The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (received Christianity Today's Book Award of Merit for 2015)

“You canʼt understand the war fully without investigating the religious dimensions of the war,” says Jonathan Ebel, associate professor of religion at the University of Illinois and author of Faith in the Fight: The American Soldier in the Great War. “I would be the first to tell you the Great War was not a war of religion, but I think a big part of peopleʼs understanding of what they were doing in the war, or why the war made sense to them, comes from religion.”

Ebel draws a line from the ‘masculine Christianity’ of the early 20th century (evangelist Billy Sundayʼs enormously popular revivals often included military recruiting tents) to the way combatants and support workers thought of the war. Soldiers scribbled lines of Scripture on their gas masks, marked their calendars with a cross for each day they survived combat, and opened the pages of the Stars and Stripes military newspaper to read poems comparing them to the heroes of the Old Testament. (See also Richard Schweitzerʼs, The Cross and the Trenches: Religious Faith and Doubt Among British and American Great War Soldiers).

Following Ebelʼs and Schweitzerʼs books comes Philip Jenkinʼs The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Jenkins is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He was educated at Cambridge and has written over twenty books including The Lost History of Christianity, Jesus Wars, The Next Christendom, and won several book prizes in both the Christian and secular arena. Christianity Today gave his book five stars, calling it “A historical tour de force… We must know the past in order to understand the present. Jenkinsʼs penetrating study of World War I masterfully underscores that abstract truth.” Kirkus Reviews writes, “A painstaking, densely layered study of the many slippery uses of religion in the making of war… A work of intensely nuanced research.” And Booklist says, “An astounding chronicle of intense piety inciting acts of terrible carnage,” starred review.

INTERVIEWER OF PJ: You say that World War I was “a religious crusade.” This sounds like a scandalous idea. Can you explain what you mean?

PJ: If I myself believed that it was a crusade, that would indeed be scandalous. Actually, I am arguing that a great many people at the time saw it in those terms, which is also scandalous, in a different way. When we look at the history of that war, we have to be struck by the religious and supernatural language in which it was imagined, throughout the whole conflict, and at all levels of society. This was not just a case of statements put out by propaganda agencies trying to scare up recruits. Nor was the religious fervor confined to the opening weeks of the war, before people knew better. Throughout, and in every country, the war was presented as a holy war, a cosmic struggle. The war was fought by the worldʼs leading Christian nations, and on all sides, clergy and Christian leaders offered a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric. Many spoke the language of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon.

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A key question raised in Jenkinsʼ book is: Why was religion so effortlessly assimilated into the culture of militarism during the Great War?

The Europe of 1914 was very far removed from modern day secularism. A sizable majority of the combatants were from peasant or small town backgrounds, and even in the cities, churchgoing persisted at rates that today seem astonishing. Even when people rejected faith, they still came from a society that intuitively knew the Christian thought-world of sanctified sacrifice, of cosmic confrontations between good and evil. Holy War was still credible, in a way that it certainly is not for later generations of Christians.

Christendom reigned in “the three holy empires” (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) of the time. Throw in the British, the Americans, French Catholicism and you have “the majority of the worldʼs Christians engaged in a war that claimed more than ten million lives.” Later other nations joined in - but initially this was a monumental intra-Christendom scrap. The propaganda and the rationale for the war was framed within religious, mystical, apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian language. “A holy war ideology became social orthodoxy,” as “a faith-based militarism” took over. “If you do not understand the messianic and apocalyptic imagery used by all sides, and how wide-ranging those images were among all classes, all groups, all nations, you cannot hope to understand the war.”

For each nation, religion and nationalism seem to work in concert and it was difficult to determine which entity was leading the charge. This contrasted with the common perception that it was simply elites using religion to advance the cause. “I was finding a very different picture, whereby the political ideology was being made by the theologians, preachers and the priests and the government was kind of going along,” said Jenkins. “So I still donʼt think itʼs absolutely coming from one side or the other, but the two are very much in dialogue.” This spiritual component went beyond what many may realize.

Both sides demonized their opponents and used the medieval imagery of knights and crusaders, believing that they were engaged in a cosmic conflict. Russians denounced Germanyʼs Kaiser Wilhelm as the Antichrist. German writers equated Britain with the great whore of Babylon described in Revelation. German Protestant ministers preached that their nation had a messianic role to play in Europe. A German pastor in Bremen likened the mood of 1914 Germany to a New Pentecost when Germany “stood together united.” When the Germans launched their last great offensive in 1918, of course it was called Operation Michael. Meanwhile, English bishops informed their countrymen that they were “Godʼs predestined instruments to save the Christian civilization of Europe.”

