(1)
“I know no book which has been a source
of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the
Bible.” (Mr.
Reginald Paget, English M.P., quoted in The Sunday Times, Johannesburg, “Sayings of
the Week”, June 28, 1964).
(2)
The use of the Bible as a classroom
textbook has been condemned by a Christian psychologist as “a positive impediment to
sound religious thinking”. The attack on religious instruction, particularly in
junior schools, came from Dr. Ronald Goldman,
senior education lecturer at Reading University. He told an education conference: “Biblical
authoritarianism is the death of imagination, spirituality and religious insight. The Bible is now a history book. Its most
profound teaching is fiction. Christ was one of the greatest fiction storytellers – a
teacher of life and explorer of it in depth. Children are taught the Bible fiction story
of Jonah and the whale as though it were actually about a whale swallowing a man. It is really a story
about a small nation being swallowed up by a great empire.” Dr. Goldman appealed to
teachers not to create in the children’s minds “the neurotic image of a
watchful, vengeful and punishing God.” (The Star, Johannesburg, January 6, 1966).
(3)
Mr. C. Arthur Smith, a 64-year-old Methodist
local preacher who lives at Ebford, near Exeter, in Devon, has published his own version
of the Bible – a version which, he says, omits “all unnatural and superstitious
teaching.” This must be done, Mr. Smith believes, “if the Church is to make any
impact on the modern world.” Mr.
Smith spent 5,000 hours on study and 9,000 hours writing his “Busy Man’s Bible.”
He points out that it is an interpretation, and not a translation from the original Greek.
It omits the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Resurrection, and other beliefs which Mr. Smith
claims are “unnatural, pure superstition, and unscientific”. Mr. Smith said he
was concerned because the church’s directive had been faltering, uncertain, and
obscure, especially to young students of every nationality coming out of universities. He
said that, in his view, religion was something that had to appeal to man’s REASON. If
it did not, he could not accept it. Mr. Smith said: “I believe that I am the child of
my mother and my father. There is a third constituent in my being, and in that sense you
and I are sons of God. In that sense, too, Jesus was a son of God.” This is much more
reasonable than the doctrine the church teaches, based largely on John I: “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This
referred to wisdom, not to Jesus. The church has
been guilty of placing on these words a
meaning that is neither genuine nor true. (The Star, Johannesburg, January 30,
1963).
(4) No heathen
tribe has conceived so grotesque an idea involving as it does the assumption that man was
born with a hereditary stain upon him and that this stain for which he was not personally
responsible was to be atoned for and that the Creator, of all things, had to sacrifice His
only begotten son to neutralise this mysterious curse. (Major Yeats-Brown, in his book
“LIFE OF A BENGAL LANCER.”)
(5)
A great Western thinker, Bertrand Russell,
unmasks the true nature of Christianity thus:
“In the so-called ages of Faith, when men really did believe in Christian religion in
all its completeness, there was the inquisition with its tortures, there were millions of
unfortunate women burnt as witches and there was every kind of cruelty practised upon all
sorts of people in the name of religion. You find as you look around the world that every
single bit of progress in human feeling,
every improvement in the criminal laws, every step towards the diminution of war, every
step towards better treatment of the coloured races or every mitigation of slavery, every
moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the
organised Churches … I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as
organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in
the world.” (“WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN?” p.14).
(6)
Another Western scholar, Winwood Reade, observes: “I
am firmly persuaded that whatever is injurious to the intellect is also injurious to moral
life and on this conviction I base my conduct with respect to Christianity. This religion is pernicious to intellect. It demands
that the reason shall be sacrificed upon the altar; it orders civilised men to believe in
the legend of a savage race. It places a hideous image, covered with dirt and blood, in
the Holy of Holies; it rends the sacred veil
of Truth in twain. It teaches that the Creator of the Universe – that sublime, that
inscrutable Power – exhibited his back to Moses, and ordered Hosea to commit adultery
and Ezekiel to eat dung. There is no need to say anything more. Such a religion is
blasphemous and foul. Let those admire it who can. I, for my part, feel it my duty to set
free from its chain as many as I can.” (MARTYRDOM OF MAN, pp. 442-3).
