The Barbaric Christian Witch Hunts

I'm doing some research for a chapter on the witch hunts for my new anthology, "Christianity is Not Great." A description of it and a link to the chapters can be seen here. The title to this post will probably be the one I'll use for the chapter. Any other suggestions? I've selected a few quotes to begin the chapter. See what you think.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Exodus 22:18

 

If we really thought there were people going about who had sold

themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in

return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them

mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings [i.e., traitors] did.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chapter 2.

A witch should not be condemned to death unless she is

convicted by her own confession.

Henrick Kramer in The Witches Hammer, Part 1, Question 13.

After being tied to the pulley [the strappado], and hoisted up a little, she says, that, yes, she could be a witch, yet when released, she announces she is not a witch. Therefore she is pulled up somewhat higher, and then a second and third time, and then released on the admission that she is a witch. But immediately she becomes stubborn and denies she is a witch. Then again she is pulled even more tightly on the ropes. She confesses that fourteen years ago, when she was unmarried, she had become a witch.

Interrogation of an unnamed woman at Eichstätt, Germany, in 1637

How many people were killed in the Salem witch trials? Nineteen.

Few casualties, big brouhaha.

Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, p. 207.