Why Does Christianity Spawn Evil Dictators?

[Diogenes]

Hitler claimed to be Christian. Stalin was a Christian acolyte. Trump, the 'Grab 'em by the _ _ _ _ _ President who is revered by fundamentalists, and now Vladimir Putin engulfs the world in war, misery, and genocide while championing his Christian faith. How does the faith of Jesus of Nazareth spawn such actors? https://religiondispatches.org/is-putin ... questions/

[Diogenes]

Hitler claimed to be Christian. Stalin was a Christian acolyte. Trump, the 'Grab 'em by the _ _ _ _ _ President who is revered by fundamentalists, and now Vladimir Putin engulfs the world in war, misery, and genocide while championing his Christian faith. How does the faith of Jesus of Nazareth spawn such actors? https://religiondispatches.org/is-putin ... questions/

Hitler was famously anti-Christian. Alan Bullock, in his book Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, wrote, “Hitler had been brought up a Catholic and was impressed by the organization and power of the Church… [but] to its teaching he showed only the sharpest hostility… he detested Christianity’s ethics in particular.”

Hitler was never a practicing Christian as an adult. While he made positive statements about Christianity early in his political career, once in power he became distinctly anti-Christian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious ... ly%20lived.



Stalin was, if anything, even more opposed to Christianity than Hitler was. He actively persecuted Christians. His opposition was not limited to Christianity. The Russian Orthodox Church was the largest religious group in Russia at the time so they felt the brunt of his attack, but he opposed all religion. Stalin had a "five year plan" to spread atheism throughout the country. He stripped churches of their land and had religious people arrested or put to death in the name of atheism.

According to Stalin the new “socialist man” was an atheist, free of all religious chains. Throughout the 1930’s Stalin ordered the imprisonment or execution of thousands of religious leaders with the stated goal of eliminated the concept of God from the USSR.

https://www.history.com/news/joseph-sta ... heism-ussr


Every American President has claimed to be a Christian. Of the past three Presidents, Joe Biden has been in the only one to regularly attend church while in office.

While I'm in agreement on Stalin, Hitler was not as anti Christian as you suggest. The article you linked says:

"In a speech in the early years of his rule, Hitler declared himself “Not a Catholic, but a German Christian”.[16][17][18][19][20] The German Christians were a Protestant group that supported Nazi Ideology.[21] Hitler and the Nazi party also promoted “nondenominational”[22] Positive Christianity,[23] a movement which rejected most traditional Christian doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus, as well as Jewish elements such as the Old Testament.[24][25] In one widely quoted remark, he described Jesus as an "Aryan fighter" who struggled against "the power and pretensions of the corrupt Pharisees"[26] and Jewish materialism.[27] Hitler demonstrated preference for Protestantism[28] and Lutheranism[29] as he stated "Through me the Evangelical Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England"[30] and “The great reformer”[31] “Luther has the merit of rising against the Pope and the Catholic Church.”[

He declared himself to be on the other hand, hostile to atheism. I have seen this discussed before and those who want to make Hitler an atheist end up in denial, claiming that when he denounced atheism and swore he'd stamp it out, he was lying.

Yes Hitler claimed to be Christian. There many today who make such claims, including white supremacists. The Bible has famously been used to support racism and slavery, both practiced by ancient Jews according to the Bible, along with God Authorized genocide and infanticide. Abraham himself was told by God to kill his only son.

Part of the problem is the employment by some of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Another problem is the questioning of a "Christian's" sincerity, a judgment Jesus preached against (although he certainly engaged in judging others).

There appears to be a contradiction between Christians saying "Well, no TRUE Christian would...," while at the same time declaring all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

[Tcg]

Hitler was never a practicing Christian as an adult. While he made positive statements about Christianity early in his political career, once in power he became distinctly anti-Christian.

