History Of Persecutions By Christians
This article gives a historical overview of Christian positions on Persecution of Christians and the History of persecutions by Christians, and more generically on religious persecution and toleration. Christian theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas had legitimized religious persecution to various extents and, during the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Christians considered heresy and dissent to be punishable offences. However, Early modern Europe witnessed the turning point in the history of Christian thought on persecution and tolerance. Christian writers like John Milton and John Locke argued for limited religious toleration, and later authors like Thomas Jefferson developed the concept of religious freedom. Christians nowadays generally accept that heresy and dissent are not punishable by a civil authority. Many Christians "look back on the centuries of persecution with a mixture of revulsion and incomprehension." Despite this, discrimination, criticism, and proselytism by individual Christians and Christian groups continues.
Read more about History Of Persecutions By Christians: Historical Background, Christian Roman Doctrine in 4th and 5th Century A.D., The Protestant Theory of Persecution, In The United States, The Mid-20th Century Spanish Model, Modern Roman Catholic Policy
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“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)