Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War: Using Christianity as a Militaristic Ideology of Conquest, Brutality

_{Image © Austin Cline
Original Poster: Nazi Propaganda
Click for full-sized Image}

If Christianity is a religion of peace and if Jesus was the Prince of Peace, why, then, aren’t all Christians peaceful — even pacifists? Some Christians through history have obviously been pacifists and others, even if not complete pacifists, have certainly tried to live peaceful lives. At the same time, though, significantly more Christians have at the very least ignored traditional injunctions to be peaceful and others have gone even further, using Christianity as an ideological basis for militaristic adventures, wars, colonization, conquest, and more.

This probably shouldn’t be surprising. Humans can be a very violent species, and it seems likely that any half-way comprehensive ideology will end up being used in the service of that violence. The relationship between people and their ideologies is curious: ideologies obviously influence and direct people’s behavior, but at the same, time people’s passions, interests, and desires influence and shape their ideologies. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The ideology or the agenda which the ideology serves?

Has Christianity been made a violent ideology by Christians who need a justification for their violent passions, or are Christians’ violent passions driven by an ideology (Christianity) with violent elements? Or a bit of both? I don’t think that there can be any easy answer to this, but it’s a question which Christians themselves need to spend quite a bit of time with. It’s their religious ideology at issue, and it’s either being perverted for violent purposes, has genuinely violent elements, or — worst of all — both are partially true. Whichever is the case, what will Christians do about it?

Critical will be Christians’ ability to distinguish between ideals and reality. Many Christians harbor an ideal of Christianity as a peaceful religion, and this includes Christians who aren’t especially peaceful themselves. No serious consideration of the above issues can proceed, however, unless a person is willing to confront the reality of Christianity as an ideology used (and not simply misused) in the service of militarism and violence. Perhaps their version of Christianity doesn’t appear to be used in this manner, but it is still Christianity in question and every Christian shares responsibility for how Christianity is used — for good and for ill.

Simply saying that others’ violent acts or militaristic beliefs aren’t “real” Christianity fails on many levels. First, they are invariably relying on legitimate aspects of Christian traditions and teachings — maybe they emphasize different traditions and teachings than more liberal and less militaristic Christians, but they aren’t any less legitimate because of that. Liberal Christians who insist that others aren’t “real” Christians because they emphasize different traditions in different ways are adopting the exact same exclusionary tactics as the extremists themselves. You can’t defeat extremism by using the same “us vs. them” ideology that drives the extremists’ agenda.

Second, this perspective encourages the idea that everything within Christianity is good while everything which is bad necessarily falls outside Christianity. Not only is this a good example of the No True Scotsman fallacy, it encourages people to regard Christianity as flawless and as lacking any need for change, improvement, or reform. Since when has Christianity ever really been perfect, though?

Finally, insisting that the extremists aren’t following “real” Christianity is the best way to ensure that they won’t listen to you. They are as convinced about the validity and truth of their Christianity as every other self-professed Christian, if not more so. They are also convinced that their enemies are all working with Satan, rather than simply mistaken or misguided. Telling them that they have placed too much emphasis on the wrong things and not enough emphasis on better things may allow them to listen to you. Telling them that they aren’t “real” Christians and/or that they aren’t following “real” Christianity guarantees that they will ignore you.

This image is based upon a Nazi poster from the Netherlands, created to encourage the Dutch to enlist in the Waffen SS. Looking back, it seems almost absurd to imagine that non-Germans would volunteer for the now-notorious SS, but they did. Some regard it as absurd that Christianity would be used to promote violence, but it is. Too much idealism about Christianity can prevent Christians from fully appreciating what is going on and how they are being manipulated.

People who don’t believe that they can possibly go wrong make frequent mistakes because they arrogantly ignore all the signs of their own errors, not to mention the advice of others who point out where things are going wrong. People who don’t believe that their philosophy could possibly go astray fail to act when their philosophy is already being used to harm others or when their philosophy is obviously leading to disaster. If Christians pretend that there’s nothing in Christian traditions and teachings which can legitimately be used in violent ways, then they’ll never be able to address the real issues in a direct and forthright manner.

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