Counting Bodies, Losing Credibility: Volf’s Thesis Refuted

          Some essays collapse under the weight of their own errors and exaggerations. Miroslav Volf’s piece on Christian violence is one of them. Here is the original text for those interested in reading the whole piece for themselves: 

          https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-04/body-counts

          Miroslav Volf’s essay on Christian violence rests on a foundation of shaky statistics and sweeping generalizations. His reliance on Naveed Sheikh’s Body Count is particularly troubling. The classification of Nazi genocides as “Christian” is not only historically inaccurate but methodologically unsound. Nazism was explicitly hostile to Christianity, suppressing churches, persecuting clergy, and promoting “Positive Christianity” as a distorted substitute stripped of biblical ethics. Its ideology replaced Christian moral teaching with racial paganism and pseudo-scientific mythology. To lump Nazi atrocities into the Christian ledger is as misguided as calling Stalin’s purges “Christian” simply because they occurred in lands once shaped by Christian culture.

          Equally problematic is Volf’s framing of modern conflicts as “Christian wars.” The United States, though majority-Christian, is a secular republic whose wars are driven by geopolitics, not theology. To describe Iraq or Afghanistan as “Christian wars” is a distortion that erases the complex motives of statecraft and reduces them to religious caricature. Coalition forces include atheists, Jews, Muslims, and others, yet Volf insists on branding these conflicts as Christian. This rhetorical sleight of hand ignores the fact that the Christian just war tradition has often condemned such interventions, showing that Christianity provides moral tools to critique violence rather than justify it. To blame Christianity for wars waged by secular states is to confuse cultural demographics with theological causation.

          Volf’s historical selectivity further undermines his credibility. He highlights Christian violence while downplaying Islamic conquests, Mongol massacres, and the genocides of atheistic regimes in the twentieth century. The Mongols alone killed tens of millions, dwarfing many European conflicts, yet their atrocities are not attributed to “Mongol religion.” Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot together murdered more than any Christian empire, yet their crimes are conveniently excluded from the comparison. This cherry-picking of evidence creates a distorted narrative in which Christianity appears uniquely violent, when in fact violence is a universal human phenomenon. Historians typically classify violence by political, ethnic, or ideological causes, not by religion alone. To single out Christianity is not historical analysis but ideological targeting.

          His romanticized contrast between Nicholas of Cusa’s dialogue and Piccolomini’s crusade is another example of oversimplification. Volf claims dialogue “won” and explains Western ascendency, but this is historical fantasy. Western dominance was built on a complex interplay of Renaissance humanism, scientific revolution, industrialization, capitalism, and military power. Dialogue with Islam did not prevent centuries of conflict, from the sieges of Vienna to Barbary piracy. To suggest that “ideas, not guns” explain Western success is to ignore the obvious role of naval supremacy, industrialized warfare, and colonial expansion. Dialogue mattered, but it was hardly the decisive factor.

          Finally, the essay’s one-sidedness is glaring. Volf emphasizes Christian failures while ignoring Christianity’s transformative contributions. The abolition of slavery, the rise of universities, the nurturing of science, and the birth of humanitarian movements were all profoundly shaped by Christian thought and activism. Moreover, the Christian just war tradition has influenced secular international law, including the principles behind the Geneva Conventions. To present Christianity only as a source of violence is not balance but caricature. It is a polemical indictment masquerading as historical reflection.