Religious Persecution Quotes

“It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches — and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban. Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It’s still going on.”
― Philip Pullman

“If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.

[Letter to the London Packet, 3 June 1772]”
― ben franklin, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Franklin

“The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws....

These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“The world has always teemed with a wide variety of spiritual thought and many differing journeys of the heart. But too often the world has used these differences as a weapon. How much agony has been wrought by what should be a thing of beauty - religious passion?”
― Steve Goodier

“If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.

In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“Humans simply love inventing superstitions and then getting killed because of them. Or better yet, using them as an excuse to kill other humans.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Vespertine

“How like God's love yours has been to me- so wise, so generous, and so unsparing!" exclaimed Pancratius. "Promise me one thing more- that is, that you will stay near to me to the end, and carry my last legacy to my mother.”
― Cardinal Wiseman

“How in any way does EQUALITY with other people equate to 'religious persecution'? Does the survival of a religion depend on the vilification and desecration of the humanity of others?”
― Christina Engela, Dead Man's Hammer

“Martyrdoms would rarely lead to conversions because they were themselves relatively rare.

The vast majority of pagans—including the millions who eventually converted—never saw a martyrdom, as recent scholarship has shown.

As the most prolific and one of the best-traveled authors of the first three Christian centuries, Origen of Alexandria, stated in no uncertain terms: “Only a small number of people, easily counted, have died for the Christian religion.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World

“They were a luckless lot too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every man Jack of 'em given twenty-five years.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Dogma”, spelled backwards, is “Am God”. When a person allows someone else’s dogma to become their God, they have things backwards.”
― Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness

“Some scholars have argued that ancient religion was principally concerned with averting the gods’ anger.

But this divine anger was aroused almost always because of neglect.

he gods—or at least one ofthem—had not been respected and worshiped properly or sufficiently.

That was the main logic behind Roman persecution of the Christians.

Because this group of miscreants refused to worship the gods, there was hell to pay.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World

“But the punishments!

Imperial bureaucrats who accepted bribes were to have their hands cut off (Theodosian Code 1.16.7);

ineffective guardians of girls who had been seduced were to have molten lead poured down their throats (Theodosian Code 9.24.1);

tax collectors who treated women tax delinquents rudely were to “be done to death with exquisite tortures”;

anyone who served as an informer was to be strangled and “the tongue of envy cut off from its roots and plucked out” (Theodosian Code 10.10.2);

slaves who informed on their masters were to be crucified (Theodosian Code 9.5.1.1);

How is one to account for such judicial cruelty from a Christian emperor?

MacMullen suggests that by the fourth century Christianity was revealing an increasingly cruel streak. He notes in particular the heightened popularity of the Christian literature... in recounting in graphic detail the torments of hell for those who refuse to do God’s will.

Possibly what applied to heaven applied to earth: If this is how God handles sin, then who are we to act differently?

Religious beliefs may have made judicial punishment specially aggressive, harsh, and ruthless.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World

“Constantius II ordered pagan temples closed and sacrificial practices stopped.

We have already seen a law issued in 341 CE: “Superstition shall cease; the madness of sacrifices shall be abolished... [anyone]... who performs sacrifices . . . shall suffer the infliction of a suitable punishment and the effect of an immediate sentence” (Theodosian Code 16.10.2).

In a law of 346 CE, the penalties are specified: Temples “in all places and in all cities” are to be “immediately closed” and “access to them forbidden.” No one may perform a sacrifice. Anyone who does “shall be struck down with the avenging sword” and his “property shall be confiscated.” Any governor who fails to avenge such crimes “shall be similarly punished” (Theodosian Code 16.10.4);

And perhaps more drastically, later in Constantius’s reign, in 356: “Anyone who sacrifices or worships images shall be executed” (Theodosian Code 16.10.6).”
― Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World

“If the Catholic Church was naturally inclined to persecute, she would persecute in all cases alike, when there was no interest to serve but her own. Instead of adapting her conduct to circumstances, and accepting theories according to the character of the time, she would have developed a consistent theory out of her own system, and would have been most severe when she was most free from external influences, from political objects, or from temporary or national prejudices. She would have imposed acommon rule of conduct in different countries in different ages, instead of submitting to the exigencies of each time and place. Her own rule of conduct never changed. She treats it as a crime to abandon her, not to be outside her. An apostate who returns to her has a penance for his apostasy; a heretic who is converted has no penance for his heresy. Severity against those who are outside her fold is against her principles. Persecution is contrary to the nature of a universal Church; it is peculiar to the national Churches.

