Christianity and violence
[1] In the Roman Empire, the early church adopted a nonviolent stance when it came to war because the imitation of Jesus's sacrificial life was preferable to it.
[5][6][7] Even though "Just War" concept was widely accepted early on, warfare was not regarded as a virtuous activity and expressing concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in battle, regardless of the cause for which they fought, was common.
[8][9] The Bible contains several texts which encourage, command, condemn, reward, punish, regulate and describe acts of violence.
[13] Mahatma Gandhi embraced the concept of nonviolence which he had found in both Indian Religions and the New Testament (e.g. Sermon on the Mount), which he then utilized in his strategy for social and political struggles.
[14] J. Denny Weaver, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Bluffton University, suggests that there are numerous evolving views on violence and nonviolence throughout the history of Christian theology.
[17] Writing about the latter, Volf says: "Beginning at least with Constantine's conversion, the followers of the Crucified have perpetrated gruesome acts of violence under the sign of the cross.
The bloody history of the tradition has provided disturbing images and violent conflict is vividly portrayed in the Bible.
This history and these biblical images have provided the raw material for theologically justifying the violence of contemporary Christian groups.
For example, attacks on abortion clinics have been viewed not only as assaults on a practice that Christians regard as immoral, but also as skirmishes in a grand confrontation between forces of evil and good that has social and political implications.
"[21] The study of Christian participation in military service in the pre-Constantinian era has been highly contested and has generated a great deal of literature.
[23]: 5 George Kalantzis, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College,[28] sided with Harnack in the debate writing that "literary evidence confirms the very strong internal coherence of the Church's non-violent stance for the first three centuries.
Already Celsus asked bitterly whether Christians, by aloofness from society, wanted to increase the political power of wild and lawless barbarians.
His question constituted a new actuality; from now on, Christians and churches had to choose between the testimony of the gospel, which included renunciation of violence, and responsible participation in political power, which was understood as an act of love toward the world."
examined the Christian concept of Holy War, asking "how a culture formally dedicated to fulfilling the injunction to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' could move to a point where it sanctioned the use of violence against the alien both outside and inside society".
Hitherto a knight could obtain remission of sins only by giving up arms, but Urban invited him to gain forgiveness 'in and through the exercise of his martial skills'."
The just war theory prevailing for most of the last two centuries—that violence is an evil which can in certain situations be condoned as the lesser of evils—is relatively young.
[46]: 3 [47] Daniel Chirot, professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at the University of Washington,[48] interprets 1 Samuel 15:1–3 as "the sentiment, so clearly expressed, that because a historical wrong was committed, justice demands genocidal retribution.
However, the actual death toll was probably higher, according to the data which Dedieu and García Cárcel provided to the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively.
[62] Many people faced capital punishment if they were convicted of witchcraft during this period, either by being burned at the stake, hanged on the gallows, or beheaded.
[65] The legal basis for some inquisitorial activity came from Pope Innocent IV's papal bull Ad extirpanda of 1252, which explicitly authorized (and defined the appropriate circumstances for) the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.
The institution survived as a part of the Roman Curia, but in 1904, it was renamed the "Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office".
While anthropologists have shown that throughout history the relationship between religion and politics has been complex, there is no doubt that religious institutions, including Christian ones, have been used coercively by governments, and that they have used coercion themselves.
[75] Augustine advocated government force in his Epistle 185, A Treatise Concerning the Correction of the Donatists, justifying coercion from scripture.
This verse has been used to justify racialized slavery, since "Christians and even some Muslims eventually identified Ham's descendents as black Africans".
[81][87] Anthony Pagden argued that "This reading of the Book of Genesis merged easily into a medieval iconographic tradition in which devils were always depicted as black.
Later pseudo-scientific theories would be built around African skull shapes, dental structure, and body postures, in an attempt to find an unassailable argument—rooted in whatever the most persuasive contemporary idiom happened to be: law, theology, genealogy, or natural science—why one part of the human race should live in perpetual indebtedness to another.
[97] Modern antisemitism has primarily been described as hatred against Jews as a race, a form of racism, rather than hatred against Jews as a religious group, because its modern expression is rooted in 18th century racial theories, while anti-Judaism is described as hostility towards the Jewish religion, a sentiment which is rooted in but more extreme than criticism of Judaism as a religion, but in Western Christianity, anti-Judaism was transformed into antisemitism during the 12th century.
[100] The commitment to pacifism and the rejection of military service are attributed by Mark J. Allman, professor in the Department of Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College,[101] to two principles: "(1) the use of force (violence) was seen as antithetical to Jesus' teachings and service in the Roman military required worship of the emperor as a god which was a form of idolatry.
[108][109][110] Several present-day Christian churches and communities were established specifically with nonviolence, including conscientious objection to military service, as foundations of their beliefs.
[citation needed] In the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr. and others adapted the nonviolent ideas of Gandhi to a Baptist theology and politics.
