Bipolar Christianity: How Torturing ‘Sinful’ Children Produced Holy Wars

February 4, 2011

From Chapter 9 of Lloyd deMause’s The Origins of War in Child Abuse:

After half a century of primary source research into the history of childrearing, I and over a hundred other childhood historians have been unable to find a single mother who did not badly beat and torture their children prior to modern times. I have long offered a prize to anyone who could find actual evidence of just one mother prior to the 18th century who would not today be thrown into jail for badly abusing their children.

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The occasional reformers, like Saint Anselm, who sometimes questioned whether whipping children “day and night” was wise, did not raise any children themselves because they were ascetic. Despite the fact that Jesus nowhere says children should be beaten, Christians taught that He wanted them to beat the sins out of them continuously, from birth. Actually, the main reference Jesus makes to children was “suffer little children to come unto me … and he laid his hands on them — that is, he exorcised the bad spirits out of them.”

The central rule of Christians toward children is simply never to give the child anything it wants. “Willfulness” was the cardinal sin, and the words “I want” were “impermissible” for which children were punished severely. Even babies had to be taught the only thing that mattered was what the adults wanted; as John Wesley put it, “Never, on any account, give a child anything that it cries for … If you give a child what he cries for, you pay him for crying.” That beating and torturing “sinful” children usually “did not work” was acknowledged by all — as one mother wrote of her first battle with her four-month-old infant: “I whipped him until he was actually black and blue, and until I could not whip him any more, and he never gave up one single inch.” If the parents’ regular beating of their children still did not result in obedience, the child should be “put to death [if they] curse or smite their father or mother,” according for instance to a 1646 Massachusetts law. The only restriction sometimes mentioned by priests was that children should not be hit “about the face and head with fire shovels … hit him upon the sides with the rod, he shall not die thereof.”

If you want to believe deMause is making stuff up, don’t read the complete chapter because it has footnotes for almost everything (232, to be exact).

For comparison, here’s what deMause has to say about Islam.

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Comment by Marklar on March 9, 2011 at 5:30am: Blah, blah, blah. If you actually bothered to read the full article you'd find that it is not so much about christianity as it is about the generational perpetuation of violence. Historically the west has been largely christian for a very long time so christian culture of of widely varying sects, whether biblical or not, has played a large role in such violence whether you care to acknowledge it or not. The fact that christianity has been such a huge influence in western culture makes this inevitable. A primitive and barbaric people will use any cultural ideololgy that is prevalent to justify and ultimately perpetuate whatever atrocities it cares to commit. The specific ideology itself (in this case christianity) is rather irrelevant except to mold the outward facade that such justifications are given.

Glad to know you are capable of the kind of knee jerk reaction prevalent amongst christian persecution paranoids everywhere instead of giving the full article the read it deserves though. I would expect no less from you.

Certainly not all christians are evil but neither are all christians good. Your christian exceptionalism is no more valid than the american exceptionalism that is constantly used to cover up atrocities however. Billions of christians have never abused children and nobody has indicated otherwise in this article, but it's also true that billions of christians have and continue to. What's that mean? Well, I guess christians are human and no better or worse than anybody else on the whole though I'm certain you could never admit to that.

Comment by fireguy on February 7, 2011 at 2:12pm: Some people's ignorance of the Bible and Christians is exceeded only by their animosity toward them both.

There is no excuse or reason for abusing children or anyone else in scripture.

Luke 17:1-3

^"1 Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. ² It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. ³ So watch yourselves."

Billions of Christians never abused their own or other peoples children. Millions have given billions of dollars to feed, clothe, water, educate and heal millions of poor children around the world.