That such incidents have any place at all in a history of the Christian church is a condemnation, not merely of the participants, but of the entire phenomenon of a politicized Christendom whereby churches have, and claim, a legal monopoly on entire populations. The Thirty Years’ War (like the Crusades or the Inquisition) is not an accidental product of this idea, nor an aberration, but its inevitable consequence.
(The Age of Reason, p. 160) - Meic Pearse commenting on the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) in which Protestants and Catholic tensions in Europe burst out into terrible acts of violence.
