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died as Catholics and Protestants fought for control of Germany.

       Holocaust (ca.1938–45; see “Second World War”)

      Nazi Germany killed 5.5 million Jews all across Europe. Even though the Nazis claimed to be killing Jews for racial reasons, the only substantive difference between the victims of the Holocaust and those left untouched was their ancestral religion. It was the climax of several centuries of European anti-Semitism.^a

       Mahdi Revolt (1881–98)

      Five and a half million Sudanese died during this fundamentalist Muslim uprising.

       Gladiatorial Games (264 BCE–435 CE)

      Perhaps 3.5 million gladiators were killed to honor the Roman ancestors.

       French Wars of Religion (1562–98)

      Three million people died in the wars between the Catholics and Protestants of France.

       Crusades (1095–1291)

      For two hundred years, European Christians tried to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Muslims. Perhaps 3 million people died in these wars.

       Fang La Rebellion (1120–22)

      Two million died in a peasant revolt in China that started with friction between a Taoist emperor and a Manichaean minority.

       Aztec Human Sacrifice (1440–1524)

      The Aztecs sacrificed some 1.2 million people.

       Albigensian Crusade (1208–49)

      Around 1 million people in the south of France were killed in this war to exterminate the Cathar heresy.

       Panthay Rebellion (1855–73)

      A rebellion of Muslims in southeast China killed a million.

       Hui Rebellion (1862–78)

      Another rebellion of Muslims in northwest China killed 640,000.

       Partition of India (1947)

      Mob violence killed 500,000 Hindus and Muslims.

       Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland (1649–52)

      Cromwell killed 300,000 to 500,000 Irish in his invasion.

       Roman-Jewish Wars (66–74 and 130–136 CE)

      A series of messianic revolts against Roman authority led to maybe 350,000 deaths.

       The Bible

      There are two sides to the debate about the atrocities described in the Bible: (1) God is merciful and everything described in the Bible is absolutely, inerrantly true, but the number of people slaughtered by the Israelites was wildly exaggerated, and those people deserved it anyway. (2) The Bible was written by mere mortals who made plenty of mistakes so you can’t believe everything you read there, but look at all of the people killed by so-called holy men in so-called holy wars in the so-called Holy Land.

      Consider, for example, the city of Ai. The Bible states quite clearly that Joshua killed all 12,000 people in the city at the orders of God. If you are a fundamentalist, you have a lot of explaining to do, but if you are a heathen, you can simply point out that Ai means “ruin,” and archaeologists have determined that the town was destroyed long before the Israelites arrived in Palestine, so the Bible is wrong. This means neither side in the debate can comfortably use the Bible to support their interpretation of history.

      Be that as it may, if we total the nasty bits of scripture, we’ll find 1,167,000 mass killings by humans specifically enumerated in the Bible. Perhaps a quarter of these (ca. 300,000) are historically plausible and religiously motivated.¹

       Japan (1587–1660)

      During the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, the Christian rebel force of 20,000 fighting men and 17,000 women and children was wiped out, leaving only 105 survivors. Overall, the Catholic Church counts 3,125 named and 200,000 to 300,000 unnamed martyrs in Japan from this period.²

       Bosnia (1992–95)

      When the predominantly Muslim republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina broke away from Yugoslavia, local Christian Serbs and the government in Belgrade tried to stop them. Two hundred thousand people died in the ensuing civil war.³

       Sati (outlawed in 1829)

      The sacrifice of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband was common practice in India, particularly in Bengal, where authorities recorded 8,000 satis between 1815 and 1828. Perhaps 60,000 or so widows were burned alive all across India during the preceding century, and a couple of hundred thousand since the Middle Ages.⁴

       English Civil War (1642–46)

      In the struggle between the Puritans of Parliament and the High-Church supporters of the King, 190,000 Englishmen died, including, at the end, the king himself.⁵

       Lebanon (1975–90)

      The country of Lebanon was originally carved out of French Syria to give local Christians a country where they could be a (slim) majority. By 1975, the national majority had shifted to the Muslims, so a civil war erupted over power sharing. One hundred fifty thousand people were killed.⁶

       Algeria (1992–2002)

      Up to 150,000 died in a civil war that began when the military junta refused to hand over the government to Muslim fundamentalist parties that had won the recent elections.⁷

       Vietnam (1820–85)

      A total of some 130,000 Catholic missionaries and converts were killed under persecution by several generations of Vietnamese rulers.⁸

       Russia (1919)

      As many as 115,000 Jews were killed in pogroms by anti-Bolshevik soldiers in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War.⁹

       Byzantine Empire (ca. 845–55)

      The Byzantine empress Theodora (not Justinian’s wife, this Theodora was the widow of Emperor Theophilus, the regent for Michael III, and a saint) hunted down and killed 100,000 Paulicians, followers of a Gnostic heresy.¹⁰

       Dutch Revolt (1566–1609)

      The Protestants of the northern Netherlands rebelled against their Spanish rulers. The Spanish duke of Alva boasted of executing 18,600 rebels after he was sent to put down the uprising. In all, 100,000 people died in the revolt, including 8,000 in the sack of Antwerp. The Protestant lands became the independent Dutch Republic, while the Catholic south stayed loyal to Spain and eventually became Belgium.¹¹

       Ukraine (1648–54)

      During a rebellion against Poland, Cossacks under Bogdan Chmielnicki massacred as many as 100,000 Jews and wiped out three hundred Jewish communities.¹²

       Eastern Roman Empire (514–18)

      When Emperor Anastasius appointed Monophysite bishops (who believed that the divine and human aspects of Christ were separate) rather than Chalcedonian bishops (who believed that the divine and human aspects of Christ were unified), General Vitalian (a Chalcedonian) rose in rebellion against him. Sixty-five thousand people died in what Edward Gibbon called the first religious war.¹³

       Witch Hunts (1400–1800)

      Sixty thousand accused witches were burned or otherwise executed all

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