Moral and Cultural Objectionsreligion, harm, justice, and the gospel

1. The objection, fairly stated

The modern moral case against Christianity is not one objection but a family. It is pressed by New Atheists, by exvangelicals, by abuse survivors, by secular progressives, by LGBTQ critics, by historians of empire and slavery, by ordinary people who watched a pastor fall and asked what the religion was actually doing. The objections deserve to be stated at their strongest before any response is attempted.

• "Religion poisons everything." Christopher Hitchens's title; the claim that religion as such is a net source of harm — wars, intolerance, sexual repression, intellectual cowardice, child abuse.
• "Christianity has caused wars." Crusades, religious wars of the Reformation era, sectarian violence — Christianity's record is bloody.
• "Churches protected abusers." The Catholic abuse crisis, the Southern Baptist Convention's failures, individual evangelical scandals — the institutional church has often shielded predators rather than victims.
• "The Bible supported slavery." The Bible regulates slavery rather than abolishing it; American slaveholders quoted Scripture to defend the system; the Southern Baptist Convention was founded in defence of slaveholding missionaries.
• "Christianity oppresses women." Two millennia of patriarchal church culture, restrictions on women's leadership, complicity with domestic abuse, silencing of women's voices in theology and in pastoral care.
• "Christian sexual ethics harm people." Purity culture's damage; shame-based teaching; the church's treatment of LGBTQ people; the harm done to gay and trans children by Christian families and churches.
• "Christianity is colonial." Mission entangled with empire; conversion as cultural destruction; the religious justification of dispossession in the Americas, Africa, Asia.
• "Christians are hypocrites." The gap between Christian profession and Christian practice is vast. Many of the most visible Christians have proven to be among the least Christ-like.

Each of these objections has substance. The Christian's first task is to refuse the temptation to minimise. Honest engagement begins with honest acknowledgement. Then — and only then — careful response becomes possible.

2. How the objection sounds across voices

Brief representative voicings across registers. These are careful summaries of widely-encountered positions, not direct quotations.

Voicing A — The New Atheist

Voicing B — The exvangelical

Voicing C — The abuse survivor

Voicing D — The secular progressive

Voicing E — The LGBTQ friend

Voicing F — The feminist critic

Voicing G — The historian

Voicing H — The anti-colonial voice

Voicing I — The Reddit skeptic

Voicing J — The college student

Voicing K — "I like Jesus, not Christians"

Voicing L — "Religion is about control"

Voicing M — "Christian morality is harmful"

Voicing N — The thoughtful pastor

Voicing O — The wounded but hopeful

Fifteen voicings, fifteen places the conversation lands. The Christian's task is to meet each voice with honesty, refuse the easy deflections, and bear witness to a gospel that already names what they are naming as sin.

3. What Christianity does NOT say

Before engaging the objections, a great deal of bad Christian rhetoric needs to be cleared away. Many "defences" of the church have done far more harm than the original wrongs.

"Christians have always acted like Christ."

They have not. The historical record is unsparing. Christians have been cruel, cowardly, complicit, and corrupt across every century of the church. The Christian who pretends otherwise has not read his own history. The bride of Christ has often, on earth, been a body that requires the indictment of her own Lord.

"Church abuse is mostly rare exceptions."

It is not. The pattern is wide. Catholic abuse documented across decades; Southern Baptist Convention's failures documented in the Guidepost Solutions investigation; major evangelical figures across multiple traditions falling in sexual, financial, and authoritarian scandal. The Christian community must name the pattern rather than absorb each fall as an isolated incident.

"Christian institutions have not sinned."

They have, structurally. Slaveholding denominations, complicit national churches, theological academies that produced apologists for racial injustice, mission boards that aligned with colonial power. Institutional sin is real and requires institutional repentance.

"Misuse of the Bible is not really our problem."

It is. The Bible has been used to defend slavery, to silence women, to enforce racial hierarchy, to shield abusers, to bless empire. The misuse does not make the Bible bad; it does make the church's handling of the Bible a sin worth confessing. The Christian must own the misuse, name it as misuse, and show what the right reading actually is.

"Repentance is private."

It is not — not for public, institutional, generational sins. Public sin requires public confession (Lev 5:5; Jas 5:16). The church that protected an abuser owes a public reckoning, not just an internal counselling protocol. The denomination that defended slavery owes more than a generic statement of regret. Concrete repentance includes specific naming, restitution where possible, structural change, and ongoing humility.

"Criticism is always persecution."

It is not. Criticism of Christian failure is often the work of Christ's own indictment through outside voices, journalists, abuse survivors, historians. Treating every critic as a persecutor protects the institution at the cost of the victims and at the cost of the truth.

"Exposing evil is attacking the church."

