Does Christianity encourage conquest and war?

“When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:”

“But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:”

“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

The Catholic Church teaches that the books of the Bible were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and have God as their author. In writing them, it says, God chose men who used their own powers and abilities, so that they were true authors, yet wrote everything and only what God wanted.

Defending the Old Testament against the Manichaean Faustus, Augustine writes that "in wars carried on by divine command, he showed not ferocity but obedience", speaking of Moses, and that God in giving the command acted "not in cruelty, but in righteous retribution". "The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like; and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake wars".

Asks whether it is always sinful to wage war, and answers that three things are needed for a war to be just: the authority of the ruler, a just cause, and a right intention. The article builds on quotations from Augustine.

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.”

“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

Fulcher's account of Pope Urban II's speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The pope urged people of every rank to go to the aid of the Christians of the East against the Turks and Arabs and to drive them out, and promised that all who died on the way, by land or sea, or in battle against the pagans, would have "immediate remission of sins".

The armies of the First Crusade took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 and massacred many of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants.

In April 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade sacked and destroyed most of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Pope Innocent III had forbidden the crusaders to attack the Byzantine Empire, telling them that the crusade must not attack Christians but should proceed to the Holy Land; he did not sanction the attack.

Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe, which had consequently been subjected to crusades. Its Christianization was begun in the late 14th century by its ruler Jogaila, who returned to Lithuania in February 1387, after which mass baptisms followed. Lithuania was the last state in Europe to be Christianized.

A papal bull of 8 January 1455 concerning the Azores and Africa south of Cape Bojador. It grants the King of Portugal the right "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever", and "to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery". The bulls Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex and Inter caetera were early influences on the development of the slave trade of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Pope Nicholas V restates the powers he had earlier granted (in the bull Dum Diversas, 1452) to the King of Portugal: to invade, capture and subdue all Saracens and pagans and other enemies of Christ, wherever they are, and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.

Papal bulls such as Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493) gave Portugal and Spain lands not ruled by Christians. Colonial powers later used them for the "doctrine of discovery". In 2023 the Vatican repudiated that doctrine and said it was never part of Catholic teaching.

The bull of 4 May 1493 to the King and Queen of Castile and Leon. It wishes "that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself", and gives, grants and assigns to them and their heirs, kings of Castile and Leon, forever, "all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south".

Papal bulls such as Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493) gave Portugal and Spain lands not ruled by Christians. Colonial powers later used them for the "doctrine of discovery". In 2023 the Vatican repudiated that doctrine and said it was never part of Catholic teaching.

A demand read out by Spanish conquerors to the peoples of the Americas. Resting on the Pope's donation of their lands to the kings of Spain, it required them to acknowledge the Church as ruler of the whole world, the Pope, and in his name the king and queen of Spain as their lords, and to let priests preach to them. It said they would not be compelled to turn Christians. But if they refused or delayed, it declared: "we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways", take you, your wives and your children and make slaves of them, and say the deaths and losses that follow are your fault.

When da Gama's fleet reached Calicut (Kozhikode), in India, in 1498 and was asked what brought them, the reply was that they had come "in search of Christians and spices". On his voyage of 1502 his fleet intercepted the Miri, a ship of Muslim pilgrims travelling from Calicut to Mecca, with over 400 pilgrims aboard, among them 50 women. It was looted, and the passengers were locked in and burned to death, as described by the eyewitness Thomé Lopes and the chronicler Gaspar Correia. The lives of twenty children were spared in exchange for forced conversion to Christianity.

Afonso de Albuquerque's forces took Goa on 25 November 1510. The Muslims who had not fled were killed under the governor's orders. In his letter of 22 December 1510 to King Manuel I, Albuquerque wrote that "they brought all the moors that escaped from Goa by the sword, and gave quarter to no living creature". He reckoned that about 800 "Turks" and over 6,000 "moors" had died.

Says Islam reached Sulu through preachers: Makdum, who arrived about 1380 and made converts in many places, and Abu Bakr, who arrived about 1450, married the daughter of Raja Baginda and taught religion and law, so that the people abandoned their former gods in a slow and gradual but real conversion; Saleeby says this modifies the opinion formerly held that Islam was introduced there by the sword. It gives Governor Francisco de Sande's instructions of 1578 for the expedition against Sulu: to order the Sulus not to admit any more preachers of the doctrine of Mohammed; to find out who preached it, and "seize and bring them before me"; and to burn or destroy the house where that accursed doctrine has been preached. Saleeby lists among the aims to reduce Sulu to a vassal state, to exact tribute, and "to uproot the 'accursed doctrine' of Mohammed and to convert the Sulus to the Christian religion", and says the expedition began a state of war between Sulu and Spain.

The colony was established in 1800, when the Batavian Republic took control of the Dutch East India Company; its possessions were nationalised as the Dutch East Indies. In December 1949 the Netherlands formally recognised Indonesian sovereignty.

