Which, just a friendly reminder, happened in Christian, civilized Europe only 70-some years ago.Īnd if you don’t believe me about the brutal repression of Manichean Christians, you can read about it here in the Catholic Encyclopedia (a publication that “chronicles what Catholic artists, educators, poets, scientists and men of action have achieved in their several provinces”).
The Crusaders killed so many Jews in the name of their Christian faith that it was the most stunning demographic blow to European Jewry until the Holocaust. They herded them into synagogues and set the buildings alight. Time after time, as Crusaders slogged southeast on their umpteenth trip to the Holy Land, they slaughtered the Jews in their path. The Crusades are still a sore subject in the Muslim world, but it’s easy to forget the havoc they wreaked on the Jews of Europe. If that was a perversion of Christianity, as many argue, or a fluke, then why can we not extend the same thinking toward, say, the Muslim conquests of the Middle East, or, dare I say it, the Islamic State? You cannot argue that one religion is inherently violent because of the following historical examples, and then wave away the violent history of Christianity and say the exception proves the rule. With all due respect to my many Christian friends, I seriously beg to differ.Ĭonservatives roll their eyes when you mention the Crusades - oh, that old thing? - and I’m sure they will when they see the reference to the Manicheans, but they both matter, especially if you’re trying to argue that religions have inherent characteristics. Most of the (politically conservative) guests raised their hands and then took pains to explain to me how, unlike Islam, Christianity is inherently a religion of love. I have witnessed this debate play out many times over, including at one dinner party when Laura Ingraham turned to the other guests and took a poll: Raise your hands if you think Islam is a death cult.
I am even more tired of hearing that Christianity is inherently peaceful. The reason I bring up the Manicheans is because I am tired of hearing, from Bill Maher and from Donald Trump, that Islam is inherently violent. Augustine called for their energetic persecution. And I mean ruthlessly: Adherents of a Manichean-tinged Christianity had their goods confiscated and were put to death, even if they converted to proper Christianity but still kept in touch with their Manichean contacts. If the word “Manichean” has negative connotations today, it might be because it was deemed a heresy by the early Catholic Church, one that needed to be ruthlessly rooted out of the Christian universe. In the secular vernacular, we might call this view “Manichean,” that is, a binary between light and darkness, good and evil.īut it’s worth noting that “Manichean” was originally used to describe a religion that spread from Persia to the eastern and northern African parts of the Roman Empire in the third century, one that influenced many early Christians. This is a worldview that is shared by people who are Trump supporters and not Trump supporters. Both are inherently one thing or the other, immutable blueprints etched in stone for the behavior of their respective adherents. Christianity is tolerant and Islam intolerant. Christianity is peaceful and Islam violent. In that world, only one religion can be bad, and so Christianity is good and Islam is bad. It is zero-sum: Either guns kill people or radical Islam kills people. Speaking after “appreciating the congrats” on the Orlando shootings, Donald Trump again insisted that what mowed people down at Pulse was not an assault rifle but radical Islam, because in Trump Tower, it cannot be both.