It is the opposite. Ezekiel 34, Jeremiah 23, and Matthew 23 show how God himself exposes corrupt religious leadership. The Christian who exposes hidden evil within the church does the work the prophets and the Lord did. Cover-ups in the name of "protecting the church" are themselves part of the sin.

4. Biblical starting point — evil inside religion is expected

The biblical books most relevant to the moral objection are written by insiders against insiders. Scripture itself names religious corruption with the most severe language in the Bible. The Christian who has read Matthew 23, Ezekiel 34, and Jeremiah 23 should be the least surprised person in the room when church failure is exposed.

Matthew 23 — Jesus on religious hypocrites

Jesus delivers seven "woes" against scribes and Pharisees who "preach but do not practise" (Matt 23:3), who "tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger" (23:4), who "shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces" (23:13), who "devour widows' houses and for a pretence make long prayers" (23:14), who "neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness" (23:23). The language is searing. Jesus reserves his fiercest words not for outsiders but for religious leaders who weaponise religion against the vulnerable. The Christian who has read this chapter has been warned.

Ezekiel 34 — the false shepherds

Ezekiel 34 indicts the shepherds of Israel for feeding themselves on the flock — for failing the weak, the sick, and the lost; for ruling with force and harshness. "Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand" (34:10). The chapter is one of the strongest biblical indictments of corrupt religious leadership. It is also where the Lord promises to come himself as the true Shepherd — the chapter Jesus echoes when he calls himself the good shepherd (John 10).

Jeremiah 23 — the prophets who lie

Jeremiah 23:1 — "Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!" Jeremiah indicts the prophets who "commit adultery and walk in lies" (23:14), who speak peace where there is no peace (cf. 6:14; 8:11), who steal God's words from one another (23:30), and who lead his people astray. The pattern of false religious leadership is named by Scripture itself; it is not a modern critique.

1 Peter 4:17 — judgment begins at the house of God

"It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?" The biblical pattern is that God's people are judged first and most strictly. The visible church is not exempt from the moral seriousness she preaches.

Acts 20:28–31 — wolves arising from within

Paul to the Ephesian elders: "I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them." The internal corruption of the visible church is anticipated by the apostle himself.

2 Peter 2 — destructive heresies, sensuality, greed

Peter writes extensively about false teachers who would arise within the church — driven by sensuality, greed, and the love of power, exploiting believers. The whole chapter is a sustained warning. The category of "wolves in the church" is biblical and apostolic.

The Christian who is shocked by church scandal has read Scripture less carefully than the Lord intended. The Christian who refuses to be honest about church failure has departed from the biblical pattern of self-indictment. The Christian who weaponises this honesty against repentance and reform has missed the gospel itself. The biblical starting point is sober: evil within religion is expected; it is named; and the Lord himself is its enemy.

5. The moral standard Christianity provides

One of the strangest features of the modern moral objection to Christianity is how often it borrows Christian moral capital to make the objection at all. The critic who says "the church failed the weak" is naming something the Christian Scriptures had already named. Where do the standards behind these critiques come from?

Image of God

Genesis 1:26–27: God creates humanity in his own image, male and female. The doctrine grounds the equal, inviolable dignity of every human person — across race, class, age, ability. Every human bears God's image; harm to a human is sin against the Creator. Gen 9:6 and Jas 3:9 reinforce the application.

Objective morality

Christianity grounds moral obligation in the character of the holy God (1 Pet 1:16; Lev 11:44). Justice is not social preference; mercy is not weakness; love is not sentiment — these are reflections of who God is. Without this grounding, the moral critique of Christian failure loses its anchor.

Neighbour-love

Jesus summarises the law in two commands: love God and love neighbour (Matt 22:37–40). The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) defines "neighbour" expansively — across ethnic and religious lines, against social expectation. Loving the neighbour is not optional and not generic; it is the demand of the Lord.

Justice

The prophets press justice as God's central demand. Micah 6:8 — "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Amos 5:24 — "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Isaiah 1:17 — "learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause."

Care for the weak

Care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor is a sustained biblical theme (Exod 22:21–22; Deut 10:18–19; Prov 14:31; Isa 58; Jas 1:27). The God of the Bible takes the side of the vulnerable; his people are commanded to do the same.

Humility

Humility — not self-aggrandisement, not pride — is the disposition Jesus commends and embodies (Matt 11:29; Phil 2:5–8). The church that has been arrogant has failed her own teaching.

Servant leadership

Mark 10:42–45 — Jesus contrasts the world's leaders, who "lord it over" their subjects, with the kingdom's pattern: "whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The biblical pattern of leadership is service; the historic church's pattern of leadership has often been domination. The departure is sin against Christ's own command.

The moral standard Christianity provides is severe enough to convict Christian failure. The atheist's critique of church evil is, in its substance, a Christian critique — even when the atheist does not see this. Tom Holland's Dominion and Glen Scrivener's The Air We Breathe have pressed this observation at length.