(7)
Tel Aviv scholars at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem have called for a scientific reappraisal of the beginnings of
Christianity in the light of the newly-discovered 1,500-year-old texts of a
Judaeo-Christian sect claiming descent from the Disciples of Jesus himself.
The
acquisition of a microfilm copy of the Arabic manuscript was reported last month by the
University. It portrays the first Christians in Jerusalem as synagogue-goers who regarded
Jesus as a prophet but not divine, and who observed Jewish laws to the letter. The texts
also give an account of the Passion which strongly suggests that another Jew may have been
singled out by Judas Iscariot and crucified instead of Jesus. Two narratives of the
Passion included in the manuscript are conflicting. One comes close to the version in St.
John but differs in details. The other, vastly different from the account in the Gospels,
says a group of Jews complained to Herod that Jesus “corrupted and led astray our
brethren.”
Herod
assigned auxiliaries to go with them to arrest the man, but none could identify him. They
met Judas, who said he would kiss Jesus’s head and take his hand so that they should
recognise him. There was a crowd in Jerusalem because it was the third day of Passover.
Judas kissed a man’s head, took his hand and then melted into the crowd. The man was
arrested.
Brought
before Herod, the prisoner denied that he was Christ (in Arabic, Christ is Maseeh, which
also means Messiah) and trembled with fear. Herod said to the Jews: “I see you
attribute to him sayings that were not his and you wrong him. Is there a basin of water
for me to wash my hands of this man’s blood?”
Pilate
learnt that Jesus had been brought to Herod and asked that he be sent to him for a talk,
as he had heard that he was an intelligent man. In his meeting with Pilate, the prisoner
also denied that he was Christ and was too nervous for intelligent conversation. Pilate
accordingly sent him back to Herod saying: “There is no good in this man,”
meaning that no intelligent conversation could be had with him.
Herod
sent him to prison for the night and the following day Jews seized him and tortured him.
At the end of the day they whipped him, crucified him and pierced him with lances so that
he should die quickly. To the last the man did not perceive his crime and died crying:
“My God, why did you abandon me? My God, why did you forsake me?”
Judas
later asked the Jews what they had done with the man. On being told that he had been
crucified, he was amazed. They took him to see the body and he exclaimed: “This man
is innocent!” He abused the Jews, threw the money they had given him into their
faces, then went away and strangled himself. (“The Times” News Service,
quoted in The Star, Johannesburg, July 15, 1966).
(8)
As time went on, it became evident that the
Authorised Version was far from correct. Consequently a Revised Version was produced, and
those responsible for the new version stated that they had discovered 36,191 mistakes in
the old version. We now know that if a new version were published to-day, the alterations
that would have to be made would be equally striking. The Revised Version should have been
the death blow to the Church’s claim for the infallibility of the Bible, but this was
not so, and it has the support of many foolish people who quote texts to prove their
theories. These people read it without thinking. When they open their Bible, they close
their reason, yet, if they will consult the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BIBLICA, they will find that the
article in it dealing with the Resurrection points out that in the various gospel stories
of this event there are twenty-two contradictions of a most serious character. Why should anyone be asked to believe in an event recorded in
such a way, and why does the Church, on this evidence, claim Resurrection of Jesus to be
the fundamental truth of Christianity? (Arthur Findlay, “THE ROCK OF TRUTH”).
(9)
Of all the old world legends, the death and
resurrection of a virgin-born, or in some way divinely-born, Saviour was the most
widespread. (Vivian Phelips, “THE CHURCHES AND MODERN THOUGHT”).
(10)
Much of the teaching attributed to Jesus is considered by
many to be peculiar to him and him only, and it is supposed that he was the first to teach
love, gentleness, the love and fatherhood of God, and all the other virtues. This is quite
wrong, though this false way of regarding his teaching is encouraged by the Church, which
claims that he originated all these injunctions.
Long
before the time of Jesus there were teachers who taught everything that is attributed to
him, and there is nothing of value ascribed to him that was not said before his time.
“Return good for evil and overcome anger with love”, and “he that would
cherish me, let him go and cherish his sick comrade”, were sayings attributed to
Buddha. “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you” was said by
Confucius. “Whenever thou art in doubt as to whether an action is good or bad,
abstain from it” was said by Zoroaster a thousand years before Jesus.
