Question
What about the Crusades, slavery, and abuse in the church?
The record is mixed because the church is full of sinners, and some chapters are straight rebellion against Jesus. The gospel judges those chapters. It is not judged by being identical with them.
Do not open with a statistic about who caused more wars. The man in front of you is often naming a wound: a crusade preached with a cross on the banner, a slave ship with a chaplain, a child hurt by someone who stood in a pulpit. Those are not internet points. If you defend them, you are not doing apologetics. You are doing public relations for sin.
Distinguish the Lord from the disciple who disobeys Him. Jesus forbids the sword as the tool of the kingdom, washes feet, and says the greatest is the servant. A medieval pope calling a war, a planter quoting Philemon, a predator using trust — none of that is an application of the Sermon on the Mount. It is a contradiction of it. The faith gave the victims the moral language (‘this is evil’) that a purely tribal world does not have. Movements that ended the British trade and confronted abuse were driven, in large part, by people who said Jesus meant what He said.
The honest sentence has two halves. Christians have done real evil in the name of Christ, and Christ is not the author of that evil. A tree is known by its fruit. Judas is not an argument against the empty tomb. He is an argument for watching the church, disciplining it, and refusing to call darkness light. Repentance is part of the case, not a footnote after the case.
See it
Slide decks that belong with this page.
Talking points
- Name the sin. Crusade, chattel slavery, and abuse are not ‘complicated’ when they prey.
- Measure the church by Jesus, not Jesus by the worst man in a collar.
- The same book that hypocrites quote is the book that condemns them.
- Abolition and reform were fueled by the gospel, not by unbelief alone.
Say this
If a man used Christ’s name to crush someone, he was wrong, and I will say so before I say anything else. Jesus did not swing that sword or hide that predator. The reason I still trust Him is that He told the truth about men like that — and then died for sinners, including the ones who shame His church.
If they say…
“Religion is the common factor. Drop it and the bodies stop.”
The twentieth century ran the experiment without the cross and filled graves anyway. The common factor is the human heart. A worldview can restrain it or bless it. The question is which Lord you are actually following when the restraint fails.
“Then your church should be cleaner than it is. It isn’t.”
Agreed. A dirty church is a reason to repent and to discipline, not a reason to call the resurrection a lie. Hypocrisy hurts because the standard is real. If the standard were fake, the failures would not indict anyone.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom… I never knew you.”
“If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
“Do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”