6. "Religion poisons everything"

The Hitchens-style critique deserves careful engagement. It is widely cited; it has shaped a generation of skepticism; and it gets some things right while overstating its central claim.

Where the critique is partly right

Religion can be weaponised. Christian institutions have caused real harm. Religious authority has been used to silence victims, to shield abusers, to enforce conformity, to justify violence. The bare existence of religious motivation does not sanctify the action. The Christian who responds to "religion poisons everything" with a generic defence of religion has not heard the actual objection.

Where the critique is overstated

The same critique applied symmetrically to atheistic ideologies of the 20th century — Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia — runs into the historical reality that twentieth-century secular ideologies also produced catastrophic violence on a massive scale, so the claim that religion uniquely causes mass violence is historically too simple. The Christian answer is not that religious people are safer than secular people, but that the human heart corrupts every ultimate commitment — religious or secular — unless redeemed by grace.

The underlying issue

The Christian's deeper response is that the issue is not religion vs no religion but true worship vs idolatry. Every human worships something; what differs is what is worshipped and how. Stalin's Marxism was worship; Mao's cult was worship; modern consumerism is worship. The biblical category is not "religion bad" or "religion good" but "what or whom are you ultimately serving?" Every system of ultimate commitment can be weaponised; the gospel's diagnosis is that the human heart is itself the deepest problem.

Christianity gives resources for self-critique

One of the strongest replies to "religion poisons everything" is that Christianity is uniquely equipped to critique its own institutions. The biblical material of §4 (Matt 23; Ezek 34; Jer 23) is the basis of an ongoing prophetic critique of corrupt religion that comes from within the tradition itself. The reform movements (the Reformation; the abolitionist movement, largely Christian-driven; the anti-segregation movement, largely Christian-driven) draw on biblical resources to indict the failures of Christian-shaped institutions. The cure for bad religion, on the biblical account, is the gospel — not its abandonment.

7. Crusades, violence, and coercion

The crusades stand for a broader set of objections about Christian violence. The historical record is complex and does not admit easy defence or easy dismissal.

Historical complexity

The crusades (11th–13th centuries) were not a single event but a long series of campaigns with different goals, mixed motives, and varied outcomes. Some were responses to the Muslim conquest of Christian territories and the Byzantine emperor's request for help; some were straightforward power politics; some involved horrific massacres of Jews, Muslims, and even Eastern Christians (the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople in 1204 was Christians killing Christians). Historians from across the spectrum (Riley-Smith, Madden, Asbridge) have laid out the documentary record. The crusades cannot be reduced either to "noble defence" or to "religious atrocity"; they include both, and far more.

No blanket defence

The Christian should not attempt a blanket defence. The massacres at Jerusalem in 1099 were atrocities by any moral standard. The Albigensian Crusade against fellow Christians in southern France was indefensible. The use of the cross as a banner over campaigns of conquest betrayed the symbol. The Christian's task is to refuse the deflection — yes, this happened; yes, it was done in Christ's name; yes, the church was complicit.

Jesus's kingdom is not advanced by the sword

The decisive biblical text is John 18:36 — Jesus before Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world." Matt 26:52 — Jesus rebukes Peter for drawing the sword. 2 Cor 10:4 — "the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds." The crusades, where they involved coercion of conscience and conversion by force, were at odds with Jesus's explicit teaching.

Coercive conversion is anti-Christian

The historic Christian conviction — sometimes lived faithfully, often betrayed — is that conversion requires the response of the heart and cannot be coerced. The Edict of Milan (313), Tertullian's earlier defence of religious liberty, the Reformation's later articulation of soul liberty, and the Baptist and Anabaptist traditions' insistence on believer's baptism all point to the conviction that compulsion is foreign to the gospel. Where the historic church coerced conscience (in inquisitions, in conversion programmes against Jews and Muslims, in the imposition of state Christianity), it betrayed its own deeper teaching.

Just-war questions are not the same as forced religion

The Christian just-war tradition (Augustine, Aquinas) addresses when, if ever, the use of force is justified to defend the innocent and restrain evil. This is a different question from coercive conversion. The Christian can hold to a just-war framework while categorically rejecting religion-by-the-sword. The two should not be conflated, and the modern critique sometimes conflates them. Key texts: John 18:36; Matt 26:52; 2 Cor 10:4.

8. Slavery and the Bible

The slavery objection is one of the strongest, and it must be handled carefully — neither minimising the harm nor mishandling the texts.

Ancient slavery is not race-based chattel slavery

The biblical material on slavery refers to the institutions of ancient Israel and the Greco-Roman world. These were not the racial chattel slavery of the Atlantic system. Ancient slavery was typically debt-related, war-related, or contract-related; slaves often had legal protections, paths to freedom, the ability to own property, and could be of any ethnicity. This is not to defend ancient slavery as morally good (it was not), but to recognise that the biblical regulations address a different institution from the American system. The conflation of the two has produced misreading in both defenders and critics of Scripture.

