Again, this is one of the questions that I wouldn't have seen as a particular objection to Christianity, and again (perhaps knowing he has picked a weak target), Strobel turns down the tone a notch. It is pretty clear that Christians have done objectionable (even genocidal) things in the name of their faith through history; but at the same time, I have little truck with those who claim that 'religion poisons everything'.
Yet once again, Woodbridge cannot make his case without some jaw-dropping claims. He comes close at times to trying to claim that Christians were not responsible for the atrocities listed (while at others coming equally close to saying that they repent for them, so there is no problem). He has enough sense not to quite go to either of those extremes, but let's look at what he does say - with particular emphasis on the outrageous.
CS Lewis Quotes: 0
Mentions of Former Atheists: 1 ('atheist-turned-Christian Patrick Glynn')
How Do I Know John D Woodbridge is Like Me? 'The fifty-nine-year-old, balding father of three was wearing a white fisherman's net sweater over a blue button-down shirt' - so not to be confused with the 'multicolored sweater over a blue button-down shirt' that Geisler was wearing. Perhaps they share shirts? Images of a fundagelical swap-shop are going through my head.
How Forceful is Strobel in Presenting the Questions? Very. 'Slamming the book shut with disgust, I looked hard at Woodbridge and asked in a voice laden with sarcasm...' (not 'leaking sarcasm' as with Geisler, of course. But that's about it for the purple prose in this chapter. We're down to 'I said', 'he said' for most of it, with the occasional 'This issue struck close to home for Woodbridge'.
Woodbridge begins with the argument that 'no true Christian' would do immoral things:
'I would make a clear line of demarcation between people who are part of 'the church' - people who are the sheep who hear the shepherd's voice and would be true Christians - and the institutional churches,' he said, emphasizing the plural of that last word.
'Now, obviously,' he added, 'there are many, many true Christians who are in the visible churches, but just because a person is part of a church doesn't necessarily mean he or she is a follower of Jesus. Some people are cultural Christians but not authentic Christians.'
(Emphasis in original.) Strobel objects to this on the grounds that it is 'a bit of twenty-first century revisionism', but of course what he really should have pointed out is that unless there is some clear way (other than their actions) of telling the 'authentic' Christians from the 'cultural' Christians, this is simply the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, circularly claiming that 'no True Christian' would commit atrocities and backing that up by claiming that anyone who commits atrocities is 'no True Christian'. This fallacy however, will recur again and again as a way of avoiding difficult questions of motivation and responsibility.
So now we get down to some specific misdeeds by the church(es).
The Crusades
Woodbridge does not hesitate to roll out the 'no true Christians' line. The Crusades were done in Jesus' name, ordered by the Pope and motivated by the promise of Salvation - but were not in line with Jesus' teachings (a dubious claim - I would imagine the episode with the moneylenders in the Temple would have been pressed into service to justify expelling infidels from the 'Holy Land' - and indeed the Temple Mount - not to mention various Old Testament atrocities).
So Woodbridge's defence here is not that modern Christians abhor the Crusades - it's that the Crusades weren't really Christian at all.
The InquisitionHere Woodbridge uses more of what will become his standard excuses: the Inquisition was not representative of True Christians. Indeed, maybe some True Christians died! And anyway, 'For much of their existence, many Christian churches have been in a minority situation and therefore not even in a position to persecute anyone.' And 'millions of Christians themselves have been victims of brutal persecution'.
I'm not quite sure how 'Christians only persecute when they are able to' is supposed to be a defence, but hey.
The Salem Witch TrialsOnce again, the witch-hunters are no True Christians, of course. But's let's not go overboard here. Woodbridge tells us that witches do exist, so we cannot assume that the victims were unfairly accused (he doesn't call them 'victims', naturally). Instead we get a lot of feeble excuses about 'monocausationism' and the idea that there may have been other factors at work.
The final, triumphant flourish is that the trials were eventually ended - by a True Christian!
