I would say that Christian nations are not a full century removed from this kind of behavior. More to the point, I would argue that nominally Christian nations have become less savage as they have become more secular. Our own nation provides numerous examples. I mentioned slavery, but there is also the forced relocation of the Cherokees, to cite just two examples.
Ah, ha; a grudging admission that city populations are no longer wiped out to the last man, woman, and child by Christian armies, even though such practices are “not a full century removed from this kind of behavior.” I guess any period of time less than a century doesn’t count. Is that the idea?
The original motive in declaring an open city was to spare its inhabitants. The Twentieth Century could be called the century of open cities, because so many were declared open to spare them a vicious bombing for no better purpose than to spread terror. Sometimes the declaration was honored, sometimes not. But I know of no instance in the Twentieth Century when a city’s denizens were wiped out, man, woman, and child by a Christian army because they (the citizens) had offered more than mere token resistance, or for any other reason. Not Warsaw, not Guernica, not even Bremen or Hamburg. I guess you need to move that bar back another century.
”I would argue that nominally Christian nations have become less savage as they have become more secular.”
I can think of no more secular a nation that was formerly “nominally Christian” than the old Soviet Empire, and I must say that it had a seventy-two year history of blood and horror that would be difficult to match in the annals of . . . well . . . blood and horror. And it is beginning to appear that its present day successor is bent on continuing in the same tradition, although it has quite some ways to go to rival its predecessor in savagery. It would appear that East Berlin and the Rumania of Ceauşescu did also aspire to emulate their patron state, the Soviet Union, albeit on a smaller stage, before turning to a more tolerant policy towards Christians following the Soviet collapse. And it would appear that Poland, the most Christian of the Eastern European countries continues to also be the most admirable. And, finally, it would appear that it is Belarus and The Ukraine that remain the more secular and the most oppressive, following the example of Russia.
But, there is some peril in turning to the comfort of secularity. As I’ve observed before, there is a tendency to forget the last moment and to ignore the next moment when framing an argument for the present moment.
”Our own nation provides numerous examples. I mentioned slavery, but there is also the forced relocation of the Cherokees, to cite just two examples.”
I take it, then, that you reject the thesis that America is purely a secular nation and that it enjoys no Christian influence, past or present, in its policies and attitudes. That’s the problem. How are you going to work both sides of this street? That Christianity has had no influence on America, but that it is to blame for every bad thing that we Americans have ever done. But, I have confidence that you can get the job done; that you can turn yourself inside out, denying that Christians have had any influence on America out of one side of your mouth, and blaming Christians for every bad thing that America has ever done out of the other side of your mouth.