“One
who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do
injustice, and it is not right to return an injury or to do any evil to any man, however
much we may have suffered from him” was said by Socrates four hundred and fifty years
before Jesus. “Let us not listen to those who
think that we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and
manly. Nothing is more praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as
clemency and readiness to forgive” was said by Cicero seventy years before Jesus.
“If a man strike thee and in striking thee drop his staff, pick it up and hand it to
him again” was ascribed to Krishna centuries before Jesus was born. (Arthur
Findlay, “THE ROCK OF TRUTH”).
(11) According to Mackey’s LEXICON OF
FREEMASONRY, freemasons taught the doctrines of the crucifixion, atonement and
resurrection long before the Christian era. (Arthur Findlay, “THE ROCK OF TRUTH”).
(12)
In respect both of doctrines and of rites, the cult of
Mithra appears to have presented many points of resemblance to Christianity. Taken all
together, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and
too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the Church in its hour of triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished and yet still
dangerous rivals. (Sir James Frazer,
“THE GOLDEN BOUGH”).
(13)
It was not, however, until the year 527 that it was
decided when Jesus was born, and various monks equipped with astrological learning were
called in to decide this important point. Ultimately the Emperor decided that 25th
December, the date of the birth of Mithra, be accepted as the date of the birth of Jesus.
Up to the year 680 no thought had been given to the symbol of Jesus crucified on the
cross. Prior to that date veneration was accorded to the Mithraic symbolic lamb, but from
this time onwards it was ordained that in place of the lamb the figure of a man attached
to a cross should be substituted.
(Arthur Findlay, “THE ROCK OF TRUTH”).
(14)
Canon Streeter, in his book “THE BUDDHA AND CHRIST”
published in 1932, quotes the following observation of Newman in support of his argument:
“A great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is in its
rudiments, or separate parts, to be found in heathen philosophies and religions.”
(15)
There has never been a religion in the annals of the world
with such a bloody record as Christianity. All the rest, including the traditional fierce
fights of the “chosen people” with their next of kin, the idolatrous tribes of
Israel, pale before the murderous fanaticism of the alleged followers of Christ. (H.P.
Blavatsky, “ISIS UNVEILED”).
(16)
Hypatia, daughter of Theon the mathematician, was a very
learned person. She was revered by all who knew her for her erudition, noble virtues and
character. Her youth, learning, and influence with Orestes, governor of Alexandria, proved
a source of intense hatred to Cyril, nephew of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria. This
bitter hatred led him to have her butchered in such a gruesome manner that it defies
description. Historians record that he ordered Peter the Reader to pound her body to a
jelly under the blows of the club, and that thereafter her body was to be cut to pieces and “the flesh
scraped from the bones” with oyster-shells and the rest of her cast into the fire, in
the name of Christ! This same Cyril was later CANONIZED as a Saint by the Church! (H.P.
Blavatsky, “ISIS UNVEILED”).
(17)
We beg the reader to bear in mind that it is the same
Cyril who was accused and proved guilty of having sold the gold and silver ornaments of
his Church, and spent the money. He pleaded guilty, but tried to excuse himself on the
ground that he had used the money for the poor, but could not give evidence of it. His
duplicity with Arius and his party is well-known. Thus one of the first Christian saints,
and the founder of the Trinity, appears on the pages of history as a murderer and a thief!
(H.P. Blavatsky, “ISIS UNVEILED”).
(18)
If Paganism had been destroyed, it was less through
annihilation than through absorption. Almost all that was Pagan was carried over to
survive under a Christian name. Deprived of demi-gods and heroes, men easily, and half
unconsciously, invested a local martyr (Jesus) with their attributes, and labelled the
local statue with his name, transferring to him the cult and mythology associated with the
Pagan deity. Before this century (Fourth) was over, the martyr-cult was universal, and a
beginning had been made of that interposition of a deified human being between God and man
which, on the one hand, had been the consequence of Arianism, and was on the other the
origin of so much that is typical of medieval piety and practice. Pagan festivals were
adopted and re-named, and Christmas Day, the ancient festival of the sun, was transformed
into the birthday of Jesus. (Rev. James H. Baxter, Professor of Ecclesiastical History
at St. Andrew’s University, in his book “CHRISTIANITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN
KNOWLEDGE”).