The Bible regulates in a fallen world and plants seeds of abolition

The biblical pattern with slavery is similar to its pattern with divorce: regulating an existing institution, mitigating its harshness, and providing principles that, when followed consistently, undermine it. The Mosaic legislation includes provisions for the release of Hebrew slaves (Exod 21:2; Deut 15:12), the prohibition of kidnapping for slavery (Exod 21:16 — a death-penalty offence, directly relevant to the Atlantic trade), the sabbatical and jubilee releases (Lev 25), and the prohibition of returning a fugitive slave (Deut 23:15–16 — directly opposed to the American Fugitive Slave Act). The Exodus narrative itself is a story of liberation from slavery.

The image of God and Galatians 3:28

The deepest biblical resource against slavery is the doctrine of the image of God (Gen 1:26–27) and the New Testament's expansion of it: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). Slavery as a permanent ontological category is impossible within this framework; the slave-master is now the brother of the slave, and Paul presses this in Philemon as Onesimus must be received "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Phlm 16).

Christians used the Bible wrongly to defend slavery

Confess this clearly. American slaveholders quoted Scripture extensively to defend chattel slavery; pro-slavery theology was developed by serious Southern theologians (Thornwell, Dabney). Some major denominations split over slavery, with the pro-slavery side often citing Scripture against the abolitionist reading. The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 specifically to defend slaveholding missionaries. The misreading was real, sustained, and theologically defended. The Christian must own this without flinching.

Christians also led abolition from biblical convictions

The Christian conscience also produced the abolitionist movement. William Wilberforce in Britain, the Clapham Sect, the Quakers, the Methodists, the early Baptists (especially in the North), the African American Christian community across centuries — all drew on biblical resources to indict slavery. The 19th-century abolitionist movement was largely Christian-driven; the case against slavery was made from Scripture by people who insisted the slaveholders had misread their own Bible. Honesty requires adding what Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis shows: the pro-slavery side often had the easier proof-texts, and it took a deeper, whole-Bible argument — not a flat verse-counting one — to defeat them, a "crisis" that the nation finally resolved only through war. Christian abolition was real and biblical; it was also hard-won, not a clean exegetical walkover.

Honest framing

The honest framing is that the Bible's resources cut against slavery (image of God, Exodus, Gal 3:28, the man-stealing prohibition, Philemon) and that some Christians in some periods nevertheless used Scripture to defend it. The institution finally fell, in the West, partly because the biblical case against it became impossible to deny. The Christian must hold both: the historic complicity is real; the biblical case for abolition is also real; and the long history finally bears the indictment of the gospel against the betrayal.

9. Women, patriarchy, and abuse

The objection that Christianity oppresses women has substance and must be engaged carefully. This page does not adjudicate the complementarian/egalitarian conversation (see women-in-ministry.html for that engagement); it addresses the broader moral objection.

Equal dignity

The biblical foundation for any Christian engagement with women is the image of God — "male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27). Women bear God's image equally and fully. Any framework that treats women as ontologically inferior, instrumentally valuable, or spiritually second-class has departed from the biblical doctrine. Galatians 3:28 — "neither male nor female" in Christ — applies the new-covenant reality to gendered identity in the body of Christ.

Abuse is sin

Domestic abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse — all are sin. The biblical material on marriage (Eph 5; Col 3) calls husbands to sacrificial love modelled on Christ's love for the church — a love that lays down its life, not that demands submission to abuse. Any reading of these texts that requires a woman to remain in physical danger for the sake of "submission" has departed from the gospel and from the law of love. Diane Langberg's lifetime of work on trauma and abuse, John Stott's careful pastoral writing, and 9Marks's church-discipline resources are essential.

Complementarianism must not become domination

For Reformed evangelicals who hold a complementarian position on church leadership and marriage, the careful pastoral application is sacrificial, servant-shaped, image-of-God-honouring, and abuse-rejecting. Where complementarianism has been twisted into authoritarian rule, women have been silenced, and abusers have been protected, the framework has been abused, and the abuse must be named. The right pastoral application of any complementarian reading must honour the dignity, voice, gifting, and safety of women. Complementarian churches must be willing to examine whether their structures, not only their language, have enabled unsafe patterns.

Jesus honoured women

One of the most striking features of Jesus's ministry was his treatment of women in a first-century context that gave them limited social standing. He taught women as disciples (Luke 10:38–42 — Mary at his feet, the posture of a disciple). He spoke theologically with women (John 4 with the Samaritan woman). He healed women (Mark 5; Luke 13). He included women among his followers and supporters (Luke 8:1–3). He appeared first after his resurrection to women — making them the first witnesses of the resurrection in a culture that did not value women's testimony (Matt 28; John 20). Paul names women as fellow workers and a deacon (Rom 16; Phil 4:2–3; Rom 16:1 — Phoebe). The historical Jesus and the apostolic church gave women a place that, judged by the standards of their day, was elevated rather than degraded.

