Christians are again killing each other in Northern Ireland; First World Christians are ignoring, and thus, by their silence, condoning the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqi children daily via the US-perpetrated economic boycott; Rwandan Christians brutally massacred hundreds of thousands of their fellow Christians a few years ago; and US Christian soldiers are about to escalate the homicidal violence against Christian peasants in Colombia, under the guise of the Pentagon's discredited and failed drug interdiction policy. And the organized church, possibly out of fear, remains invisible and almost totally silent on the issue of militarism.

When one looks at the history of the last 1700 years of Christianity through the honest and uncensored lens of the academic historian, one has to be horrified at the cruelty that has been, and obviously still is being, perpetrated in the name of the church.

The reality of the Crusades, where Christian soldiers killed without mercy those "enemy of God" occupiers of the Holy Land, is a dark blot on the history of the church.

The horrific Inquisitions, where Jews, wise women and other "heretics" were tortured and burned at the stake during religious celebrations, went on for 600 years, with the blessings of the official church leaders who justified the cruelty as being the will of God.

The reformation and counter-reformation wars, starting in the 16th century, were perpetrated by those in charge of church doctrine and lasted for centuries. All sides, Lutheran, Calvinist, Catholic and Anglican, believed that one could follow Jesus and simultaneously be able to kill those members of the body of Christ who were on the other side of the battle line.

The American Civil War resulted in the brutal deaths of over 600,000 Americans, virtually all claiming Christianity as their faith and the faith of their fathers, the North using the Bible as justification for total war, the South justifying the heartless and cruel institution of slavery and the mass slaughter that is war.

Both World Wars I and II were started and fought by Christians against fellow Christians, with the pulpits on all sides ringing with flag-waving patriotism and militarism, shouting for blood and victory.

The atomic bombing of Nagasaki (and its annihilation as the historical and spiritual center of Oriental Christianity) is still regarded as totally pointless overkill by all credible historians; but the bombing was carried out by an all-Christian bomb crew, whose mission was solemnly blessed by its Catholic and Lutheran chaplains before that infamous August 9, 1945 day.

The on-going genocidal massacres, military and economic, of indigenous peoples ever since the time of Columbus, are being largely accomplished with the full knowledge, consent and participation of decent, "God-fearing" Christians and justified by passages in the Bible.

Given the fact that Christian theologians and most of the non-Christian world knows without a doubt that the pacifist Jesus preached active nonviolent resistance to evil (rather than justified violence against it) and was a merciful and compassionate idealist who renounced homicide and violence in all its forms, one has to wonder what has been going on these last 17 centuries. It is helpful to recall that Gandhi, a Hindu follower of Jesus, often said that the only people who don't think Jesus was nonviolent are Christians.

And therein lies a serious spiritual problem for the church. History documents clearly that the Christian church of the first three centuries took Jesus' teachings of unconditional love of friend and enemies seriously. In fact, the church of Jesus Christ started out as a peace church. So, if the church of the first few centuries was a peace church, and the latter church of the last 1700 years has been a Justified War church (and usually with a vengeance), one has to wonder: "What would the world be like now if Every Church Had Been A Peace Church?" A little clear thinking for those who know a modicum of history would come up with a multitude of tantalizing possibilities, including the following:

1) The baptized Catholic Adolph Hitler would have been raised within a progressive peace church by a strong pacifist Catholic mother who would have nurtured and loved and protected little Adolph from the cruelty of his father and the cruelty of his society.

2) The Lutheran Adolf Eichmann, the Orthodox Christian Joseph Stalin, and the baptized Catholics Benito Mussolini and Joseph Goebbels and most of the rest of those of fascist infamy were Christians, but none of them were ever taught, with any emphasis, that the Sermon on the Mount was central to the theology of Jesus and that nonviolence was at the core to his teachings.

3) If every church had been a peace church, the American Christian churches of the South would have rejected slavery (or their faith in Jesus) and the American Civil War would not have happened.

4) If every church had been a peace church, Christian European monarchs and their obedient Christian soldiers would not have brutalized and raped Africa, Asia and the Americas into colonial submission over gold, silver and slaves, and the bloody armed revolutions of liberation from the European colonizers would not have happened a century later.

5) If every US church was a peace church, a unified, benevolent United States Christianity would be working hard right now to nurture and reconcile with, rather than demonize and marginalize, the officially feared minorities such as Muslims, Palestinians, blacks, gays, lesbians, and non-white foreigners of many colors and religions, including Colombian peasants, the Iraqis, Sudanese, Hispanics, Orientals, Jews, etc., etc.

6) If every church was a peace church, there would not be the current crippling military spending to defend America's unjustly obtained excess luxury wealth going on decade after decade, making it a struggle to obtain funding for every program of social uplift.

7) If every church had been a peace church, there might have been no World War I, no oppressive Treaty of Versailles, no Nazi party and no World War II.

8) If every church was a peace church Christian children would not be cruelly bullying their weaker brothers and sisters in the Columbine high schools of this land, and the victims of those bullies would have no reason to shoot back.

9) If every church had been a peace church, professed Christian presidents would not be trying to outspend their predecessors on lethal weapon systems, nor would they become gleeful hanging judges with a need to disprove their suspected wimphood by saber-rattling their nation back into the Cold War.

10) And if every church had been a peace church, those who claim discipleship to the non-violent Jesus would be leading the world to peace, rather than into war -- and the Peaceable Kingdom of God would be at hand.