Again, saying that the widely held superstitions of past times cannot be laid at the door of modern Christians is one thing; to continue to promote those superstitions in the modern world is quite another - especially when Woodbridge is supposed to be distancing himself from the consequences of those beliefs!
Exploitation by MissionariesOnce again we get the No True Christians argument. Then there is this:
'It has to be pointed out that sometimes the critics of missionaries have an almost Rousseauist idealism that native peoples [had] none of the demonic or negative spirits going on in their culture.'
Seriously? Anyone who thinks that primitive cultures are not 'demonic' is patronising them?
I am also disappointed that Woodbridge doesn't see fit to mention my own pet bugbear, the slave plantation at Codrington run by the Church of England (via its subsidiary, the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts), or the active promotion slavery as a means of getting missionaries to otherwise isolated pagan African tribes.
Anti-SemitismWoodbridge's first defense here is that during the Middle Ages there were false rumours (such as the Blood Libel) being spread about Jews. He doesn't bother to mention who was spreading them, apparently not thinking too much of the critical facilities of his audience. Hitler, of course, was No True Christian - but even Woodbridge cannot apply this 'logic' to Martin Luther. The best he can do for Luther is argue that Luther might have turned to anti-Semitism later in life. So that's fine, then.
Finally, what better way to defend Christianity than to attack atheism? So we are told that atheism (as promoted by Hitler, who we just got through hearing was a non-orthodox Christian) was 'directly responsible' for 100 million deaths during the 20th Century. This is because there is a 'lack of framework in atheism for making moral decisions'. This is of course deeply dubious - it would seem that political extremism, along with the enabling factor of mechanisation, was the real culprit here. And just eleven years after Strobel was writing, we are already seeing religious genocides and massacres around the world that make the 'Christian America versus Commie atheists' narrative hard to sustain.
Woodbridge has to finish with an OTT flourish. So he feels the need to contrast this with the Christian contribution to world happiness, which consists of: the death of Jesus, some real stuff about hospitals and schools, and the Holy Spirit. But that's not enough - can you think how ghastly things would be if the untrue parts of Woodbridge's belief system were untrue?
'Can you imagine what the world would be like if the Holy Spirit were withdrawn? I mean, talk about your local horror show! It's bad enough the way things are now, but if the restraining power of the Holy Spirit were not here, then the horrible side of life would emerge even more graphically than it already does.'
Finally, we are told that Christianity says we are all made in God's image (we are not reminded that it also tells us we are all 'born in sin' and 'nobody is truly innocent', as per Geisler) and that religion gave us science and literacy.
I have been largely skipping Strobel's somewhat rhetorical 'Deliberations' section of 'questions for reflection or group study' at the end of each chapter, but here he asks 'On balance, have the contributions of atheism been positive or negative for humankind?' A Monty Python sketch immediately flashes into my mind: What have atheists ever done for us? Nothing! Well, aside from the Enlightenment. All right, two things, the Enlightenment and secular democracy. And modern medicine. Three things! [...] Other than the Enlightenment, religious freedom, secular democracy, modern medicine, the eradication of smallpox, Humanism, science and human rights, what has atheism ever done for us? NOTHING!
In general, I agree with Woodbridge's points; the Christian church is not universally bad, or malicious. As long as no-one is claiming that it is a divenely-inspired, morally perfect organisation, these occasional abuses (however appalling) are sadly not exceptional in a group of human institutions. The only truly worrying aspect is that Woodbridge will not accept that the basis for things like the witch trials was fundamentally mistaken. In the modern world, he still believes that there are such things as witches and demons, and refuses to accept that that believing other cultures are 'demonic' was at the heart of the persecutions.
I would also have liked Woodbridge to deal with some of the problems with the beliefs of what he calls 'True Christian' - many of them can be homophobic, for instance. Will Christians of future generations be struggling to account for this before equally dubious audiences? I like to think so.
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