Church failures must be confessed

The historic church has often failed women — through silencing, through abuse cover-up, through pastoral malpractice that returned women to dangerous homes, through theological education that excluded women's voices, through cultures of misogyny in some Christian subcultures. The Christian community must own these failures, change the structures that protect them, and recover the biblical pattern that the dignity of women is non-negotiable. Recommendations include Rachael Denhollander's testimony and work, Diane Langberg's Redeeming Power, Aimee Byrd, Beth Allison Barr (with critical engagement), and the careful complementarian writing that has tried to articulate non-abusive frameworks (e.g., Kevin DeYoung's careful pastoral material, even as the broader complementarian/egalitarian debate continues).

10. Sexual ethics and harm objections

The modern moral objection presses Christian sexual ethics as harmful — purity culture's damage, shame-based teaching, and especially the church's treatment of LGBTQ people. The conversation requires care: clear teaching, gentle tone, refusal of cruelty, refusal of compromise on what the Christian believes Scripture says.

Christianity teaches embodied holiness

The biblical framework treats the body as integral to the person — not a shell, not a problem, not a vessel of shame. The doctrine of incarnation (the Word became flesh, John 1:14) and bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15) dignifies the body. Sexual ethics, on the biblical account, are not arbitrary rules imposed on the body; they are the shape of human flourishing as embodied creatures made for love, covenant, and the worship of God.

Chastity for all

The Christian sexual ethic applies to all believers — married and unmarried, gay and straight. Married believers are called to faithful covenant intimacy with the spouse; unmarried believers are called to chastity. The standard is the same in kind for all. The historic church has too often singled out one group while excusing the failures of another; the consistent biblical ethic falls on the whole community.

Marriage as covenant

The biblical pattern of marriage — the one-flesh union of one man and one woman, intended for lifelong covenant faithfulness (Gen 1–2; Matt 19:4–6) — is the Christian framework. The Reformed evangelical position holds this consistently. Other Christian frameworks have argued differently; the conversation within the wider church is real. This page reflects the historic Reformed evangelical reading.

People are not reduced to desires

One of the deepest things the Christian framework offers, in a culture that increasingly defines persons by their sexual or romantic identities, is the conviction that the human person is more than their desires. The Christian identity in Christ precedes any other identity. Same-sex-attracted Christians, like all Christians, are called to chastity-as-disciples; they are not less than full members of the body of Christ. Wesley Hill's Washed and Waiting, Sam Allberry's Is God Anti-Gay?, and Rosaria Butterfield's testimony offer pastoral models that take both Scripture and people seriously.

Same-sex attraction must be handled with compassion

The church's treatment of LGBTQ people has too often been cruel — bullying, expulsion, conversion-therapy abuses that compounded harm, families that disowned children, serious mental-health harm among some LGBTQ people who experienced family rejection, bullying, or harsh religious treatment. The Christian must confess where the church has failed. The right pastoral application of biblical sexual ethics is patient, gentle, and dignifying; it offers the gospel's invitation to whole-person discipleship, not condemnation of identity. Refuse cruelty. Refuse compromise. Both.

Pastoral guardrail: no Christian should mock, bully, threaten, or shame a young person over sexuality or gender questions. Parents and churches must speak truth with patience, safety, and love, remembering that vulnerable people need care, not humiliation.

No explicit sexual content

This page does not include explicit sexual content. The careful biblical-pastoral treatment of sexuality is available in the works recommended in §18 and in the related pages on this site.

Repentance and grace for all

The gospel of grace covers all sexual sin — for the gay person, the straight person, the married, the unmarried, the divorced, the abuser, the abused. 1 Cor 6:9–11 lists serious sins (including sexual sins) and then says, "and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Grace is the centre; chastity is the path; Christ is the Lord. Key texts: Gen 1–2; Matt 19:4–6; 1 Cor 6:9–20; Eph 5:1–2.

11. Colonialism and mission

The colonialism objection has real substance: Christian mission was historically entangled with European empire, and the entanglement caused real harm.

Missions have sometimes been entangled with empire

The historical record is mixed but it includes serious complicity. The Spanish conquest of the Americas was theologically framed as evangelism even as it was systematic dispossession. The British East India Company's relationship with Christian mission in India was complex and at times exploitative. Mission boards sometimes operated under colonial protection and depended on colonial structures. Indigenous peoples in many places lost language, land, and culture under arrangements that mission helped enable. The Christian must not deny this.