(19)
Protestantism is just as cruel a creed as Roman
Catholicism. The two who did as much as any to promote their acceptance and growth were
murderers. Constantine killed his own kith and kin, and Calvin murdered Servetus because
he disagreed with him. All branches of the Christian church were tyrannical when they had
the power, giving no mercy to anyone. That is the consequence of an “inspired”
Church and an “inspired” book. Whenever men think that they, and they only, have
divine authority, cruelty and intolerance follow. (Arthur Findlay, “THE ROCK OF
TRUTH”).
(20)
If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider
the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound
logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of Justice revolts against this Vicarious
Atonement. If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but
himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only
from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity – not
even the Supremest of the Supreme – can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not
be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellowman, kill, disturb the
equilibrium of society, and the natural order of things, and then – through
cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not – be forgiven by believing that the
spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt – this is preposterous! Can
the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be
pardoned? (H.P. Blavatsky, “ISIS UNVEILED”).
(21)
It is well to know that when Mohammedans were the friends
of Science, Christians were its enemies. How consoling it is to think that the friends of
Science, the men who educated their fellows, are now in hell, and that the men who
persecuted and killed philosophers are now in heaven! Such is the justice of God.
The
Christians of the Middle Ages, the men who were filled with the Holy Ghost, knew all about
the worlds beyond the grave, but nothing about the world in which they lived. They thought
the earth was flat, that it was about five thousand years old, and that the stars were
little sparkles made to beautify the night.
The
fact is that Christianity was in existence for fifteen hundred years before there was an
astronomer in Christendom. No follower of Christ knew the shape of the earth.
The
earth was demonstrated to be a globe, not by a pope or cardinal, not by a collection of
clergymen, not by the “called” or the “set apart”, but by a sailor.
Magellan left Seville, Spain, on August 10, 1519, sailed west, and kept sailing west, and
the ship reached Seville, the port it left, on September 7, 1522.
The
world had been circumnavigated. The earth was known to be round. There had been a dispute
between the Scriptures and a sailor. The fact took the sailor’s side.
In
1543 Copernicus published his book, ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES. He had some
idea of the vastness of the stars, of the astronomical spaces, of the insignificance of
this world.
Towards
the close of the 16th century, Bruno, one of the greatest men the world has
produced, gave his thoughts to his fellowmen. He taught the plurality of worlds. He was a
Pantheist, an honest man. He was imprisoned for many years, tried, convicted, and on
February 16, 1600, burned in Rome by men filled with the Holy Ghost – burned on the
spot where now his monument rises. Bruno was the noblest, the greatest of all the martyrs.
Yet Christians, followers of Christ, murdered this incomparable man. These Christians were
true to their creed. They believed that faith would be rewarded with eternal joy, and
doubt punished with eternal pain. They were logical. They were pious and pitiless, devout
and devilish, meek and malicious, religious and revengeful, Christ-like and cruel, loving
with their mouths but hating with their hearts.
In
1608 Lippersheim, a Hollander, so arranged lenses that objects were exaggerated. He
invented the telescope. He gave countless worlds to our eyes, and made us citizens of the
Universe.
In
1609, Kepler published his book, MOTIONS OF THE PLANET MARS. He, too, knew of the
attraction of gravitation, and that it acted in proportion to mass and distance. Kepler
announced his Three Laws. He found and mathematically expressed the relation of distance,
mass, and motion. Nothing greater has been accomplished by the human mind.
Astronomy
became a science, and Christianity a superstition.
Then
came Newton, Herschel, and Laplace. The astronomy of Joshua and Elijah faded from the
minds of intelligent men, and Jehovah became an ignorant tribal god.
In
1610, on the night of January 7, Galileo demonstrated the truth of the Copernican system,
and in 1632 published his work on THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD. What did the Church do? Galileo
was arrested, imprisoned, forced to fall upon his knees, put his hand on the Bible, and
recant. For ten years he was kept in prison – for ten years, until released by the
pity of Death. Then the Church, men filled with the Holy Ghost, denied his body burial in
consecrated ground. It was feared that his dust might corrupt the bodies of those who had
persecuted him! (Robert G. Ingersoll, “LECTURES AND ESSAYS”).
