In thousands of years of history, there are many ups and downs, villains and heroes, and societies and religions influence each other, there is no religion abstracted from its social context, and picking a few villains to characterize a religion as a whole is pretty easy.

Christianity has split into dozens of denominations and sects over those 2000 years, the mainstream ones have developed into very peaceful, progressive movements intent on doing good in the world, just as the western world has changed from what it was 200, 1500, 100, or 500 years ago.

The problem is with those who claim they are going back to "fundamentals" by ignoring any improvements and sticking to what they understand to be the "original" orders from God.