Many missionaries opposed colonial abuses

At the same time, the historical record includes many missionaries who opposed colonial abuses — Bartolomé de las Casas's lifelong advocacy for indigenous peoples in the Americas, missionaries who defended indigenous rights against settler violence, missionaries who developed written forms of indigenous languages and provided education and medical care that survived the colonial period, missionaries who became the most articulate Western critics of colonial atrocities (e.g., Roger Casement's exposure of Belgian Congo atrocities had Christian roots). The picture is not simply "mission = colonialism."

Christianity is not Western

The framing of Christianity as a Western religion is historically incorrect. Christianity began in Western Asia, spread early into Africa and Asia, and has had non-Western Christian communities continuously for two thousand years (the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, the Syriac churches, the Mar Thoma Church in India, the Armenian Church). The Western dominance of Christianity in recent centuries was a phase, not the essence. Today Christianity's demographic centre of gravity is in the Global South, with enormous Christian populations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Philip Jenkins's The Next Christendom documents this shift.

Christianity's demographic centre of gravity has shifted to the Global South

This re-Africanisation and re-Asianisation of Christianity matters for the colonialism conversation. The largest Christian populations are now in places like Nigeria, Brazil, China, the Philippines, India, and South Korea. These communities did not receive Christianity as colonial imposition; many of them embraced it actively, indigenised it deeply, and now send missionaries back to the West. The post-colonial church looks different from the colonial-era picture, and any honest critique of Christianity-as-colonial must reckon with this.

The gospel translates into cultures but also critiques them

The biblical pattern of mission (Acts 17 — Paul in Athens) is that the gospel translates into a culture's own categories while also critiquing what is broken in that culture. This is true for Western culture too. The gospel is not the property of any culture, and the gospel critiques every culture — including the colonial cultures that historically deployed it badly. The Christian mission today, where it is healthy, looks like cross-cultural respect, indigenous leadership, and the gospel allowed to speak both for and against every culture it enters.

12. Hypocrisy and scandal

"Christians are hypocrites." The objection is real because the phenomenon is real.

Hypocrisy is real

The gap between Christian profession and Christian practice is wide. Famous Christian leaders have fallen in sexual, financial, and authoritarian scandal. Ordinary churches have produced ordinary hypocrites. The skeptic who notices this is not making it up.

Jesus condemns hypocrisy more fiercely than skeptics do

The skeptic's critique is not a discovery against Christianity; it is Christianity's own diagnosis applied. Jesus reserves his most severe language for religious hypocrites (Matt 23). The category of "hypocrite" comes from Christianity itself — the Greek ὑποκριτής originally meant "actor," one who plays a part on stage. Jesus uses it of religious people whose outside performance does not match their inside reality. The skeptic who says "Christians are hypocrites" is, in part, speaking with Jesus's voice.

Hypocrites do not disprove Christ

The argument "Christians are hypocrites; therefore Christianity is false" does not work. The existence of hypocritical doctors does not disprove medicine; the existence of corrupt judges does not disprove justice; the existence of failed Christians does not disprove Christ. The standard against which Christians fall short is the standard Christianity itself holds out; failure to meet a standard is not the same as the standard being wrong.

They prove the need for judgment and repentance

What hypocrisy does prove is that the diagnosis of the human condition the Bible gives is correct: even religious people are sinners. The right response is not the abandonment of the gospel but its application — to the hypocrites themselves first. The Christian who is not himself a recovering hypocrite has not understood the gospel he professes.

13. Christianity's moral fruit

A careful positive section. This is not "Christianity is the source of all good and credit for everything"; it is "the Christian tradition has produced specific moral fruit that deserves honest naming alongside the failures."

Hospitals

The development of the hospital as a free institution for the care of strangers, especially the poor and the sick, has Christian roots. Early Christian communities cared for the sick and dying during plagues that other Roman institutions abandoned (Rodney Stark, Larry Hurtado, and Kyle Harper document this carefully). The medieval and modern hospital tradition has deep Christian sources, even where current hospitals are secular.

Education

The university system in the West grew out of monastic and cathedral schools and the medieval Christian commitment to learning. Mass literacy in many cultures was advanced by Christian translators, schools, and Bible-translation projects. The modern Western education system is post-Christian, but its roots are Christian.

Abolition

The abolitionist movement was largely Christian. Wilberforce, the Clapham Sect, the Quakers, the early Methodists, African American Christianity, and many others made the biblical case for the end of chattel slavery. Mark Noll's careful historical work documents how contested that exegetical battle actually was — the deeper biblical case against slavery had to be fought for, not simply assumed.

Charity

Organised charity for strangers — outside kin networks and obligations — is, historically, largely a Christian innovation. The early church's care for widows, orphans, and the poor extended beyond the in-group in ways the surrounding pagan world found striking (Julian the Apostate complained that the Christians fed the pagan poor better than the pagans did).

