Peter d'Errico: Obama touches sore spot with Christianity remark

Historical records show that Christianity was very violent during long periods of its development. The horrors of the Crusades and the Inquisition, to which Obama referred, are demonstrated in official church documents. The Crusades were a 300-year long series of church-sponsored military expeditions to eject Muslims from the "Holy Land." The Inquisition was a 400-year long, multinational church network of terror against all other religions and especially against "infidels" (non-believers) and "heretics" (people with "wrong" beliefs).

For example, under Pope Innocent III, the Christian powers waged a war of terror against "heresy" in what we now know as southern France. One million people were killed in 15 years. The Christians wiped out whole towns at once. When the "soldiers of Christ" asked the Bishop of Cocteau what they should do with the Catholic citizens of one town, the bishop said, "Kill them all, God will recognize his own." The papal legate thereafter notified the pope that the entire population of the town—20,000 people—was put to death.

The violence of Christendom extended to "heathens" (people who have not heard the "word of Christ") in the "New World." The Spanish Requerimiento of 1513, based on a Papal Bull of 1493 confirming Spanish title to "discovered" lands, declared that the colonizers may "make war against you (Native peoples) in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault."

U.S. history shows similar horrific events, in which Native peoples were the victims of terrible violence at the hands of "Christian Discoverers." In 1637, the English burned an entire Pequot village, after blocking any escape routes. Captain John Underhill explained the killing of the elderly, women, and children, by saying, "...sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents...We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings."