excommunicating the
Albigensians (left), Massacre against the Albigensians by the
crusaders Certain interpretations of some moral decisions in the Bible are considered
ethically questionable by
human rights activists and scholars,
historians, and
critics of religion. Some of the passages most commonly criticized include
colonialism, the
subjugation of women,
religious intolerance,
condemnation of homosexuality and
transgender identity, and
support for the institution of slavery in both Old and New Testaments.
Colonialism Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated because Catholicism and Protestantism were the religions of the European colonial powers and acted in many ways as the "religious arm" of those powers. Historian Edward E. Andrews argues that although Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery", by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them." Christianity is targeted by critics of colonialism because the tenets of the religion were used to justify the actions of the colonists. For example, Michael Wood asserts that the indigenous peoples were not considered to be human beings and that the colonisers were shaped by "centuries of Ethnocentrism, and Christian monotheism, which espoused one truth, one time and version of reality."
Slavery Early Christian perspectives of slavery were formed in the contexts of
Christianity's roots in Judaism, and as part of the wider culture of
slavery in the Roman Empire. Slavery was widespread in the
Roman Empire, including at the time of
Augustus when
Jesus was born. Both the
Old and
New Testaments recognize that the institution of slavery existed, with the former sanctioning it within certain limits (Leviticus 25:39–46, Exodus 21:2–21).
Saint Paul the Apostle in addressing slavery in
Ephesians 6:5–8 tells slaves to "obey your earthly masters" and "render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women." Defenders of Christianity argue that nothing in the passage affirms slavery as a naturally valid or divinely mandated institution. Rather, Paul's discussion of the duties of Christian slaves and the responsibilities of Christian masters transforms the institution, even if it falls short of calling for outright abolition.
St. Augustine thought slavery was a result of sin, but was part of the fallen world and so should be tolerated. However, others opposed it:
John Chrysostom explicitly argued that slavery itself was a sin, but he did not advocate for its abolition;
Origen called for the practice of
manumission after six years as found in the Old Testament; others, such as
Gregory of Nyssa,
Acacius of Amida, and
St. Patrick, called for the complete abolition of slavery. On the other hand, critics claim that Orthodox Christianity justified slavery on the ground that it was part of the divinely ordained hierarchical order. Slaves are enjoined to be submissive in the
Ephesians passage above as well as other parts of the Bible, such as in Paul's
Epistle to the Colossians: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters [
kyrioi] according to the flesh in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord [
kyrios]". In addition, John Chrysostom wrote "The slave should be resigned to his lot, in obeying his master he is obeying God" while St. Augustine wrote: "...slavery is now penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance". According to one view, today and from a human rights perspective, it is difficult to understand why early Christians did not object to the social institution of slavery. It is uncertain whether one can go so far as to criticise Early Christians, including Paul and other authors of Biblical texts, for their active or passive acceptance of slavery. Peter Gruszka attributed the view of early Christian Fathers on slavery to their social environment. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the most prominent fathers such as
Clement,
Tertullian,
Cyprian,
Origen and others emerged in Africa and Egypt, where slavery did not exist on a large scale. Different was the social environment in Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Palestine and especially Asia Minor, where slavery was a strong presence and therefore attracted the attention of the
Cappadocian fathers of the 4th century. According to
Jennifer Glancy, sexual exploitation of slaves in the Roman Empire was helped by Christian morality. Jesus urged his followers to act like slaves, implementing a
slave morality. The early Christian theologians were unconcerned about slave morals. In the
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine), a shift in the view of slavery is noticed, which by the 10th century transformed gradually a slave-object into a slave-subject. Since the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery has been subjected to significant internal conflict and has endured dramatic change. Nearly all Christian leaders before the late 17th century recognised slavery, within specific biblical limitations, as consistent with Christian
theology. The key verse used to justify slavery was Genesis 9:25–27: "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem." which was interpreted to mean that Africans were the descendants of
Ham, cursed with "the mark of Ham" to be servants to the descendants of
Japheth (Europeans) and
Shem (Asians). In 1452,
Pope Nicholas V instituted the hereditary slavery of captured
Muslims and pagans, regarding all non-Christians as "enemies of Christ". The "
Curse of Ham" along with Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians 6:5–7 helped American slave owners to balance their beliefs with slavery. The
Southern Baptist Convention separated from the
Triennial Convention in order to support slavery, which the southern churches regarded as "an institution of heaven". The New Testament was ignored except in reminding that Jesus never condemned slavery and the
Epistle to Philemon in which a runaway slave was returned to his owner, although Paul urges the owner to treat him "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother".
