Pullman and the church

Phillip Pullman says this:

As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it's a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the bloody nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they'd be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches."


So what do Christians say about that? We don't have to say anything about that. Narrative is not normative. Things done by Christians don't make them representative of the Christian faith. The persecution and tyranny and cruelty committed by the church over the ages is wrong...but by what standard is it wrong? Why is slavery wrong? Why is genocide wrong? No because atheism is right, but because the Gospel is true. There is no standard of truth outside the absolute standard of the truth of the Gospel, and the supremacy of Christ. Voddie Baucham says more about this here.