Adolf Hitler: As a Christian, I Feel that My Lord and Savior was a Fighter

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. ...Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. ...
- Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922

https://www.learnreligions.com/adolf-hi ... tes-248190

Tcg

[brunumb]

I feel that Christianity does not spawn these evil leaders as much as it enables them. Be meek and mild, turn the other cheek, accept your miserable lot for your rewards await in heaven, the evil will get their just deserts, etc, all allow the believing populace to be manipulated and remain compliant to the will of the leader. Would those tyrants have achieved their status if the people, right from the beginning, forcefully rejected them before they got a foothold? I wonder.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hitler claimed to be Christian. Stalin was a Christian acolyte. Trump, the 'Grab 'em by the _ _ _ _ _ President who is revered by fundamentalists, and now Vladimir Putin engulfs the world in war, misery, and genocide while championing his Christian faith. How does the faith of Jesus of Nazareth spawn such actors? https://religiondispatches.org/is-putin ... questions/

God creates evil dictators, God creates evil and good, have you never read this even in your own Bible??? Well its there plainly written, many Christians won't agree, they won't believe God, they will "interpret" what is written and rewrite it.

[William]

Hitler claimed to be Christian. Stalin was a Christian acolyte. Trump, the 'Grab 'em by the _ _ _ _ _ President who is revered by fundamentalists, and now Vladimir Putin engulfs the world in war, misery, and genocide while championing his Christian faith. How does the faith of Jesus of Nazareth spawn such actors? https://religiondispatches.org/is-putin ... questions/

Maybe it is because these ones you have named are non-theists pretending to be theists, in order to use that pretense as a means of gaining support for their agendas, which as you point out, do not appear to align with "the faith of Jesus of Nazareth"

It is a highly plausible answer to your question because we also have example of non-theists behaving in like-manner as those you have named.

Also, we can see that materialist-based science is non-theistic and has become the number one reason why we are now entering an extinction event situation.

We know for certain that if it were not for these non-theist/pretend theists having done what they did, there probable wouldn't be any such thing as 'space junk', let alone all the pollution etc which can be directly sourced in the science of exactness which materialism brought into the world.

So if one is looking for somewhere to hang the blame...

[William]

I feel that Christianity does not spawn these evil leaders as much as it enables them. Be meek and mild, turn the other cheek, accept your miserable lot for your rewards await in heaven, the evil will get their just deserts, etc, all allow the believing populace to be manipulated and remain compliant to the will of the leader. Would those tyrants have achieved their status if the people, right from the beginning, forcefully rejected them before they got a foothold? I wonder.

Re the case of the materialist agenda, at what point do you think 'right from the beginning' would have been re the optimum moment to have rejected said agenda?

[Tcg]

Maybe it is because these ones you have named are non-theists pretending to be theists, in order to use that pretense as a means of gaining support for their agendas, which as you point out, do not appear to align with "the faith of Jesus of Nazareth"

Given that the "faith of Jesus of Nazareth" includes this:

Matthew 13:40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

It's hard to comprehend how these dictators' actions aren't in line with the future destruction Jesus will reportedly bring.


Tcg

[William]

Maybe it is because these ones you have named are non-theists pretending to be theists, in order to use that pretense as a means of gaining support for their agendas, which as you point out, do not appear to align with "the faith of Jesus of Nazareth"

Given that the "faith of Jesus of Nazareth" includes this:

Matthew 13:40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

It's hard to comprehend how these dictators' actions aren't in line with the future destruction Jesus will reportedly bring.


Tcg

Then the question is answered. Christianity and the faith of Jesus of Nazareth spawn such actors.
It is just another materialist invention...

[Athetotheist]

Christianity in particular----and theism in general----certainly don't hold a monopoly on spawning evil dictators.

That being said......

Christianity isn't just a set of morals; it's an apocalyptic religion with prophecies revolving around the return of Jesus. Jesus' return has been expected at numerous times by numerous groups of Christians and has never happened. Every time something is prophesied and the prophecy fails, it can push those who trusted the prophecy further into culture shock and make their reactions to life more and more irrational.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to William in post #15

Also, we can see that materialist-based science is non-theistic and has become the number one reason why we are now entering an extinction event situation.......

.......So if one is looking for somewhere to hang the blame...

Wherever the blame can rightfully be hung, it can hardly be hung around the necks of the scientists who have been warning us of the very extinction event situation you mention.