Pro-war religious imagery (like an alternative depiction of the Emmaus Road story in which two gun-laden soldiers spy a cross in the distance made out of the criss-crossed clouds left by artillery fire while Jesus reveals himself to them) seeped into the public consciousness. With startling literalism, visual representations in all the main participant nations placed Christ himself on the battle lines, whether in films, posters, or postcards. Jesus blessed German soldiers going into battle; Jesus comforted the dying victims of German atrocities; Jesus personally led a reluctant Kaiser to confront the consequences of his evil policies. Apart from the obvious spiritual figures — Christ and the Virgin — most combatant nations used an iconography in which their cause was portrayed by that old Crusader icon Saint George, and their enemies as the Dragon. Death in such a righteous cosmic war was a form of sacrifice or martyrdom, elevating the dead soldier to saintly status.

In every country, mainstream media stories offered a constant diet of vision and miracle, angels and apocalypse. The French widely circulated a story about fallen soldiers who arose from the dead — “Debout les Morts!” — to help defend a living comrade from German attack. Soldiers on both sides reported angels and saints appearing in the midst of battle to help their side. British soldiers claimed that during one battle the ghosts of Medieval English long bowmen fired arrows into German ranks; at certain times Russian, German and French soldiers claimed to see the Virgin Mary above their trenches. The Germans often saw the archangel Michael, while the English saw St. George, and the French Joan of Arc. Peasant girls in Portugal famously saw a vision of Mary at Fátima in 1917, but both Russian and French soldiers also saw visions of the Virgin during the war.

“I could almost rewrite my book in terms of angels,” Jenkins said, citing one of the most frequently used — and believed in — images of the war. The most famous example are the so-called “Angel of Mons” — ghost soldiers from the 15th-century Battle of Agincourt led by St. George who supposedly appeared on the the British lines in France. But the ghost soldiers were the post-Mons invention of Welsh poet Arthur Machen. Yet when he pointed out they were a fiction, people accused him of suppressing the truth. “You donʼt get anything like that in World War II,” Jenkins said of the belief in angels on the battlefield. “In World War II, there were hundreds of depictions of angels, but they were all in films and books that were clearly fantasy and fiction. But the angel stories in World War I were taken seriously.”

For the Allies, religious and apocalyptic hopes crested in 1917 and 1918 with the great symbolic victories in the Middle East, the most striking being the British capture of Jerusalem from the Turks, and the decisive British victory at — honestly — Megiddo, the site of Armageddon.

Also, far from being imposed from above — from central state propaganda offices — such stories usually arose from the grass roots, often from soldiers themselves. Governments actually spent a good deal of time trying to suppress such tales of crusades and miracles, for fear of their effect on national morale. Yes, ordinary British and Americans might freely describe their war in the Middle East as a holy Crusade, guided by God. But the British government invoked its ferocious powers of censorship to suppress any such language in the media, for fear of offending the empireʼs many millions of Muslim subjects. Whatever governments wanted, Holy War visions kept breaking through.

Christian theologians — of all denominations — appeared to regard the promotion of the war as their sacred duty. Their appeal for sacrifice and martyrdom was communicated in a language that makes some contemporary jihadists appear moderate by comparison. In 1915, Arthur F Winnington-Ingram, the Anglican bishop of London, declared that it was the nationʼs duty to mobilise for “a holy war.” In one of his sermons he urged British soldiers to “kill Germans — do kill them; not for the sake of killing, but to save the world, to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young as well as the old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends… As I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who died in it as a martyr.”

British clerics did not have a monopoly on crusading zeal: theologians on all sides of the war voiced similar sentiments. The representation of this conflict as a holy war was widely promoted by Christian religious leaders. Moreover, the identification of the war with a religious duty was also evident among Muslim and Jewish leaders. Just as “islamists” denounce their enemies as infidels and heretics, so Christians coped with killing fellow Christians by claiming that they werenʼt “proper Christians.” All sides rushed to condemn enemy nations as ungodly and to “proclaim fellow believers as de facto infidels.” Christian leaders gave an absolute religious underpinning to warfare. Preachers asserted that Jesus would have taken up a bayonet. In 1916, a group of 60 leading U.S. clergymen issued a rebuke to Woodrow Wilson for pursuing peace negotiations instead of leading the nation into the European conflict. Among the signers were the famous liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, the flamboyant evangelist Billy Sunday and the restrained president of Princeton University, John Grier Hibben. These Protestants warned their president that a just God, “who withheld not his own Son from the cross, would not look with favor upon a people who put their fear of pain and death… above the holy claims of righteousness and justice and freedom and mercy and truth.” Of course the Quakers and Mennonites decried the war, and Pope Benedict XV lamented “the suicide of civilized Europe,” but such anti-war sentiments were rare compared with the pro-war, crusading, and apocalyptic sentiments.