Human rights language

The vocabulary of universal human rights — the dignity of every human as such — has Christian theological roots even where contemporary rights discourse is secular. The image of God doctrine is the historical seedbed of the modern conviction that every human bears inviolable worth. Tom Holland's Dominion and Glen Scrivener's The Air We Breathe press this case at length.

Care for the poor

The biblical commands to care for the poor (Lev 19; Deut 15; Prov 14:31; Isa 58; Jas 1:27; many others) have produced sustained Christian engagement across centuries — food banks, shelters, medical missions, anti-poverty advocacy. The work has often been imperfect; it has also been real.

Do not overclaim

Christians alone did not do good in the world. Non-Christians have contributed mightily; some good came from secular and non-Christian sources; some Christian-led initiatives caused harm even as they did good. The honest claim is narrower: the Christian tradition has been one significant source of moral goods that the modern world takes for granted, and noticing this is not chauvinism but historical care. Christianity is neither the source of all good nor the source of all evil; it is a major shaping force whose contributions and failures both deserve honest naming.

14. Common objections answered

"Religion causes wars."

Wars have many causes — political, economic, ethnic, dynastic, ideological. Religion has been one cause among many. The "religion causes wars" claim, examined empirically (the Encyclopedia of Wars by Phillips and Axelrod is sometimes cited), does not bear out the strong form. Twentieth-century secular ideologies also produced catastrophic violence on a massive scale, so the claim that religion uniquely causes mass violence is historically too simple. The honest assessment is that powerful institutions of any kind — religious, ideological, national — can be weaponised.

"Churches protect abusers."

Many have. The pattern must be named, repented, and structurally changed. Independent investigations, mandatory reporting, removal of abusive leaders, and pastoral care for victims are minimum standards. The church that does not do these has failed her own teaching.

"The Bible supports slavery."

See §8. The Bible regulates an ancient institution while planting seeds of abolition; the deepest biblical resources cut against slavery; Christians misread the Bible to defend chattel slavery; Christians also led the abolition movement from biblical conviction.

"Christianity hates women."

See §9. The biblical foundation is the image of God; Jesus honoured women; the apostolic church included women as fellow workers; the historic church has often failed women, which must be confessed. "Hate" is not a fair summary of what the gospel teaches; it is sometimes a fair summary of what specific Christians have done.

"Christianity is anti-LGBTQ."

See §10. The Reformed evangelical position holds the historic Christian sexual ethic on the basis of Scripture. This must be held with care, gentleness, and refusal of cruelty. The church has too often failed at the pastoral application; the failure must be confessed; the ethic itself, on the historic Christian reading, is not "hatred" but a call to whole-person discipleship for all.

"Mission is colonialism."

See §11. The historical entanglement was real and partial. Christianity is not Western; mission today is overwhelmingly non-Western; the gospel translates into and critiques every culture, including the cultures that have historically deployed it badly.

"Christians are hypocrites."

See §12. The objection is partly correct and is not a discovery against Christianity; it is Christianity's own diagnosis applied. Hypocrisy does not disprove Christ.

"Christianity is politically dangerous."

Christianity can be politicised in ways that damage both faith and polity. The biblical pattern (1 Pet 2; Rom 13; Acts 4–5) holds the state in proper respect while maintaining the higher allegiance of conscience to God. Christian nationalism is a contemporary distortion that confuses the gospel with cultural-political dominance and must be resisted. The Christian's deepest political conviction is that Jesus is Lord — and that this Lordship is not coercive.

"Morality is better without religion."

The historical record does not support the strong form. Twentieth-century secular ideologies also produced catastrophic violence on a massive scale, so the claim that morality is uniformly better without religion is historically too simple. The deeper question is the grounding of morality itself; see §5 and apol-new-atheism.html.

"Religion controls people."

It can. So can any powerful institution. The right Christian response is to refuse the structures of control and to recover the biblical pattern of servant leadership, voluntary commitment, and the conscience-binding authority of Scripture alone. See apol-cults.html on high-control groups.

"Why should I trust a church after scandal?"

You should not trust uncritically — that has been the problem. You should look for churches with open finances, accountable elders, plural leadership, willingness to confess specific failures, healthy treatment of women and the vulnerable, and a gospel that indicts even its preachers. Such churches exist. The Lord is gathering his people in them, slowly, even now.

15. Biblical language notes

Brief notes on a few key terms in the texts most relevant to this conversation. Kept careful and not overclaimed.

Mark 10:42–45 — διάκονος / δοῦλος

Jesus contrasts worldly leadership with kingdom leadership: "whoever would be great among you must be your servant (διάκονος), and whoever would be first among you must be slave (δοῦλος) of all." Διάκονος denotes service (the root from which "deacon" comes); δοῦλος is the strong word for slave/bondservant. Jesus's pattern is not "leadership-with-a-service-flavour"; it is the inversion of worldly leadership — the greatest are those who are most fully servants. The historic church's pattern of domineering leadership is at odds with this teaching at the level of vocabulary.

