Which religion has proved the most violent and destructive in US history? The answer should not be a surprise.
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RELIGION DISPATCHES
GARY LADERMAN
What is the most dangerous religion in America?
A slightly loaded question that no one in their right mind would attempt to answer, no? But it is a question at the heart of the debates surrounding mosques and Muslims in America today. The opposition against building an Islamic center near the site where the World Trade Center once stood, and the growing outcry around the country about the creation of other Muslim places to gather and worship, suggests that many Americans are not afraid to answer the question without hesitation.
In the post-9/11 world we now live in, Islam poses the greatest threat to American lives and security; a nefarious, fanatical religion that can bring death and destruction to innocent people, that disregards our laws and codes of conduct, and that is prone to acts of violence beyond the pale of civilized society. At least this is the message we are hearing more and more frequently in the news, especially in the wake of President Obama's recent statements; views espoused by religious and political leaders as well as average American citizens fearful of Muslims abroad and at home.Hatred of Infidels, the Subhuman, the Different
But perhaps it might be worthwhile to take a step back from all the
heated rhetoric and passionate emotions fueling the fires of hatred and
distrust in the current moment and take a brief look into the past. In
the pre-9/11 world and backward through time to the founding of this
great country, a historical perspective leads to a very different
picture about religious violence and what religion poses the greatest
threat to American lives. Anyone who takes the time to research and
reflect on the nation's past might be led to believe that Christianity
has been the most dangerous and violent religion in the United States:
that it is a religion inspiring bloodshed and discrimination, hatred
and terrorist acts against people understood to be infidels, subhuman,
or simply different.
"Christianity" of course is a meaningless label, as I've written before. Like "Islam" it is too broad a category to cover the radically diverse practices, beliefs, and interpretive communities associated with it. So let me be even bolder and say that Protestants, and even more specifically, Anglo-European Protestant men, would appear to be the most dangerous religious individuals in American history. Without question white Protestant males from the colonial era to the dawn of the twenty-first century have inflicted more pain, more suffering, more terror than any other individuals in this so-called "city on a hill."
This historical perspective is placed in sharp relief by a new book that coincidentally arrived in the mail as I was preparing to write this piece last week. Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History, edited by John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, is chock full of fascinating documentation pointing to this interpretation, providing evidence that throughout US history the perpetrators of religiously-inspired violence have usually been white Protestant men fearful of non-Protestant communities. It's an easy case to make with or without the book when commonly known events from historical eras are brought to mind:
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