Is the Cross a Symbol of Hate?

It depends on who you ask.

The other day, I wound up getting into it with a Christian acquaintance who asserted my Satanic Temple necklace is a hate symbol, and none of my insistence that The Satanic Temple is not a hate group because refusing to be Christians’ doormats does not constitute a hate crime would change this person’s mind.

Even so, I asserted that since The Satanic Temple has never engaged in any sort of actual hate crime (aka genocide, religious warfare, lynching, and the like) it cannot be considered a hate organization for the mere fact that it uses the American judicial system to fight against Christians’ persecution of their historically favorite targets (i.e., women, queerfolk, and non-Christians). Since The Satanic Temple is not a hate group, the goat and inverted pentagram is not a hate symbol.

Unfortunately, the same cannot necessarily be said for the Christian church or its most famous symbol. For Christians, the crucifix/cross is a symbol of God’s eternal love and sacrifice for their sins, but if you’ve ever been on the business end of Christian hate, the feelings you get when looking at the cross are far from warm and fuzzy.

Still, most people would likely bristle at the suggestion that the Christian cross is an actual symbol of hate. After all, a lot of good has been done under the banner of the cross. On the other hand, when you consider all the evil that has also been done under its banner and the sheer number of victims of Christian hate, the categorization of the cross as a hate symbol might seem a bit less ridiculous.

Ye Shall Know Them by Their Fruits: Historical Crimes Committed Under the Banner of the Cross

There’s no way I could even begin to form a remotely comprehensive list of all the atrocities committed in the name of the Christian god. From the widespread genocide and subjugation of non-Christian peoples to a thousand years of Medieval holy war to two millennia of relentless persecution of the Jews, the cross casts a long shadow over some of the planet’s worst atrocities.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll only list a few of the crimes against humanity that stain Christian history, and I’ll also limit the scope to atrocities officially committed by Christian institutions or by theocratic/quasi-theocratic Christian governments.

The Persecution of the Jews

Potentially the greatest crime Christians have ever committed in the history of the religion is the global persecution of the Jews. The Christian institutions and governments that have engaged in forcible conversion, expulsion, and outright ethnic cleansing of Jewish minorities in their lands are too numerous to count. Few Christian-majority societies are entirely innocent, and the responsibility for Jewish persecution in Christian lands falls entirely on the Christian ideology.

It was Christians who first labeled the Jews Christ-killers, Christians who invented the blood libel, and Christians who cast the Jews as vermin worthy of nothing but violence and subjugation. Though the scarlet tide has finally stemmed in the 21st century, it remains to be seen how long this time of relative tranquility will last.

The European Inquisitions

Due to the Protestant churches’ fabrication of the Black Legend, most people think of the Early Modern Spanish iteration when they hear the word “Inquisition.” They may not even be aware that the Spanish Inquisition was just one of many different variants. The truth is the Spanish Inquisition was one of the tamer versions of this Catholic thoughtcrime policing unit that got its start in the Middle Ages and spread all over Europe and its colonies, inflicting torture and violent death on heretics and dissidents all the way through the mid-nineteenth century.

The primary victims of both the European and Colonial Inquisitions alike were not technically confessional minorities, who did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but Christians themselves. However, when you consider that a large proportion of the victims of the Inquisition were forcibly converted, barred from practicing their birth faiths, and then subsequently punished as heretics for failing to be “good Christians,” things start to get more complicated.

The middling and later variants of the Inquisition were also weaponized by the Catholic Church against Protestant rebellion and, to a lesser extent, against other assorted heretics like sorcerers, bigamists, queerfolk, and secular apostates such as myself. Though many people aren’t aware of it, the Holy Office still exists even to this day.

The Destruction of Polytheistic Religions

Potentially one of the other greatest crimes committed within the long shadow of the cross is the destruction of Pagan belief systems in virtually all the territories Christians conquered and colonized. Long before the Doctrine of Discovery paved the way for centuries of European Christian world domination, Christians were violently spreading their religion from the Italian Peninsula throughout Pagan Europe, burning the faiths of their neighbors as they went.

Through the use of tactics ranging from aggressive ideological colonization (also known as missionary work) to holy warfare to relentless persecution to outright cultural and literal genocide, Christianity has systematically driven multiple European Pagan religions either entirely or almost out of existence. Unfortunately, it would seem the slow eradication of European Paganism was just a dress rehearsal for the even larger-scale and more brutal atrocities to come.

In more recent times, the aforementioned Doctrine of Discovery paved the way for Christian missionaries and European Christian colonizers to decimate or exterminate innumerable indigenous faiths in Africa, Polynesia, Australia, and the Americas. Many of the world’s earliest and oldest religions are now extinct, thanks to Christian missionaries and colonizers. Though there were, of course, other forces at work (such as racism and burgeoning capitalism), we must never forget that the attempts of European conquerors to “civilize” indigenous cultures cannot be divorced from their work to erase native religions and replace them with Christianity.

The Residential Schools

The Catholic Church has openly admitted to running at least half of the North American residential schools where countless indigenous children were taken after losing their parents to forcible separation. Some of these children would go on to lose their lives. These schools have now been labeled cultural genocide, a practice with which the Christian faith is unfortunately all too familiar. A paltry apology and few to no reparations hardly make up for this recent and heinous crime.

The Sex Abuse Schemes

I would be remiss if I failed to mention Christian sex abuse scandals in a list of the crimes of the church. The ultimate crime is arguably not the sex abuse itself, as any organization that handles a large number of children is vulnerable to infiltration by predators. The ultimate crime is the way the Christian church, without fail and in almost all circumstances, covers up, protects, justifies, and pardons abuser after abuser after abuser. This centuries-long pattern has created an environment that is dangerous and hostile for women and children because it attracts and possibly even generates sexual predators, practically guaranteeing a higher likelihood of victimization.