During the lead up to World War I, the Book of Revelation was being quoted, the Second Coming seemed imminent, the Kaiser was seen as the anti-Christ, fundamentalism, Pentecostalists, Jehovahʼs Witnesses, Theosophy, Schofieldʼs dispensationalism and the World Missionary Conference were all emerging. Only by looking at the overwhelming weight of religious and supernatural imagery in the warʼs visual heritage do we get a sense of just how prevalent these other-worldly ideas were, and how archaic. Itʼs an odd juxtaposition, of highly medieval depictions of angels and apocalyptic horsemen, visions of Christ and the Virgin, images of ghosts and prophets — and all in a highly modern world of machine guns, tanks and gas warfare. That disjunction of medieval and modern is shocking. Christians then, like Islamists today, portrayed their soldiers as warriors from a romanticized past, with a special taste for the Middle Ages. Both shared a common symbolism of sword and shield. Both saw heroic death as a form of martyrdom, in which the shedding of blood washed away the sins of life and offered immediate entry to paradise.

During the First World War, right across the world, theology and militarism combined to ensure that whole populations believed that they were engaged in a struggle of cosmic significance, of good against evil. Nowhere was this blending of religion and militarism stronger than in Germany. German churches saw themselves as the apex of Christian civilization and believed that, given the sudden and near-miraculous quality of its creation and rise to glory among the old nations, the German Reich was being used by God to fulfill His purposes on earth. Religious leaders promoted the idea that Germany was a holy nation engaged in a cosmic struggle for civilization against the forces of barbarism. German soldiers marched off to war wearing belt-buckles with the words “Gott mit Uns” (God with Us) inscribed on them.

Numerous church leaders also embraced the war as an instrument of religious revival. Instead, soldiers and chaplains who tried to force religion on their comrades often faced ostracism. The war did not lead to a religious revival on the home front either, despite the comfort that many civilians drew from believing that the men in the army were religious and that the dead had had their souls saved. As Vera Brittain, whose own religious beliefs waxed and waned over time, noted, “Surely there must be somewhere in which… the hearts broken by War may be healed. It is all so hopeless otherwise.”

However, all this fire and brimstone came at an enormous cost to the churches concerned. By enthusiastically endorsing the most destructive and costly war the world had ever seen Europeʼs established religions had sown the seeds of their own destruction. For every soldier whose life was saved by a Bible that stopped a bullet there were several more who saw the war as evidence that no just and caring God could allow such suffering to continue. By mixing-up Christianity with war and patriotism they had created a toxic “moral disorientation” that would undermine the power and influence of organised religion in the years ahead. According to Jenkins the Great War “destroyed a global religious order that had prevailed for the previous half millennium and dominated much of the globe” and “drew the worldʼs religious map as we know it today.”

Partisans on both sides of WW I didnʼt hesitate to invoke eternal salvation in the cause of international warfare. A long time after the event, most soldiers believed in what they were doing and used religious terms such as “sacrifice,” “redemptive suffering” and “bringing Godʼs kingdom on earth.” The Machine Gun Corpsʼ memorial erected in 1925, quotes from the Old Testament; “Saul hath slain his thousands! But David hath slain his tens of thousands.” Governments and military and church leaders resorted to religious language and appealed to well entrenched religious beliefs to fire patriotic sentiment and make sense of indiscriminate slaughter. Religion provided men with a set of responses to help them rationalize their suffering, their guilt, and their acts of slaughter.

Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the struggle, was most affected by the carnage: “It wasnʼt a case of seeing them with a nice bullet hole in their tunic, far from it.” They were blown to pieces. In the words of a French Jesuit who served as an army sergeant at Verdun, “To die from a bullet seems to be nothing; parts of our being remain intact; but to be dismembered, torn to pieces, reduced to pulp, this is a fear that flesh cannot support and which is fundamentally the great suffering of the bombardment.” British veteran Henry Allingham recalled spending a night in a shell hole: “It stank. So did I when I fell into it. Arms and legs, dead rats, dead everything. Rotten flesh. Human guts. I couldnʼt get a bath for three or four months afterwards.” The only thing conceivably worse than the smell was the eardrum-shattering noise of battle. At Passchendaele, the only analogy Patch could find for the artillery fire was “non-stop claps of thunder. It took your breath away. The noise was ferocious. You couldnʼt hear the man next to you speaking.” Passchendaele was mispronounced as Passion Dale with echoes of crucifixion.

The author sees a religious influence in the ethnic cleansing and massacre that accompanied the war, including the Armenian Genocide and the anti-Jewish massacres on the Eastern Front. Those claimed many more lives that Verdun and the Somme combined. Anti-Semitism grew across the continent. So did Hasidism and Kabbalism. Geoffrey Wheatcroft remarked, “The First World War changed everything: without it, there would have been no Russian Revolution, no Third Reich, almost certainly no Jewish state.”