Careful significance. Christian leadership is structurally servant-shaped; departures from this are departures from Christ's own model.

Galatians 3:28 — equal standing in Christ

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus." Paul's three pairs collapse the structural divisions of his world — ethnic, social, gendered — within the body of Christ. The verse does not erase all distinctions in creation; it does establish equal standing in Christ. This equality is the seedbed of the historic Christian conviction that no human stands ontologically above another.

Careful significance. Gal 3:28 does not by itself settle every contested question about gender roles, but it establishes the ontological equality that any application must honour.

Philemon — δοῦλος language with caution

Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus, a runaway slave returning to his master. The letter is short and theologically explosive: Paul calls Onesimus "my child" (v. 10), describes him as Paul's own "very heart" (v. 12), and asks Philemon to receive him "no longer as a slave (δοῦλος) but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (v. 16). The letter does not by itself abolish slavery; it asks Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother in Christ, which dissolves the slave-relationship at the level of identity.

Careful significance. Philemon is not a permission slip for slavery; it is a quiet seed of abolition planted in the most personal possible terms.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 — careful and not graphically

Paul lists serious sins (including sexual sins, using terms whose exact translation has been debated — μαλακοί, ἀρσενοκοῖται) and then says, "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." The lexical and translational debates are real; the larger structure is unmistakable — the gospel of grace covers sexual sin among other sins, and produces a transformed identity in those who receive it.

Careful significance. The Christian reading of 1 Cor 6 takes both the moral seriousness and the gospel grace seriously. The text is not a license for cruelty against any group; it is a call to whole-person discipleship under grace.

Note. The Christian engaging this conversation should resist making any single term carry more weight than it can bear. The strength of the case is the cumulative biblical witness, not isolated word studies.

17. Top 30 Conversation Q&A

The previous sections laid the doctrinal and historical ground. This section is for the moment of actual conversation. Each entry follows a five-part shape: how you'll hear it, the short answer, the longer answer, a Scripture/doctrinal anchor, and a pastoral note.

18. Further reading

Works for engaging the moral and cultural objections. Inclusion does not imply endorsement of every position the author holds.

• Christianity's moral shaping of the West
• Holland, Tom. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Basic, 2019.
• Scrivener, Glen. The Air We Breathe. The Good Book Company, 2022.
• Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity. HarperOne, 1996. Useful but sometimes contested; read alongside other historians.
• Hurtado, Larry W. Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. Baylor, 2016.
• Harper, Kyle. From Shame to Sin. Harvard, 2013.

• Crusades and violence
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A History. Bloomsbury, 3rd ed. 2014.
• Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades. Rowman & Littlefield, rev. ed. 2014.
• Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence. Oxford, 2009.

• Slavery, race, and abolition
• Noll, Mark A. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. UNC Press, 2006.
• Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. IVP Academic, 2004.
• McCaulley, Esau. Reading While Black. IVP Academic, 2020.
• Perkins, John. One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love. Moody, 2018.

• Abuse, spiritual abuse, and the church
• Langberg, Diane. Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church. Brazos, 2020.
• Mullen, Wade. Something's Not Right. Tyndale, 2020.
• Denhollander, Rachael. What Is a Girl Worth?. Tyndale, 2019.
• Holcomb, Justin S., and Lindsey A. Holcomb. Is It My Fault?. Moody, 2014.

• Women, family, and pastoral care
• Stott, John. Issues Facing Christians Today. Zondervan, 4th ed. 2006.
• Carson, D. A., ed. Worship by the Book. Zondervan, 2002. (Includes careful pastoral material.)

• Sexuality and pastoral care
• Allberry, Sam. Is God Anti-Gay?. The Good Book Company, 2013.
• Hill, Wesley. Washed and Waiting. Zondervan, expanded ed. 2016.
• Butterfield, Rosaria. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Crown & Covenant, 2012.
• Welcher, Rachel Joy. Talking Back to Purity Culture. IVP, 2020.

• Mission, colonialism, world Christianity
• Sanneh, Lamin. Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West. Eerdmans, 2003.
• Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford, 3rd ed. 2011.
• Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Orbis, 1996.

• Cultural and political engagement
• Trueman, Carl R. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Crossway, 2020.
• Miller, Paul D. The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism. IVP Academic, 2022.
• Moore, Russell. Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. Sentry Press, 2023.

• Related pages on this site
• Apol — Cults & Near-Christian Groups.
• Apol — Spiritual but Not Religious.
• Women in Ministry.
• Apol — New Atheism.
• Apol — The Problem of Evil.
• Modern Apologetics Hub.