(22) The Chicago TIMES recently printed the hangman’s
record of the first half of the present year (1877) – a long and ghastly record of
murders and hangings. Nearly every one of these murderers received religious consolation,
and many announced that they had received God’s forgiveness through the blood of
Jesus, and were going that day to Heaven! Their conversion was effected in prison.
See how this ledger- balance of Christian Justice (!) stands: These red-handed murderers,
urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for
blood, slew their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent, or call on
Jesus to wash them clean with his blood. They, perhaps, died sinful, and, of course –
consistently with theological logic – met the reward of their greater or lesser
offences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by
sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes
to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been
prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained
eternal happiness? And how about the victim, and his or her family, relatives, dependants,
social relations – has Justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world
and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the “holy thief” of Calvary
and is forever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a prudent silence. (H.P.
Blavatsky, “ISIS UNVEILED”).
(23)
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir
Matthew Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for having caused children
to vomit crooked pins. She was also charged with having nursed devils. The learned judge
charged the intelligent (!) jury that there was no doubt as to the existence of witches;
that it was established by all history, and expressly taught by the Bible. The woman was
hanged and her body burned.
Sir
Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was to throw away the sacred Scriptures.
In my judgment, he was right.
John
Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches, and insisted upon it, years after all
laws upon the subject had been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember that John Wesley was the founder of the
Methodist Church.
In
New England a woman was charged with being a witch, and with having changed herself into a
fox. While in that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs. A committee of
three men, by order of the court, examined this woman. They removed her clothing
and searched for “witch spots”, that is to say, spots into which needles could
be thrust without giving her pain. They reported to the court that such spots were found.
She denied, however, that she ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the report of the
committee she was found guilty and executed. This was done by our Puritan fathers.
They
believed that animals were often taken possession of by devils, and that the killing of
the animals would destroy the devil. They actually tried, convicted and executed dumb
beasts!
At
Basle in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs
were used only in making witch ointment – this everybody knew. The rooster was
convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the public square. So a hog and six
pigs were tried for having killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted, but
the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth, were acquitted. As late as 1740, a
cow was tried and convicted of being possessed by a devil!
They
used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes and vermin. They used to go through the alleys,
streets, and fields, and warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In case they
disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and penalties.
For
two hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing the impossible crime of
witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and torturing innocent men, women and children.
Protestants were as active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were burned at
the stake in a period of three months. About one thousand were executed in one year in the
diocese of Como. At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany alone, the last
execution (in Wurtzburg) taking place as late as 1739. Witches were burned in Switzerland
as late as 1780.
Sir
William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, says: “To deny the
possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to
contradict the word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the
thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn born
testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws, which at
least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.”
In
Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is
said that “A witch is a woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons are
among men is abundantly plain from Scripture, and that they ought to be put to death.”
In
1716 a Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age, were hanged for selling their souls
to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of
soap.
In
England it has been estimated that at least thirty thousand were hanged and burned. The
last victim executed in Scotland perished in 1722. “She was innocent old woman, who
had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter,
lame of both hands and of feet – a circumstance attributed to the witch having been
used to transform her daughter into a pony and getting her shod by the devil.”
In
1692 nineteen persons were executed and one pressed to death in Salem,
Massachussetts, for the crime of witchcraft.
In
1836 the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the sea a woman reputed to be
a sorceress; and as the miserable creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was
pronounced guilty and beaten to death.
Take
from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable,
the impossible, the unknowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains. (Robert
G. Ingersoll, “LECTURES AND ESSAYS”).
(24)
“Anglican” deplores priestly incitement of
violent revolution against White Southern Africa and complains: “Surely all churches
should spread love, not hatred and violence?”
Now
where did he get the curious idea that churches should spread love? Hasn’t he been
reading the history books? Doesn’t he know of the Church Militant, of the recurrent
history of violence within Christendom? Gibbon wrote: “The Christians, in the course
of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than
they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.”
