Burning people to death. Didn't Christians do that a few years back?

[haele]

158. And politics and religion don't go hand in hand in these situations?

The religion is used as an excuse in most of these situations. The deceased is typically accused of being a witch (male or female) or gay, or a pedophile in some sort of personal/political dispute, and since those crimes are against "God's Laws", they get burned by the whipped-up mob.

Burning alive seems to be the extra-judicial punishment choice of the under-educated or over-excited mobs who actually want the experience of watching their victim go to Hell, instead of imagining it after the body starts to go cold.

And almost 40 years ago, it was very surprising to hear one of my best friend's "sweet old grandpa" from somewhere in the South use religion as an excuse describing a particular horrendous lynching he tried to justify when a picture of him and his brothers participating had been published.
From memory (which may be a bit rusty):
"That was a terrible time and we were angry. Things have changed now, thankfully - but we all thought what that man had done was against God and Nature. Our preacher himself said we had to let all those [others] who thought they were better than God made them understand that they were going to Hell if they didn't act the way they should."

It was politics- racial politics - that lead to that lynching episode, where, according to the article, they had doused the man with gasoline and lit him before they pulled him up by a noose over a tall branch so that he burned as he asphyxiated.

Sarah had problems talking to her grandfather after than; she never forgave him for the picture of him smiling and pointing in that picture.

Haele