Men from different backgrounds intermingled and adopted the beliefs of others, so Protestants found Catholic shrines and calvaries helpful. Many soldiers saw Roman Catholicism serving the spiritual needs of British soldiers better than Anglicanism. First, most Roman Catholic chaplains ignored the British Armyʼs ban on chaplains going into the trenches because of the Catholic Churchʼs need to administer sacraments, most notably Extreme Unction. As a result, Roman Catholic chaplains shared the soldiersʼ experience of war through direct participation. Anglican chaplains, most of whom were uncomfortable with the class chasm that separated them from British soldiers, were less likely to be seen at the front. Second, Catholicismʼs emphasis on suffering and sacrifice fit the battlefield experience of most men better than did Anglicanism.

Other soldiers believed in fate, some used numerology to calculate the end of the war. Some carried talismans to ward off danger, saw ghosts — such as dead comrades still fighting with them — while others held séances.

As the war got worse, 40% of French soldiers refused orders and many Germans deserted. The legendary statement by Martin Luther, “Here I stand. I can do no other” was co-opted by those generals who wanted to see the war through.

The Great War transformed Christianʼs beliefs, particularly their belief in how the church was related to the state. If the war led some believers to support toxic regimes, it also drove others to oppose repression and militarism and develop a sweeping critique of the churchesʼ alliance with secular states. Although initially confined to academic circles, those ideas gradually became popularized — so commonplace and familiar, in fact, that it almost seems difficult to believe that churches could ever have held any other positions.

Sixty-eight percent of all Christians lived in Europe at the beginning of the war. Today the number of Christians living in Europe as a percentage of population can be counted in the single digits in most European countries.

After the Church was discredited, its millenarian myths got taken up by Naziism and Communism. In Germany and Russia, secular messianic prophets advocating radical ideologies benefited from the realization that Germany had lost a holy war. Meanwhile, mainstream Christian orthodoxy lost out to Spiritualism, new cults and fundamentalist Christianity. Pentecostalism grew as mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches waned. Beyond Europe and North America, the war marked the beginning of radical new forms of religion.

Orthodox Christianity nearly became extinct during the Soviet era in Russia which began with the success of the communist revolution during the last year of WW I when all the heavily Christian nations west of Russia were busy fighting each other.

Numerous Christian communities in the Middle East continue to be threatened with extinction, a process that began with the Armenian genocide of 1915.

On the other hand, Christianity in Africa has experienced explosive growth in recent decades, and if current trends continue Africa will have more Christians than any other continent by 2030, a success story that Jenkins traces to the disruptions of WW I.

For Muslims the war was traumatic in that they saw the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the loss of the caliphate in Istanbul, loosing the Islamic extremism that continues until today.

And of course for Jews WW I was a breathtaking game changer as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 paved the way for the creation of the modern State of Israel.

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For Further Reading…

• The Civil War as a Theological Crisis and Holy War
• Further evidence that the Civil War was a Holy War
• A Rational Response to the Film, Amazing Grace

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Speaking of seeing ANGELS on the battlefield note that following the second invasion of Iraq by the U.S., and the pushback by Islamic radicals, W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War Collegeʼs strategic studies institute — and the top expert on Iraq there — said in 2004: “I donʼt think that you can kill the insurgency… Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators.” He describes the religious imagery common in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: “Thereʼs talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents.”

SOURCE: Far graver than Vietnam by Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian, Thursday 16 September 2004, and Salon.

The Criminal History of Christianity by Karlheinz Deschner

Karl Heinrich Leopold Deschner (born on May 23, 1924, in Bamberg, Germany), is a German researcher and writer who has achieved public attention in Europe for his thorough and critical treatment of Christianity (and Catholicism in particular) as expressed in articles and books (that have appeared thus far in Spanish, Italian, Polish and his native German), culminating in his magum opus The Criminal History of Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek) which is planned in 10 volumes, of which 9 have been published so far.

Hans Kung (bestselling Catholic theologian) speaking about Deschner:

During the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the Catholic Church enjoyed a generally high public standing. At the beginning of the third millennium after Christ, however, it is being attacked more than ever in some quarters. Granted, Rome has recently been asking for forgiveness for the monstrous errors and atrocities of the past—but in the meantime, the present-day church administration and Inquisition are producing still more victims. Scarcely any of the great institutions in our democratic age deal in such a despicable way with critics and those of other views in their own ranks, nor does any discriminate so much against women—by prohibiting contraceptives, the marriage of priests, and the ordination of women. None polarizes society and politics worldwide to such a degree by rigid positions in matters of abortion, homosexuality, and euthanasia, positions always invested with an aura of infallibility, as if they were the will of God himself. In view of the apparent inability on the part of the Catholic Church to correct and reform itself, is it not understandable that at the beginning of the third Christian millennium the more or less benevolent indifference widely shown to the church around fifty years ago has turned into hatred, indeed, public hostility? Antagonistic church historians and critics are of the opinion that in the churchʼs two-thousand-year history no organic process maturing [of doctrines and dogmas] can be detected, but rather something more like a criminal history. A once-Catholic author, Karlheinz Deschner, has devoted his life and so far six [now nine, with a tenth on the way] volumes to such a history. In it he describes every possible form of criminality in the churchʼs foreign policy and in policies relating to trade, finance, and education; in the dissemination of ignorance and superstition; in the unscrupulous exploitation of sexual morality, marriage laws, and penal justice… and so on, for hundreds [now 8,000] pages.*

