Oh, you mean like how the Church of the Silver Flame in Eberron went on a genocidal rampage against Shifters and Lycanthropes throughout the continent of Khorvaire?
Oh, you done had to drag the Silver Flame into this...
The Silver Flame is often misunderstood, and often misrepresented by authors within canon sources. it is not supposed to mirror any religion in our world, because Eberron ISN'T our world. Eberron is a world where we know
as fact that there are shapeshifting fiends manipulating humanity, that vampires thirst for mortal blood, that there are hordes of aberrations just below our feet, waiting to burst out of Khyber and slaughter the innocent. The purpose of the Silver Flame is, first and foremost, to
protect the innocent from supernatural evil. The Silver Flame isn't a "god" in the traditional sense; it's a pool of celestial power that only affects the world by empowering those who seek to protect the innocent.
The Lycanthropic Purge was based on the 3.0 rules for lycanthropy; what later canon has established, as shown in the timeline posted earlier in the thread, is that these rules
were in effect at that time. Under those rules, an afflicted lycanthrope could spread the affliction, which creates the possibility of an exponential infection: one werewolf bites two people, they each bite two people, they each bite two people, and before you know it the Five Nations is overrun. It also emphasized that not only did the
curse — and it was called out as a curse — force an alignment change, but that it was an EXTREME alignment shift. Evil lycanthropes are driven to murder and to prey on the innocent, even preying on their former friends and family.
And that includes shifter lycanthropes. The shifters feared evil lycanthropes as much as anyone, and in fact understood the threat better than any templar. Shifters and templars
should have been allies; but cunning wererats spread the rumors that all shifters were lycanthropes or at least sympathetic to them, staging attacks on templars to drive this home (as some shifters WERE lycanthropes, after all!). And even good-aligned lycanthropes were called out as being driven to abandon civilization for the wilds. If contracting lycanthropy simply meant gaining a bunch of superpowers, everyone would WANT it. The conclusion of the Keeper was that the curse, in forcing its alignment shift, "corrupted the soul itself."
So the point is this: when the Silver Crusade was declared, lycanthropy was a real, potentially existential threat to the Five Nations. The Crusade lasted for
decades, because initially the odds favored the 'thropes. Bear in mind that the typical templar was a 1st or 2nd level
warrior. Take a commoner or warrior and add a 3.0 lycanthrope template. Set aside that a single 'thrope is more than a match for a few templars, one good bite is all it takes to spread the infection. It's not that the church had no sympathy for the infected, but rather that they lacked the RESOURCES to make curing all infected a real possibility; and again, at the start this was a desperate, bloody struggle, not one where the templars could AFFORD to try to take their enemies alive.
Eventually the tide turned, and ultimately the power of the curse was broken. Afflicted 'thropes could no longer spread the affliction themselves. But by this time, the people of western Aundair had lived through decades of terror, and hatred and a thirst for revenge brought out the worst in them. This was the origin of the Pure Flame, and it was these zealots who carried out the brutal persecution over the final decade. This was a time of paranoia and cruelty. But again: the Crusade
began as an act of selfless heroism, with templars throwing themselves against a deadly foe to protect people who didn't even share their beliefs. Through their actions they saved the people of Aundair, and possibly the entire Five Nations. The Crusade ENDED in a decade of cruelty and persecution in which many innocents died, an inquisition fueled by the worst elements of humanity. But if not for the templars, Galifar might have fallen to primal savagery. Now, it's also true that the Keeper recognized it as an opportunity to spread the faith, and it was. But this didn't change the fact that the templars who put their lives on the line were doing it to help innocents... or the fact that the converts that Keeper Sol won for the faith became the nucleus of a vicious extremist sect that casts a shadow on the church to this day.
The whole point of Eberron is that there aren't always easy answers, and that stories don't always end well. The Silver Crusade embodies this idea. It began as a truly noble quest; it ended in cruelty and innocent deaths. It's not supposed to be entirely good or entirely evil; it's imperfect.
