Er….

Following up Scott’s post on Stephen Green…

Christianity was a violent religion until the Thirty Years War. That war lasted so long, and killed so many people (the population of Germany was reduced by a third), that Christendom lost its bloodlust. Freedom of conscience was born on the battlefields of central Europe. The Middle East hasn’t suffered that kind of loss; they haven’t yet had their fill of blood; they haven’t yet become disgusted with tyranny. I’d like to think that the Middle East can do what the West did, without all the suffering. But if it takes regional fratricide, then so be it.

Hrm.

The Seven Years War: 1.3+ million dead
The Napoleonic Wars: 2.5+ million dead
World War I: 8.9+ million dead (although you can exclude the 300000 Turks if you’d like)
World War II: 63 million dead (you can exclude about 20 million non-Western casualties if it suits you)

Now, if you want to claim that neither Germany nor Russia were Christian countries during World War II, feel free; the argument is less absurd for the Soviet Union than for Germany, as the Communists were genuinely anti-Christian while the Nazis relied heavily on a Catholic base. Of course, that gets us into trouble with Green’s other claim, that the Christian West somehow became averse to tyranny after 1648. To put it gently, the evidence would seem to problematize that assertion…

I suppose it could also be argued that, since the above wars weren’t specifically about religion, they don’t challenge Green’s argument. That would certainly be an odd contention; the Christian aversion to murder, tyranny, and slaughter was so great that it had no meaningful effect on limiting brutality, murder, tyranny, and slaughter in overwhelmingly Christian countries.

The above does not, of course, note systematic Christian brutality in the colonial world after 1648, including 10 million dead in Congo alone between 1880 and 1908.

A curious thing, this religious war in Germany between 1618 and 1648 that was so awful that it expunged tyranny, war, brutality, slaughter, and (presumably) ring-around-the-collar from the soul of the West for all of time.