*Though Drescherʼs works have translated into several European languages only a few paragraphs have thus far been translated into English (see below)—but if one is interested in present-day religion-related abuses and crimes, click here.

Synopsis Of Christianityʼs Criminal History, Volume 7, 13th and 14th Centuries by Karlheinz Deschner:

“The Middle Ages,” noted Nietzsche, “is the era of the greatest passions.” How these passions expressed themselves in the 13th and 14th Centuries is related by Karlheinz Deschner in the newest volume of his Christianityʼs Criminal History.

At the beginning of this epoch stood Emperor Henry VI, who claimed for himself dominium mundi, world rule—with or without the blessing of the Pope. At the end stood Emperor Charles IV, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire until 1378. The most powerful ecclesiastical opponent of this imperium was Pope Gregory IX (1227 to 1241), who demanded from the emperor his right to crusades and who managed internal security by means of the Inquisition.

Events of this period: the decisive power struggle between emperor and papacy, the fall of the Hohenstauffen and the end of papal universal domination, the papal bull “Unam Sanctam,” the Mongol Invasion, the Sicilian Vesper, the “Babylonian Captivity” of the popes in exile in Avignon, increasingly devastating anti-Jewish pogroms, crusades in every direction, among them that of Frederick II, the Crusades of Louis I the Holy to Egypt and Tunis, the Crusades of Christians against Christians, against the Albigensians, the Stedinger, the grotesque Childrenʼs Crusade, the destruction of the Templars, the destruction of the Pastorells, the notorious terrorist regime of the German Order, the extermination of the “heathen” in the Northeast of Europe, the suppression of the Balts, the Prussians — and not least the totalitarian Inquisition meant to suppress every stirring of intellectual freedom.

Deschnerʼs meticulous, irrefutable presentation of evidence from eye witnesses who were previously silenced or distorted reveals the very Christian Middle Ages as the high water mark of ruthless power politics involving both secular thrones and the Holy See.

Excerpts From Christianityʼs Criminal History, Volume 7, 13th and 14th Centuries by Karlheinz Deschner:

In the course of sacred history punishments became more and more severe and salutary. The Councils of Reims in 1157 and Oxford in 1160 had imposed facial branding on heretics. Even Innocent III threatened the Albigenses at first “only” with banishment and confiscation. But thereafter capital punishment became more and more frequent with various forms of execution appearing. In Cologne, Nuremberg and Regensburg “heretics” were occasionally drowned, in Würzburg beheaded, but death by fire became the rule for such an offense.

Death by fire, usually on a holiday, became a demonstration of the Churchʼs virtual omnipotence, as a grandiose ritual sacrifice, more popular than any other religious holiday. This human sacrifice was given a Portuguese name, autodafé, which in Latin is actus fidei. It was “an act of faith,” unquestionably the most ardent in the history of religion. Special couriers spread the invitation, the condemned were led forth before crowds of onlookers, special prices were paid for window seats, and every good Catholic who could bring forth wood for the fire was certain of a welcome absolution. This splendid opportunity has been denied the Catholic world since the 19th Century, for the last autodafé was probably celebrated in Mexico in 1815 (the first in 1481 in Seville).

Spiritual and worldly princes participated. The Grand Inquisitor handed over the condemned to the civil authorities following high mass and a sermon in a public square or house of God, not without expressing his heartfelt wish that the “life and limbs” of these people might be spared. The condemned were brought to the place of execution, usually wearing a foolʼs cap to symbolize their mindless perversity, clothed in bright yellow sackcloth and covered with the most outrageous images of the Devil, so that even the most dimwitted Catholic might easily recognize the spiritual father of these miscreants. These bystanders would often express their brotherly love in the usual fashion: by beating the condemned with canes, pinching them with glowing tongs and sometimes chopping off their right hands. In order to spare the delicate sensibilities of Godʼs people, the “heretics” were often gagged to muffle their screams, so that nothing could be heard but the almost cozy crackling of the flames and the chanting of the priests. And while the victims, depending on wind direction, either suffocated or slowly roasted to death, the assembled Christian community, nobility, common people and clergy, all sang: “Almighty God, we praise Thee.”

