Friday, February 22, 2008

ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY, AND KAREN ARMSTRONG

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELERAPH'S DAMIAN THOMPSON

Apart from being pretty un-Christian in tone, it's simply a non-starter, based on the facts.

It is a fact that institutional Christianity is responsible for the greatest series of blood-baths in all of human history.

Wars of religion, inquisitions, terrors, burning heretics alive, crusades, pogroms, annihilation of indigenous peoples, and world wars.

And then there's all the merely squalid stuff including the scores of popes and bishops with illegitimate children, assassinations, selling indulgences, nunneries serving as houses of ill-repute, the buying and selling of the papacy, etc, etc.

It's a bloody, ugly record that provides no basis for positions like yours against those trying to promote peace and decency.

I love the scene in 'The Brothers Karamazov' in which Christ returns to earth and is confronted by a church official.

It sums up institutional Christianity perfectly.