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The Inquisition is not over. Faith continues to kill and torment. In Africa, for instance, witch hunts are causing mothers to turn against their children. Even babies are being brutalised and murdered. But this is not driven by some Dark Continent cult: this is fundamentalist Christianity at work.
Professor Richard Dawkins’ appearance on the BBC’s Have Your Say programme prompted Father Jonathan Morris, Fox News’ religious attack poodle, to dredge up the old and insupportable myth that Stalin and Hitler killed millions in the name of atheism. (Catholic priests and Fox News presenters are, of course, both accustomed to spouting insupportable myths.)
This is a standard and intellectually dishonest knee-jerk response to an inescapable truth: that throughout its history, Christianity has been responsible for widespread death and misery. The Inquisition comes immediately to mind. That said, today we most frequently associate religiously inspired murder and violence with Islam. Aside from Islamic-inspired terrorism, brutal, so-called ‘honour’ killings are shamefully frequent in places like Pakistan and even among Islamic communities in more enlightened countries, such as the UK. A recent report in The Guardian highlighted the murders and burnings of women in Iraq, now that Islam can use the chaos of that benighted country to reassert its atavistic influence.
But Christianity has not finished killing.
In Nigeria, according to a report in The Observer, Christian fundamentalists, operating in a region where church-going and belief are almost universal, are exploiting the fear of witchcraft. And those being named as witches are children. The accused are abandoned, beaten, mutilated or even murdered – unless their parents can pull together the money to pay the churches for exorcisms. In part, this is a grotesque and chillingly callous scam. But it is religious belief that provides its framework, its language, its control over people’s minds and hearts, its power.
The fundamentalists are not alone in disseminating fear and causing misery in Africa. The lies spread by Roman Catholic missionaries – that condoms carry AIDS – have lead to countless unnecessary deaths. The church is complicit in murder motivated by their narrow, propagandist agenda.
And it’s not just in Africa. Fundamentalist-inspired abstinence programmes in the US, for example, inevitably result in unwanted teenage pregnancies and (because condom use is stigmatised) the increased risk of AIDS infection. Why? Because, like all the schemes of totalitarian regimes, such programmes either fail to account for, or are actively contemptuous of, genuine human nature. In addition to the life-changing, and even life-threatening, consequences, those young people who have ‘failed’ by becoming pregnant or infected have the additional burden of guilt heaped on them by their faith.
It’s a defining characteristic of totalitarian regimes – whether it’s Stalinism, Christian fundamentalism, Islam, Nazism or the latter’s erstwhile supporter, the Roman Catholic church – that the dogma and strictures of the regime are not just more important than human nature and humanity, but are deliberately in conflict with them. Combine this with rules that are ill-defined, constantly shifting and which are understood only by an elite (the Politburo, the priesthood) and you have an environment in which it is virtually impossible not to transgress. And when you do, they have you.
When crippled by fear of everlasting torture, normally sensible and intelligent people can be forced to act against their own best interest. Totalitarian regimes demand this self-sacrificing conformity as proof of your devotion. They take any lapse as a sign of your unworthiness. But the rules being broken are arbitrary or formed on irrational, often bizarre, beliefs. Nevertheless, the guilt or fear instilled in you ensures you remain in your place, under control. It may even kill you – or your child.
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