The courts of the Inquisition were the noblest courts of the Church and shielded from every profane influence. They were deemed immune to corruption; they usually adorned themselves with the attributes “holy” and “most holy.” For the filthier something is, the more it must be verbally rid of filth, embellished, ennobled, elevated to glory and majesty.

Official Church proclamations glorified the Inquisition, as did popes such as Innocent IV and Clemens IV in their papal bulls of March 23, 1254 and February 26, 1266. The inquisitors themselves were placed in an illustrious line of descent stretching back to an entire gallery of glorious Old Testament gangsters, with Saul, e.g., with David (I, 85 ff.!), Joshua (I, 83 f.) and others. But even Jesus, John the Baptist and Peter were numbered in the inquisitorial pedigree. Indeed, God Himself, the expeller of Adam and Eve from Paradise, was viewed as nothing less than the first “inquisitor.” These murdering thugs were in any case agents of the pope. Their derived their plenipotentiary authority everywhere and at all times from him alone.

Prisons of the Inquisitions, Places of Unspeakable Cruelty

The courts of the Inquisition were opened by an invocation to the Holy Spirit [whom, it is promised to believers in the NT, “will lead you unto all truth”].

Prayer also preceded the pronouncement of judgment.

The verdict, however, even in cases of extreme doubt, was not subject to appeal to secular courts, which functioned merely as an executive tool of the Church courts, whose sentences they were to carry out “blindly” (coeca obedientia) and “with closed eyes” (oculis clausis).

Numerous papal bulls sharply admonished the princes to damn well do their duty. Not only the doges of Venice were finally obliged by their oath of office to burn heretics. Otto IV of the Welf dynasty promised “effective support” in the eradication of “evil heresies” as much as his opponent, Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who in fact went further and demanded of all his subordinates, consuls, and rectors that “they in their respective lands make every effort to exterminate everyone designated by the Church as a heretic.” This obligation was confirmed by a public oath, under penalty of deposition and loss of their lands. These oaths proved to be effective.

The popes did everything in their power to ensure that the demands and orders of the inquisitors be quickly obeyed, that the inquisitors themselves be granted armed escort, and especially that the inquisitorial decrees be incorporated into the secular law codes. Innocent IV wrote in his bull “Cum adversus haereticam” of May 28, 1252:

“As the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick has pass certain laws against the heretical evil, by which laws the spread of this plague might be hindered, and as we desire that these laws be observed for the strengthening of the faith and the salvation of the faithful, so we order the beloved sons who are in authority to incorporate these laws, whose exact wording is attached, into their statues, and to proceed against the heretics with great zeal. Therefore we order you [the inquisitors], when these authorities fulfill our orders carelessly, to force them to compliance by means of excommunication and interdiction … We utterly curse those who have fallen from the Catholic faith, we pursue them with punishment, we rob them of their fortunes, deny them succession and revoke any and all their rights.”

The usual punishment for “heretics” was incarceration, often for life. In a partially preserved register of sentences of the Inquisition in Toulouse from the years 1246 to 1248, of 149 prisoners six were serving 10 years, 16 an indeterminate time based on the discretion of the Church, and 127 were serving life terms.

The prisons of the Inquisition were places of unimaginable cruelty, dark and confined by papal prescription, usually without any light or ventilation but full of filth and stench. The clergy filled these places to the point that Gregory IX ordered the building of more and promised generous indulgences to Christians who would contribute to their construction. Sentences served in these hellholes were far worse than any quick death by fire at the stake. Men and women often languished for years without being sentenced or acquitted. A man by the name of Wilhelm Salavert was first interrogated on February 24, 1300 and finally sentenced on September 30, 1319, after 19 years of uninterrupted misery. A woman in Toulouse was “reprieved to bearing the Cross” after lying in the local prisons for 33 years.

(from Karlheinz Deschnerʼs Christianityʼs Criminal History, Volume 7, p. 260 ff.)

Torture, the Most Compelling Instrument of Christian Brotherly Love

Of the three types of Inquisitorial conviction—purification, recantation, torture—“torture is the most suitable. Because heresy is difficult to prove, the judge of the Inquisition should be inclined toward the use of torture: ad torturam judex debet esse promptior.” (Antonius Diana, Consultant to the Sicilian Inquisition)

Augustine, both saint and doctor of the Church and the archetype of all medieval “heretic”-hunters, had already allowed torture against the Donatists, defending it as a trifle when compared to the agonies of hell. He called it a “cure,” an “emendatio.”

Bishop Anselm of Lucca among others in the 11th Century further developed Augustineʼs “heresy” argumentation. Expelled by his own clergy in 1080, he had a quite correct understanding of Augustine: proceeding against evil is not persecution but an expression of love. And Bishop Bonizo of Sutri, blinded and maimed by his own Christians in 1089, called for “combating” schismatics and worse dissenters “with all vigor and weapons.” He did not hesitate to attribute to Augustine the view “that all those are blessed who persecute for the sake of righteousness.”

