Have any of the religious nuts tried to claim (yet) that the Christians

are now the most persecuted group of all time?

That would really take some totally batshit nutcase to claim it, but it wouldn't surprise me if some freepturd tried that tactic . . . I think that the Holocaust survivors might want to have a word with any freakturd who tries that claim . . .

I think the Holocaust is too fresh in people's memories for them to try to make the claim.

claim, plus all the minorities by any definition.

"most persecuted group" is a Fox news type stretch of some folks feelings that the constitutional "free excercise of religion" is getting second chair to the not in Constitution "separation of Church and state" that is read into the Constitution's no state religion wording.

The Burger "excessive entanglement" concept works for most folks - but where you draw that line will always be a point of discussion.

of which you speak - is the "secular purpose" part. We all know what Roy Moore was up to when he set that Ten Commandments display up; he wanted us to know whose religious viewpoint was dominant! Wanted to hit me over the head with it, figuratively of course.

That's why I liked it when that one Ten Commandments display got shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court - they had put up their religious display, and then added a few token secular items around it! It was clear what their purpose was - same as Roy's!

to persecute in the US. No, she wasn't kidding. I was so shocked by her disconnect that I couldn't respond.

If I were listening to a sermon where that happend, I think there would be a shocked expletive, followed by me leaving and not letting the door hit me on the way out.

The Inquisition was not a perversion of Christian doctrine, it was an EXPRESSION of Christian doctrine.

This excerpt from Robert Ingersoll's classic piece, "Heretics and Heresies" sums it up nicely:

"It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people. They infested every country, every city, town, hamlet and family. They appealed to the worst passions of the human heart. They sowed the seeds of discord and hatred in every land. Brother denounced brother, wives informed against their husbands, mothers accused their children, dungeons were crowded with the innocent; the flesh of the good and true rotted in the clasp of chains; the flames devoured the heroic, and in the name of the most merciful God, his children were exterminated with famine, sword, and fire. Over the wild waves of battle rose and fell the banner of Jesus Christ. for sixteen hundred years the robes of the church were red with innocent blood. The ingenuity of Christians was exhausted in devising punishment severe enough to be inflicted upon other Christians who honestly and sincerely differed with them upon any point whatever."

"Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power. Why should the church pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has been perpetrated by the church. Every nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched."

"Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted heretics to the fullest extent of their power. Toleration has increased only when and where the power of the church has diminished. From Augustine until now the spirit of the Christians has remained the same. There has been the same intolerance, the same undying hatred of all who think for themselves, and the same determination to crush out of the human brain all knowledge inconsistent with an ignorant creed..."

"In those days the cross and rack were inseparable companions. Across the open Bible lay the sword and fagot. Not content with burning such heretics as were alive, they even tried the dead, in order that the church might rob their wives and children. The property of all heretics was confiscated, and on this account they charged the dead with being heretical -- indicted, as it were, their dust -- to the end that the church might clutch the bread of orphans. Learned divines discussed the propriety of tearing out the tongues of heretics before they were burned, and the general opinion was, that this ought to be done so that the heretics should not be able, by uttering blasphemies, to shock the Christians who were burning them. With a mixture of ferocity and Christianity, the priests insisted that heretics ought to be burned at a slow fire, giving as a reason that more time was given them for repentance..."

"According to the theologians, God, the Father of us all, wrote a letter to his children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest differences, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls, and prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ. For more than fifty generations the church has carried the black flag. Her vengeance has been measured only by her power. During all these years of infamy no heretic has ever been forgiven. With the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the clutch of avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon she has devoured; pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with the conscience of a serpent: such is the history of the Church of God."

Heretics And Heresies
Robert Green Ingersoll
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/heretics_and_hericies.html

Mao and Stalin combined rendered Hitlers holocaust as a trivial as far as numbers of deaths.

Christianity has been around for 20 times as long as Communism, so even though it's committed atrocities at a far lower rate there may still be a competition.

If we take a ballpark figure of 50 million for the number of people killed as a result of Communist persecution (too high? too low?), then that would be analagous
to an average of 25 thousand deaths attributable to Chrisianity per year since 0 AD, (or 40 thousand deaths a year attributable to Islam)

Both of which are probably overestimates by an order of magnitude at the least, so yes, I think the Communists probably win hands down.

More than 100 million were killed just bringing them over here during the course of slavery.

If you define "Most persecuted" as "most members killed for their religious beliefs" then it's a toss-up between Christianity and Judaism, I'd think. There have always been a lot more Christians than Jews, and a lot of them have been killed for their religion (usually but not always by other Christians), but my guess is that Holocaust still puts the Jews into the lead - 6 million deaths is an awful lot, even if you've got two millenia to accumulate them as it were, and that's not counting all the Jews who have died in other religious persecutions.

Islam has only been around for about 2/3 as long as Christianity, and there are fewer Muslims that Christians, so unless the feuding between Sunni and Shia has been considerably more bloody than that between Catholic and Protestant I wouldn't expect it to be able to compete. I'm ashamed to say I don't know enough about Hinduism or Buddhism to comment on the strength of their respective claims, but neither is as large as Christianity (although both are older, which would increase their score, of course).

My money is still on the Jews, though.

The question is about "most persecuted". It doesn't say anything about who's doing the persecution. I suppose if you were looking at persecution of the religion itself as something separate from the believers, it might not, but that's impossible to measure, I suspect.

I would guess more Muslims bit it there than Christians, but I am not sure.

Is that more Christians than Muslims died as a result of the Crusades.

When it comes to killing human beings, human beings are very inefficient. Hunger, thirst, disease and the like are far better at it. The Muslims were on their home ground - all they had killing them was Crusaders, who IIRC were not terribly good at it. The Crusaders had a long, hazardous journey for which a lot of them weren't very well prepared, and they then had to fight away from home.

It may be that more Muslims were killed by Christians than vice versa in the Crusades, though - I really don't know.