French rule lasted from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830 until the end of the Algerian War, which resulted in Algeria gaining independence on 5 July 1962.

The protectorate was established by the Bardo Treaty of 12 May 1881, after a French military conquest, and was abolished on 20 March 1956.

The protectorate was established on 30 March 1912 by the Treaty of Fez, with the northern part of the country a Spanish protectorate. It lasted until the treaty was dissolved on 2 March 1956.

Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, was tried by the British after the rebellion of 1857 and exiled to Rangoon in 1858, which ended the Mughal dynasty.

The British Raj, the rule of the British Crown in India, was instituted on 28 June 1858, after the rebellion of 1857, and lasted until 1947, when it was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states. It followed the Mughal Empire.

British rule lasted from 1882, when Egypt was occupied by British forces during the Anglo-Egyptian War. It ended nominally with the 1922 declaration of Egyptian independence; the last British forces withdrew on 18 June 1956.

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a condominium of the United Kingdom and Egypt between 1899 and 1956; Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956.

The Pangkor Treaty of 1874 led to the appointment of J. W. W. Birch as British resident in Perak, the start of British rule over the Malay states. The Federation of Malaya achieved full independence on 31 August 1957.

The British conquered the area in 1903 and annexed it into the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate. On 13 March 1903 the last vizier of the caliphate conceded to British rule.

Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were taken by Italy from the Ottoman Empire in 1911. Italian jurisdiction over Libya ended in 1943, and Libya became independent in 1951.

It took France from 1920 to 1923 to gain full control over Syria; the League of Nations mandate was assigned on 29 September 1923. The mandate lasted until 1946, when French troops left Syria and Lebanon.

The British mandate was created in 1921, after the 1920 revolt against the proposed Mandate of Mesopotamia. The territory remained under British administration until 3 October 1932, when the Kingdom of Iraq became independent.

Greece, after its war of independence against the Ottoman Empire from 1821, was recognised as an independent state by the London Protocol of 1830.

The Congress of Berlin (1878) formally recognised the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, Britain took over Cyprus, and Bulgaria became a self-governing principality.

The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913. The Balkan League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe.

The Ottomans were granted the small fortress of Tzympe near Gallipoli; the Fall of Gallipoli in 1354 (or 1356) provided the Ottomans with a basis for operations in Europe. The final retreat of Ottoman rule began with the First Balkan War (1912-1913).

The Suez Crisis was a British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel attacked on 29 October, and Britain and France joined on 31 October; the fighting lasted until 7 November 1956.

On 20 August 1998 American cruise missiles struck a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and an al-Qaeda camp in Khost Province, Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001 the United States declared the war on terror and led a multinational military operation against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001, alongside the United Kingdom.

The invasion began on 20 March 2003 and lasted just over one month. It was conducted by a United States-led coalition of mainly American, British, Australian and Polish troops.

Between 2004 and 2018, the United States government attacked thousands of targets in northwest Pakistan using drones operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On 19 March 2011, a NATO-led coalition began a military intervention into the Libyan Civil War, initially led by France and the United Kingdom, with command shared with the United States.

The United States officially intervened in the Syrian civil war on 22 September 2014, when its forces attacked targets of the Islamic State (ISIL) and of other groups in Syria.

Between 12 January 2024 and 6 May 2025 the United States and the United Kingdom carried out strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen, in response to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

On 22 June 2025 the US Air Force and Navy struck three Iranian nuclear facilities, Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, as part of the Twelve-Day War.

The Duelfer Report (2004) found that Saddam Hussein ended his nuclear program in 1991, with no evidence of concerted efforts to restart it; the chemical stockpile had been destroyed in 1991, and only a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions were discovered; the biological program was abandoned in 1995.

Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974, in an operation that progressed in two phases over the following month. It followed a coup five days earlier, on 15 July 1974, sponsored by the Greek military junta.

The Ogaden War was fought between Somalia and Ethiopia from July 1977 to March 1978 over control of the Ogaden region. Somalia launched an invasion in support of the Western Somali Liberation Front insurgency.

In Ethiopia's 2007 census, Christians made up 62.8% of the population and Muslims 33.9%.

“Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.”

“But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in Allah: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things).”

Ibn Umar reports that a woman was found killed during one of the Prophet's (ﷺ) campaigns, and the Prophet forbade the killing of women and children.

“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.”

Ibn Qudamah, a Hanbali jurist, holds that the matter of jihad is entrusted to the ruler (imam) and his judgement, and that the people must obey him in it. He makes one exception: if an enemy attacks suddenly and there is no time to ask the ruler, the people may defend themselves without his permission. He also holds that a Muslim who enters a non-Muslim land under a promise of safety (aman) may not betray its people or take their property, because the safety was given on the understanding that he would not betray them, even if this was not said in words.

“On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.”