Christian abolitionist movements Rodney Stark makes the argument in
For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery, that Christianity helped to end slavery worldwide, as does
Lamin Sanneh in
Abolitionists Abroad. These authors point out that Christians who viewed slavery as wrong on the basis of their religious convictions spearheaded
abolitionism, and many of the early campaigners for the abolition of slavery were driven by their Christian faith and a desire to realize their view that all people are equal under God. In the late 17th century,
Anabaptists began to criticize slavery. Criticisms from the
Society of Friends,
Mennonites, and the
Amish followed suit. Prominent among these Christian abolitionists were
William Wilberforce and
John Woolman.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her famous book, ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin'', according to her Christian beliefs in 1852. Earlier, in Britain and America,
Quakers were active in abolitionism. A group of Quakers founded the first English abolitionist organization in 1783, and a Quaker petition brought the issue before government that same year. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the way for the campaign.
John Wesley, the founder of
Methodism, was instrumental in starting abolitionism as a popular movement. Many modern
Christians are united in the condemnation of
slavery as wrong and contrary to
God's will. Only peripheral groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan and other so-called Christian
hate groups on the racist fringes of the
Christian Reconstructionist and
Christian Identity movements advocate the reinstitution of slavery. With these exceptions, Christian faith groups now condemn slavery, and see the practice as incompatible with basic Christian principles. In addition to aiding abolitionism, many Christians made further efforts toward establishing racial equality, contributing to the
Civil Rights Movement.
The African American Review notes the important role Christian
revivalism in the
black church played in the Civil Rights Movement.
Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained
Baptist minister, was a leader of the American civil rights movement and president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Christian Civil Rights organization.
Christianity and women '' (1895) is a collection of critical commentaries on texts within chapters of the Bible referring to women Many
feminists have accused notions such as a male God, male prophets, and the man-centered stories in the Bible of contributing to a
patriarchy. Though many women disciples and servants are recorded in the
Pauline epistles, there have been occasions in which women have been denigrated and forced into a second-class status. For example, women were told to keep silent in the churches for "it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church".
Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said in ''
The Woman's Bible'' that "the Bible in its teachings degrades women from Genesis to Revelation". Elizabeth Clark cites early Christian writings by authors such as
Tertullian,
Augustine, and
John Chrysostom as being exemplary of the negative view of women that has been perpetuated in church tradition. Until the latter part of the 20th century, only the names of very few women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years were widely known:
Mary, the mother of Jesus;
Mary Magdalene, disciple of Jesus and the first witness to the resurrection; and
Mary and
Martha, the sisters who offered him hospitality in Bethany.
Harvard scholar
Karen King writes that more of the many women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years are becoming known. Further, she concludes that for centuries in
Western Christianity, Mary Magdalene has been wrongly identified as the adulteress and repentant prostitute presented in —a connection supposed by tradition but nowhere claimed in the New Testament. According to King, the
Gospel of Mary shows that she was an influential figure, a prominent disciple and leader of one wing of the early Christian movement that promoted women's leadership. King claims that every sect within
early Christianity which had advocated women's prominence in ancient Christianity was eventually declared
heretical, and evidence of women's early leadership roles was erased or suppressed. Various theologians have concluded that the canonical examples of the manner of Jesus are instructive for inferring his attitudes toward women. They are seen as showing repeatedly and consistently how he liberated and affirmed women. However,
Schalom Ben-Chorin argues that Jesus' reply to his mother in during the
wedding at Cana amounted to a blatant violation of the commandment to honor one's parent.
Christianity and violence Many critics of Christianity have cited the violent acts of Christian nations as a reason to denounce the religion. The
science fiction writer
Arthur C. Clarke said that he could not forgive religions because they endorsed atrocities and wars over time.