While the Catholic Church by her progress in freedom naturally tends to push the development of States beyond the sphere where they are still obliged to preserve the unity of religion, and whilst she extends over States in all degrees of advancement, Protestantism, which belongs to a particular age and state of society, which makes no claim to universality, and which is dependent on political connection, regards persecution, not as an accident, but as a duty.

Wherever Protestantism prevailed, intolerance became a principle of State, and was proclaimed in theory even where the Protestants were in a minority, and where the theory supplied a weapon against themselves. The Reformation made it a general law, not only against Catholics by way of self-defence or retaliation, but against all who dissented from the reformed doctrines, whom it treated, not as enemies, but as criminals,—against the Protestant sects, against Socinians, and against atheists. It was not a right, but a duty; its object was to avenge God, not to preserve order. There is no analogy between the persecution which preserves and the persecution which attacks; or between intolerance as a religious duty, and intolerance as a necessity of State. The Reformers unanimously declared persecution to be incumbent on the civil power; and the Protestant Governments universally acted upon their injunctions, until scepticism escaped the infliction of penal laws and condemned their spirit.”
― John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays

“But Protestant establishments, according to our author’s definition, which applies to them, and to them alone, rest on the opposite theory, that the will of the State is independent of the condition of the community; and that it may, or indeed must, impose on the nation a faith which may be that of a minority, and which in some cases has been that of the sovereign alone. According to the Catholic view, government may preserve in its laws, and by its authority, the religion of the community; according to the Protestant view it may be bound to change it. A government which has power to change the faith of its subjects must be absolute in other things; so that one theory is as favourable to tyranny as the other is opposed to it. The safeguard of the Catholic system of Church and State, as contrasted with the Protestant, was that very authority which the Holy See used to prevent the sovereign from changing the religion of the people, by deposing him if he departed from it himself. In most Catholic countries the Church preceded the State; some she assisted to form; all she contributed to sustain. Throughout Western Europe Catholicism was the religion of the inhabitants before the new monarchies were founded. The invaders, who became the dominant race and the architects of a new system of States, were sooner or later compelled, in order to preserve their dominion, to abandon their pagan or their Arian religion, and to adopt the common faith of the immense majority of the people. The connection between Church and State was therefore a natural, not an arbitrary, institution; the result of the submission of the Government to popular influence, and the means by which that influence was perpetuated. No Catholic Government ever imposed a Catholic establishment on a Protestant community, or destroyed a Protestant establishment. Even the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the greatest wrong ever inflicted on the Protestant subjects of a Catholic State, will bear no comparison with the establishment of the religion of a minority. It is a far greater wrong than the most severe persecution, because persecution may be necessary for the preservation of an existing society, as in the case of the early Christians and of the Albigenses; but a State Church can only be justified by the acquiescence of the nation. In every other case it is a great social danger, and is inseparable from political oppression.”
― John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays

“If you don't stand up to nationalist extremism now, every single nation that has been secular for a short while, such as America, Turkey, India and so on, will again turn back into the grovel-pit of bigotry, sectarianism, persecution and hate crime.”
― Abhijit Naskar, I Vicdansaadet Speaking: No Rest Till The World is Lifted

“Although Pakistan is an ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse nation, the role of religion in the society is being ignored altogether.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“I am a victim of religious persecution, and this tragedy has changed my life forever. Anything I write about freedom of religion is therefore colored by what has happened to me—a nightmare that never ends.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“As I look at the upsurge in horrific atrocities against faith and ethnic communities, the pandemic of forced conversion and marriages, and see the widespread persecution continuing to rise, it feels like several storms are on their way to hitting us.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“In reality, minorities are chewing over several levels of trauma at the same time: personal, social and national. This also means the burden of social trauma is carried from generation to generation with tears and rage.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“Religious beliefs have been the greatest cause of persecution in all of history.”
― Priscilla Vogelbacher, Hallowed Be Thy Name