The
history of Christendom is hardly more than a recital of violence. Already in the 2nd
century the Pagan philosopher Celsus had observed that what chiefly characterized
Christians was their mutual hatreds. The sword of Constantine ushered in the triumph of
the Church over Paganism.
In
366, when Damasus was elected Bishop of Rome, the election was so hotly contested that at
the end of the day 137 corpses were counted. Charlemagne convinced the Pagan Saxons of the
gentleness of Christianity by having 4,500 beheaded in one day; the survivors were
immediately convinced!
This
butcher was canonized on December 28, 1164. During the 13th century massacres
of the Albigenses and Waldenses, the notorious command of Abbot Arnaud is still relevant:
“Kill all! the Lord will know His own.”
We
need not dwell on the inquisitions and their appalling cruelties. On St. Bartholomew’s
Day, 1572, 10,000 Protestant leaders in France were massacred in one blood bath which
saved France for Catholicism. After the horror Pope Gregory XIII had a Te Deum sung,
struck a gold medal and commemorated the victory of the Church in a fine (?) work of art.
Almost
without exception the priests of Germany enthusiastically embraced the cause of Hitler,
while the Vatican signed a pact with that devil. During the war, the official executioner
at the Jasenovac concentration camp was Franciscan Brother Miroslav Filipovitch.
And
these are simply a few of the highlights of Church history. If “Anglican” reads
further he will find much more.
It
is no use quoting pacifist verses from the New Testament as though this were all of
Christianity. Sure enough, there are Gandhi-like sentiments therein, if one wants to quote
selectively.
One
can just as selectively quote evidence of violence, and the New Testament is a massive
chronicle of cruelty and violence.
Why
all the exhortations to love one another and not to prosecute each other in the courts if
not because of the mutual hatreds which were born together with the Church? “But
those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay
them before me.” (Luke, 19:27). (Letter in “The Star”, Johannesburg,
15/11/1971, signed “FACTS”).
(25)
I saw that Christianity had developed from the cult of a
bloodthirsty being, much more like the Devil than the loving Deity whom I was asked to
worship. I saw that the documents on which Christianity was based were inconsistent. Some
statements in the New Testament must be untrue, so all of them might be. And I saw the
immense gaps, both in theory and practice, which separated the Churches of to-day from
those of the first century. At the same time I learned enough history to see that, as a
witness for Christianity, the Church was much weaker than the Bible. If I could not base
my religion on the documents ascribed to St. Luke or St. Paul, I certainly could not do so
on Churches which had been ruled by Henry VIII or Alexander VI. (Professor J.B.S.
Haldane, scientist, in “WHY I AM A RATIONALIST”).
(26)
“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I
tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house
divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the
son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter
against the mother; the mother in law against the daughter in law, and the daughter in law
against her mother in law.” (Luke, 12:51-53. See also Matthew, 10:34-35).
The
above verses are an irrefutable proof of the fact that Christianity does not exercise a
unifying, but a powerfully divisive, influence on its adherents. The following news item
confirms this fact:
NAIROBI.
A South African Black and a Northern Irish Protestant told the World Council of Churches
(WCC) Assembly here yesterday that the Christian Churches in their countries had divided
the people in many respects rather than to unite them. Dr. Manas Buthelezi, a leading
Black South African theologian, taking part in a debate on Church unity, told delegates
that from missionary days the Christian Churches had divided Africans: not only dividing
them into Christians and non-Christians, but into English Christians, German Lutherans and
African Baptists. He said that for the Blacks the quest for Church unity is basically a
matter of restoring religious integrity to a community whose religious wholeness was
disintegrated by European Christianity.
The
Rev. Gordon Gray, a Belfast Presbyterian Minister, said that his country made a mockery of
the Assembly theme, ‘JESUS CHRIST FREES AND UNITES’, because in Ireland “we
have proclaimed to the world a Christ who enslaves and divides. When the breakdown of our
society called urgently for a prophetic word from the Lord, we discovered that we could
not agree on what that word should be. So Christians have spoken with a divided voice
according to our separate traditions or together mouthed platitudes of peace.” Having
been driven to the verge of despair, the Irish had been taught bitter lessons which Rev.
Gray pleaded with delegates to learn from. (From:
“The Natal Mercury”, 28 November, 1975. Durban, South Africa).