Who did Christians fight with?

Answer 1

As Christianity is over 2,000 years old, Christian communities have fought wars with almost every other religious grouping on the planet. Keep in mind that religion was not always the main reason for these conflicts, and was sometimes used as a pretext to achieve other goals. *I'm not trying assign blame with any of these examples.* As religious groups tend to stick together, especially when they are a minority, economic and political conflicts often take on a religious dimension, even if religion isn't the reason for the fighting. This list is far from exhaustive.

European Christians fought a series of Crusades in the Levant (modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan) from 1095-1291, attempting to win control of these lands from Muslims, who also consider the region their Holy Land. Europeans also fought Crusades against Muslims in northern Africa. Other Crusades were fought against Christian sects in the south of France, Poland, and Lithuania. Battles were fought against Pagan Slavs in eastern Europe, and Crusaders attempted to conquer Eastern Orthodox Christian territory in Russia.

Throughout European history, pogroms against Jewish populations were common. The centuries-long struggle for control of Spain between Muslim Moors and Catholic Spaniards is another notable example of Christians going to war.

During the European empires of the 16th through early 20th centuries, colonizers often described their mission as spreading Christianity to the people of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, and this was a component of the scores of conflicts with native peoples of countless faiths.

More recently, Christians have been a party to religious conflicts in the Balkans, where both Christian and Muslim populations have been subjected to ethnic cleansing and mass murder, in Lebanon, where Maronite Christians fought against Muslims and Druze in that countries' messy civil war. Christians in southeast Asia, mainly Burma/Myanmar and Vietnam, have been involved in separatist conflicts with the largely Bhuddist-controlled governments.