This is a systemic problem that Christian culture itself has created and shows absolutely no interest in curtailing. Though the Catholic Church still seems to be the worst offender, other Christian sects aren’t far behind. No denomination is immune, despite the fact that, until recently, the Protestant sects enjoyed criticizing their Catholic counterparts for their sexual sins. They can’t do that anymore. Seems pastors are just as likely to be predators as priests, and Protestant institutions are just as likely to cover their clergy’s crimes as Catholic ones.

The Persecution of Gender and Sexual Minorities

In the current era, perhaps Christianity’s most frequent hate crimes are the ones it commits against those it considers inferior based on our femaleness, proximity to femininity, or failure to perform femininity adequately. It’s no secret if you’re queer and/or a woman, you’ve not had a historically great relationship with the Christian religion. Modern-day Christians often point to the early Church’s historical elevation of women to positions of power as a way to argue that Christianity is actually a feminist faith, but this argument is as full of holes as a colander hat.

For the first moments of the religion’s existence, it is partially true that Christian women experienced elevated status in comparison to the status they received in Rome itself. But by the time we saw Christianity become the state religion of the Roman Empire, its fledgling feminism came to a swift and decisive end.

For the next 1,700 years, Christian institutions of all varieties used the misogyny in the Bible to justify subjugating, marginalizing, torturing, and murdering the female half of the human population. They even weaponized our own biology against us. Unlike a lot of institutional Christian violence, sexism is not a historical issue that has comparatively died down in recent decades. Misogyny is alive and well in most Christian denominations. Modern Christians can squabble over whether the Bible really means it when it says to abuse and oppress women, but the behavior of their churches and their congregants speaks for itself.

The behavior of Christian churches towards queerfolk speaks just as loudly. Again, there’s quibbling among liberal Christian denominations as to what, exactly, the Bible meant when it said to put people to death for homosexual behavior, but the fact that the Church has spent the better part of its existence doing exactly that and continues to do it to this very minute needs no more commentary.

Hateful Crosses

The issue of the cross as a hate symbol is not just limited to the hate crimes committed under the standard of the cross. There are actually quite a few recognized hate symbols that contain or consist of a cross because European and Euro-descended Christians have long incorporated the symbol of their religion into their racist practices. Though not all of these crosses are directly associated with Christianity, one must ask oneself why it is that fascists and genocidal maniacs seem to so frequently incorporate some version of a cross into their insignia.

Here are a few examples:

The Arrow Cross

Originally meant to denote an early twentieth-century Hungarian fascist party of the same name, this cross of arrows has since been appropriated by a few fringe white supremacist groups.

The Burning Cross

Perhaps the most notorious symbol of the KKK, the burning cross is one of the most mainstream and recognizable hate symbols in the US and around the world. This cross needs no introduction, as just about every American associates it with lynchings, firebombings, Jim Crow, postbellum quasi-slavery, and other violence. Whether or not the violence was specifically committed by the KKK, the burning cross still casts its bloody glow over just about every instance of American anti-Black hate.

The Crusader Cross

The scarlet cross of the Knights Templar and of the infamous Medieval Crusades has, in recent years, been adopted by the alt-right and the Christian Nationalist movements. This cross began to make its presence felt again after 9/11 when anti-Muslim sentiment reached fever pitch and Christian Nationalism was still comparatively confined to fundamentalist homes and churches. As of the Epiphany Insurrection in 2021, this cross is once again out and proud as a symbol of Christendom’s divinely ordained dominion and the alleged holy wars to come.

The Iron Cross

Another infamous symbol of hate, the Iron Cross got its start as a military medal in nineteenth-century Prussia. It went on to be awarded to soldiers of the German Empire and, later, to Nazis. To this day, it is one of the most infamous global symbols of white supremacy, though, at least in the US, it has also been adopted by groups that have nothing to do with hate, such as extreme sports enthusiasts.

The Cross: A Symbol of God’s Limitless Love or Christianity’s Boundless Hate?

Ultimately, it’s not up to little, ole me to decide for everyone whether the cross is a hate symbol. I can only express my own personal opinion on the subject. Whether you see the cross as a symbol of love or loathing has a lot to do with your experiences at the hands of the people who slap it on their cars and hang it around their necks. If you’re a believer, when you look at the cross, you probably think about divine love or Christ’s sacrifice. You might think about Christian charities that strive to do good works or a Christian church group that helped you out when you fell on hard times.

However, as a non-Christian and one of the innumerable victims of Christian ire and loathing, I think about the abuse, persecution, and violence I and countless others have suffered at the hands of the Church. When I see the cross, I remember all the times I was beaten and otherwise punished for questioning the Bible as a young child. I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d been diagnosed with autism as a kid and received actual help instead of being taken to Christian “counselors” who told me I was so weird and unlikable because demons were working in me. I think about how much easier and better things would have been for me if I’d received an actual education instead of a biblical indoctrination. I wonder if I would have been so primed to accept abusive relationships and sexual coercion as normal if I’d not grown up being told I exist at and for the pleasure of men. I think about what could have been if the followers of Christ hadn’t stolen my childhood and irreparably damaged my future.

I know I’m not the only one. There are countless others, both living and long dead, who’ve suffered oppression, abuse, discrimination, and worse at the hands of Christians and in the name of their faith. We’re innumerable as the sands of the Sahara. Thus, for many of us, the cross signifies something very different than divine love. It can never — will never — symbolize anything but Christian hate.