It has been exasperating to read and listen to the attacks against President Obama for the comments he made during last week’s National Prayer Breakfast.

In case you missed the speech, or the resulting dust-up, here are the comments that drew the ire of his critics:

“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

President Obama made these remarks within the context of asking how people of faith can reconcile the existence of atrocities committed in the name of religion.

The president did not want his audience to overlook the fact that throughout history, all major religious groups — including Christians — have engaged in atrocities in the name of religion. This is evidenced by his following comment:

“So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.”

The virulent and clamorous outcry from the conservative right denouncing President Obama’s remarks are grounded in the belief that Christians — and by extension, the West — have not used religion in this way, while Islam has. Or, if Christians did, it was so long ago that it no longer counts.

Lest they think that Muslims acting under the aegis of the Islamic State or ISIL or Boko Haram have a monopoly on violence committed in the name of religion, President Obama’s critics must be reminded of the “Christian” foundations of the Ku Klux Klan and of the terroristic atrocities its members have perpetrated in modern times.

A report released Tuesday by the Equal Justice Initiative asserts that 3,959 African-Americans were brutally — and often publicly — killed in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. The human toll is at least 700 more lynchings than previously recorded. Many of the victims’ lives were taken for demanding basic human rights or for refusing to submit to unfair treatment, according to the report.

We can add to the list of modern Christian terrorists the names of Adolph Hitler, who twisted religion as well as logic in justifying the annihilation of more than 11 million people, including 6 million Jews; and Anders Behring Breivik, who in July 2011 was arrested and charged with terrorism in Norway. He set off a car bomb around government buildings in Oslo that killed eight people, then followed up with a mass shooting at a youth camp on Utoya Island that killed 69, most of them teenagers. Identifying himself as a “Christian crusader,” he detailed in writing his beliefs that immigrants were undermining Norway’s traditional Christian values.

And we should not forget the continuing wave of bombings and slayings of doctors, nurses, receptionists and security guards at women’s health clinics across the country by “Christian” fundamentalists so hellbent against abortion that they violate their own claims regarding the sanctity of life.

President Obama said: “No God condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number. And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion — any religion — for their own nihilistic ends.”

So bray at the moon as much as they wish, President Obama’s critics must wake up and remove the logs from their own eyes. Christianity is no exception when it comes to crimes against humanity. Instead of fighting the president, they need to battle those — even those within their own religion — who seek to use religious beliefs to harm and terrorize others.