This most compelling instrument of Christian brotherly love was already being employed north of the Alps during the Carolingian period but did not being to flourish until the 13th Century when Innocent IV, in his bull “Ad exstirpanda” of 1252, called for the use of torture and its canonical regulation in the fight against “heretics” in northern Italy. This policy expanded to include all of Italy in 1256 and was confirmed in the following years by Popes Alexander IV and Clemens IV.

In 1261 Urban IV allowed inquisitors, under whose robust manner of opinion research delinquents might expire, to mutually absolve one another. It was after all not permitted to torture to death a person being questioned. In such a case the inquisitor would face excommunication, from which he could be immediately freed, however, by a priest of the Inquisition uttering the formula: “Ego te absolvo.”

(from Karlheinz Deschnerʼs Christianityʼs Criminal History, Volume 7, p. 266ff)

REVIEWS of Deschnerʼs “Christianityʼs Criminal History”:

“How a religion of love became a religion of worldly power—provocative, discomforting, richly detailed: Karlheinz Deschnerʼs ambitious Christianityʼs Criminal History”—Prof. Ludger Lütkehaus, Badische Zeitung, 29.11.1988

“A shocking panorama of fraud and deceit, blood and murder under the sign of the Cross … The author recounts conscientiously, even in pedantic detail, the multitude of clerical, Christian crimes dating back to the earliest days of the Church. He demolishes with crushing blows monumental figures such as the great Constantine … The venerable doctors of the Church such as Athanasius, Ambrose, and Augustine lose their halos entirely… . Of course there is another side to the story… But that does not negate Deschnerʼs account. He brings to light what has been diligently suppressed, falsified, and played down through two Christian millennia.”—Heinz Schönfeldt, «Mannheimer Morgen»

“Deschner doesnʼt believe in wounding blows. He goes for the throat … And what is the result? A mammoth project. The crowing completion of a lifelong altercation: Christianityʼs Criminal History.”—Dietmar Bittrich, «Hamburger Abendblatt»

“A standard work based on a thorough study of the sources… The absolutely breathtaking descriptions, whose factual content are irrefutable, present a single, massive indictment of Christianity and show to what astonishing degree the gospel of love and mercy preached by Jesus was betrayed again and again. A book which will challenge and shake those above all who cherish a heartfelt commitment to the message of the Gospel.”—Lieselotte von Eltz-Hoffmann, «Salzburger Nachrichten»

“Deschner is not a modern Don Quixote, nor a Michael Kohlhaas. He is a modern proponent of the Enlightenment who still believes in the power of reason. He does not perceive the necessity of a new myth to replace a demystified Christianity no longer able to offer salvation. This fact distinguishes him from some modern critics of the Church who still feel allegiance to some interpretation of primitive Christianity. Deschner is without compromise in this regard.”—Rolf Gawrich, «Frankfurter Rundschau»

“Christianityʼs Criminal History is the name of this work which has now expanded to two volumes and which will eventually encompass a few more volumes as an opus maximum: in its projected entirety probably the most comprehensive critical history of Christianity ever. The title is intended in its absolute, literal sense. Deschner is set on laying forth an uncompromising account of Christianityʼs ‘history of crime.’ The spine title, formulated perhaps out of publication considerations, expresses extenuating circumstances which the book itself does not offer. And ‘Christianityʼs Criminal History’ is also to be understood in the sense of criminal detection, proof and exposure of the crime and the culprits. The halo which has customarily surrounded said criminal history is relentlessly attacked by Deschner as a monstrous hypocrisy.

The monumental figures of sacred history are in fact toppled right and left: the church doctors, the dogmatic patriarchs, the early popes, the “most” Christian emperors: Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Basil, Clemens, Eusebius, Jerome, Irenaeus, Lactantius… A litany of saints of blessed memory becomes an unholy litany of scoundrels one would prefer to forget. Volume 1 is already in its fifth printing and covers the time from Old Testament origins to the death of Saint Augustine. Volume 2 deals with that period from the Catholic “children emperors” to the extermination of the Arian Vandals and Ostrogoths under Justinian I. What these two books reveal is a blood-drenched trail as remote as one can imagine from a message of love and mercy, not a story of salvation but a monstrous catastrophe. In this context, the expression “Christian persecutions” acquires a painfully ironic twist: out of the victims arise the oppressors.

