You may have heard (or said) something like, “More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other cause.” As it turns out, historians such as Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod have discovered a different trend. In their Encyclopedia of Wars, they document that over 100 million people were killed in the 20th century alone by the atheistic states of the USSR and China. In the 20th century, more people were killed by Communist and Nazi ideologies than all previous 19 centuries combined.
The New York Times (July 6, 2003 edition) reported that upwards of one billion people have been killed in the entire history of wars, with 1 to 3 million (less than 1%) attributed to wars related to Christianity (the vast majority stemming from the Crusades). Don’t get us wrong, 1 death attributed to a self-professing Christian is horrible (and one too many). But death and wars are not fairly attributable to Jesus’ teaching or His true followers.