Richard Dawkins makes a similar case in his book,
The God Delusion. In the counterargument book
The Dawkins Delusion?, Alister McGrath responds to Dawkins by suggesting that, far from endorsing "out-group hostility",
Jesus commanded an ethic of "out-group affirmation". McGrath agrees that it is necessary to critique religion, but he says that Dawkins seems to be unaware that it possesses internal means of reform and renewal. While Christians may certainly be accused of failing to live up to Jesus' standard of acceptance, it lies at the heart of the Christian ethic. of French Protestants in 1572 Peace, compassion and forgiveness of wrongs done by others are key elements of Christian teaching. However, Christians have struggled since the days of the
Church fathers with the question of when the use of force is justified. Such debates have led to concepts such as
just war theory. Throughout history, biblical passages have been used to justify the use of force against heretics, sinners and external enemies. Heitman and Hagan identify the
Inquisitions,
Crusades, wars of religion and
antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence". To this list, J. Denny Weaver adds, "warrior popes, support for
capital punishment,
corporal punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod and spoil the child', justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to men". Weaver employs a broader definition of violence that extends the meaning of the word to cover "harm or damage", not just physical violence per se. Thus, under his definition, Christian violence includes "forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, and sexism". Christians have also engaged in violence against those who they consider heretics and non-believers. In
Letter to a Christian Nation, critic of religion
Sam Harris writes that "...faith inspires violence in at least two ways. First, people often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it... Second, far greater numbers of people fall into conflict with one another because they define their moral community on the basis of their religious affiliation..." Christian theologians point to a strong
doctrinal and historical imperative against violence which exists within Christianity, particularly Jesus'
Sermon on the Mount, which taught nonviolence and love of enemies. Weaver says that Jesus'
pacifism was "preserved in the
justifiable war doctrine which declares that all war is sin even when it is occasionally declared to be a necessary evil, and it was also preserved in the prohibition of fighting by monastics and clergy as well as in a persistent tradition of
Christian pacifism". Others point out sayings and acts of Jesus that do not fit this description: the absence of any censure of the soldier who asks Jesus to heal his servant, his overturning the tables and chasing the moneychangers from the temple with a rope in his hand, and through his Apostles, baptising a Roman Centurion who is never asked to first give up arms. Historically, prohibitions on fighting by monastics and clerics have often been discarded; the notion of military monasticism emerged in the 12th century, in large part because of the advocacy of
Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard—and, once the papacy gave sanction to the idea, the entire Roman Catholic Church—believed that existing Christian methods of serving the Church's ends in war were inadequate, and that a group of dedicated warrior monks could achieve spiritual merit by waging war, rather than despite it. In this view, war against heretics justified means of waging war that fell outside the bounds of
just war; for example, the
Teutonic Order, which received papal sanction, made frequent use of massacres and
violence to compel conversion during the
Baltic Crusades.
Science as depicted by
Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury in
Galileo before the Holy Office, 19th-century During the 19th century an interpretive model of the relationship between religion and science known today as the
conflict theory developed, according to which interaction between religion and science almost inevitably leads to hostility and conflict. A popular example was the misconception that people from the
Middle Ages believed that the
Earth was flat, and that only science, freed from religious dogma, had shown that it was spherical. This thesis was a popular
historiographical approach during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but most contemporary
historians of science now reject it. The notion of a war between science and religion remained common in the historiography of science during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of today's historians of science consider that the conflict thesis has been superseded by subsequent historical research. The framing of the relationship between Christianity and science as being predominantly one of conflict is still prevalent in
popular culture. The astronomer
Carl Sagan mentioned the dispute between the astronomical systems of
Ptolemy (who thought that the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth) and
Copernicus (who thought the Earth and planets revolved around the Sun). He states in
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage that
Ptolemy's belief was "supported by the church through the Dark Ages... [It] effectively prevented the advance of astronomy for 1,500 years."
Ted Peters in
Encyclopedia of Religion writes that although there is some truth in this story, it has been exaggerated and has become "a modern myth perpetuated by those wishing to see warfare between science and religion who were allegedly persecuted by an atavistic and dogma-bound ecclesiastical authority". In 1992, the Catholic Church's seeming vindication of Galileo attracted much
comment in the media. ==Ethics==