Marshalling arguments against this awful compilation of factual evidence will be difficult. It may be that Deschner in cases of doubt always decides against the accused. As a whole, however, this massive study, whose origins date back to the 1950s, is painstakingly thorough and researched with a scholarly diligence without equal. The first two volumes contain almost 2,000 secondary titles, 130 pages of footnotes and annotations, in addition to a user-friendly, detailed index, all of which makes this compendium of crime a fatally effective reference work. This impressive apparatus also conveys a simple message: the author knows that in spite of all the recognition heʼs received — in 1988 he received the Arno-Schmidt-Prize for his uncompromising literary production — he is not going to be easily, at any rate not voluntarily believed.”—Prof Dr. Ludger Lütkehaus, «Freiburger Universitätsblätter» herausgegeben im Auftrag des Rektors der Albert-LudwigsUniversität Freiburg

“Deschnerʼs Christianityʼs Criminal History should not be absent from any serious scholarly library. It is a standard work, an organon including all the major themes, a necessary corrective of great value belonging on the shelf next to the works of Augustine, the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas and the Lexica für Theologie und Kirche of our own day.“—Helmut Häußler, Freigeistige Aktion, Hannover

“I am reminded of 18th Century proponents of the Enlightenment such as the Frenchmen Pierre Bayle, Claude Helvetius, and Voltaire or the German poet Heinrich Heine. Now the 20th Century also has its book, Deschnerʼs Christianityʼs Criminal History.… Thanks to Deschnerʼs back-breaking research, the suspicion that Christianity has skeletons in its closet becomes an absolutely certainty. Widely known facts are beginning to replace mere suspicions, and what we learn about reality exceeds even the products of our fantasy.”—Prof. Dr. theol. Horst Herrmann, Der Spiegel

“The Criminal History is a massive work, a lifeʼs work, perhaps the centuryʼs work. So brilliant is the analysis and captivating the style, bold, cutting, skilful, never looking back or down; independent, creative greatness at work.”—Volker A. Zahn, Kölner Illustrierte

“Deschnerʼs Criminal History not just fills a huge gap. It is THE standard work of alternative church history. With his stupendous, comprehensive grasp of detail, the author of this work of the century makes a pressing, existential issue out of the lives and views of those who have defied the Church through the centuries.”—Prof. Dr. theol. Hubertus Mynarek

Quotations from Drescher:

My skepticism keeps me from becoming a fanatic, which is something no faith has ever achieved.

“I would rather err with the majority than in my own way,” so thought St. Augustine. I am just the opposite.

The superstition that a belief based on faith is different from a superstition is the greatest superstition of all.

SNIPPETS from Drescher, cited in someone elseʼs article on the web:

“The Churchʼs efforts of putting an end to the common practice of plundering shipwrecked sailors in the Middle Ages, didnʼt include Arabs or other infidels. The Church didnʼt see any wrong in sending non-Christian prisoners of war into slavery. In the 17th century the Scottish clergy teached that one under no circumstances whatsoever should give food or shelter to a hungry human being if he didnʼt have an orthodox Christian faith (Deschner).

The ninth commandment of not bearing false witness seems to be a tough one for God himself since he tells lies via his own prophets (1 Kings 22:23, 2.Chr. 18:22. Jer. 4:10, 20:7 Ezek 14:9) and deceives(2.Thess 2:11-12). St Paul also admits using lies and deception to spread the word of God (Rom 3:7, 1.Cor 1:19-23). The biblical texts also forge the very word of God (Jer. 8:8). Jehovah also admits this in Ezek 20,25 “Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live.” Even the noble Church Father Origen thinks it should be allowed to lie and deceive to save souls. According to Origen Godʼs love justifies him using lies. Church father John Chrysostom (Golden mouth) thought lies were necessary for saving the soul (Deschner Karlheinz, 1972: ”Abermals krähte der Hahn” Stuttgart, p. 30). Bishop and Church historian Euseb of Cæsarea (ca 265-430 AD) claimed openly that the Church should use deception and fraud if it was in the interest of the Church. The founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius Loyola, wrote in the 16 th century ”We should always be open for what seems white to us, in reality is black if the leaders of the Church should decide so.”

Additional Books by Deschner

Why I Left the Church (1970)—a book of testimonies from people who left the fold. With contributions by G. von Frankenberg, K. Port, R. Mächler, J. Bjorneboe, F. Vester, G. Zwerenz, K. Harpprecht, W. Baranowsky, O.F. Gmelin, W. Beutin, H. Wollschläger, J. Kahl

Memento! (1999)—A Little Lesson About the “Great Act of Atonement” of the Pope in the Holy Year 2000. In the Holy Year 2000 the Pope asked forgiveness for his organization in a “great act of atonement” from all the millions of victims of crimes committed in the name of Christ through the centuries. Deschner helps the Holy Father search his conscience. Every line of this deeply disturbing litany of crimes cries out “Remember!” - “Memento!”

TV Program About Deschner, on Youtube.com, in Seven Parts (in German)
1/7 Die hasserfüllten Augen des Herrn Deschner