War and Religion

It is so terribly sad that flawed assumptions are allowed so often to tarnish the image of religion. This is one reason why I wrote Why Religions Work. "Why they don't work, more like," I hear quite a few people say, and they dismiss the book with a sneer. Just look at the world and all the wars- that's why they don't work, someone said recently.
One of the most common reasons given for not wanting anything to do with religion is that religions cause most of our wars. But do they?
Excuses abound for war and violence without any need for religion at all! The religions’ historian, Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God, shows us that wars are more about greed, envy and ambition, cloaked perhaps in religious rhetoric to give them ‘respectability’. And they can certainly be fueled by religious difference. But we are also attached to too many possessions, and Aidan Rankin in his book Many-Sided Wisdom: A New Politics of the Spirit claims that it is this attachment, rather than religion per se, that is the cause of so many wars that are too often blamed exclusively on religion.
It is true that many conflicts are fought over geographical boundaries, hypothetical lines drawn on maps, although religious passions do run deep when that land or property is sacred. For many people the religious Crusades come first to mind. Yes they were bloody, and the reasons behind them enormously complex; basically they were great military expeditions undertaken by the Christian nations of Europe for the purpose of rescuing the holy places of Palestine from the hands of the Mohammedans. But here again we are talking about the fight for possession of land and property.
In Gustav Niebuhr’s book Beyond Tolerance, he refers to a night in 1993 when there were 40 wars going on in the world, but on analysis most of them were fueled rather than caused by religion.
However, it is indisputable that we now live in a more perilous world than those of us who are children of the 1950s could possibly have foreseen. There are more wars worldwide than ever before. It is true that in the Western world many of us have experienced unbroken peace since the end of the Second World War. But we can no longer ignore the wider global picture. In those terms the future is bleaker, with so much war and civil unrest and dreadful violence obvious from our daily news, And we all see current atrocities on our TV screens where religious hatred is cited as a cause. But sadly and worryingly it is too often the case that politics is masquerading as religion, the faith differences being used for political purposes, and it is true that religious fundamentalism/extremism is often implicated. But a moment’s reflection tells us that hunger, injustice, inequalities and tyrant dictators also play a significant part in most unrest today. We witnessed in 2011 the most extraordinary events that have been collectively called the Arab Spring. Were not these uprisings more about injustice and inequality and tyrannical rule than about religion? It is quite likely that wars of the future will be similarly caused. Researchers have also found that environmental shifts are already contributing to war and strife and we can expect further displacement of refugees through climate change in the future that will threaten peace in the areas affected. The adverse effects of climate change could easily deliver the knockout punch if there are serious social inequalities which cause tensions waiting to be sparked into action.
The fact is that religions are social capital writ large, of vital significance to the vast majority of the world's population, 

and they work tirelessly to address the causes of so many of these tensions.

So perhaps instead of endlessly debating the role of religion in past and indeed current wars we should concentrate on how the religious – and for that matter atheists and humanists – can peaceably coexist. This needs respect, based on understanding, which can only be achieved through education. Remember the common features of most if not all faiths: the Golden Rule of loving our neighbors as ourselves; the rules that call for universal love and that forbid killing; the common concern for Creation; the notion of hospitality.

I shall look at the the whole issue of religious fundamentalism and extremism in more detail in a later post.
Meanwhile see in this respect the report in the Independent , February 21st, and a related editorial from the Barnabas Fund, of the speech given by Baroness Warsi, the UK Coalition's Minister for Faith, during a recent trip to the Middle East. 

See also this article re. wars and religion or this blog and also Jimmy Akin who has quite a few words to say about this issue.

And please read the book before dismissing religion with an ill informed sneer! 

What do we mean by tolerance?

Here's a story:
If someone is making what I consider to be a huge din next door, playing loud pop “music” that I find disturbing, I may put up with it or I may bang on the wall between us, ask him to turn it down. I am tolerating his noise, or perhaps not. And that is what tolerance is; putting up with something. But supposing he wasn’t really playing his music that loud; just that I prefer Mozart and find that his type of music doesn’t speak to me in the same way. How is he to know that? So I go next door and speak with him. Suppose I tried to understand why he enjoys what to me is anathema. Suppose he comes to understand that I am writing, and there are times when I need quiet for concentration and for thinking. And let’s suppose that through dialogue we can come to a mutual accommodation. He’ll try to turn his music down on the days and times when he knows I am working at my laptop, perhaps close his window. I may never appreciate his musical taste, but I can respect it. I now know that this is his type of release when he gets home from work, an essential part of him “winding-down.” Of course none of us should have to tolerate antisocial behaviour within the norms of society, and neither of us intended to be anti-social! But I’ve discovered through dialogue that he’s not too keen on my bonfires either, because they don’t help his asthma. And we have built up a mutual respect through the dialogue we had, because actually now I know him better he’s a pleasant guy – I’d been a little nervous about him before we talked - and I’ve found we do share a passion for growing our own vegetables and for reading books on spirituality! Respect and understanding achieved through dialogue is much more powerful than mere tolerance.

The Dalai Lama once suggested to a multifaith audience that they should go on pilgrimages with each other, to each other’s holy sites, where they should pray together or at least meditate together. “This is a very effective way to understand the value and power of other religious traditions,” he said.

Gustav Niebuhr, great nephew of Reinhold Niebuhr, calls for an end to what he calls the “rough trade in raw insults” between religions, for example as seen so often on the Internet, and agrees that we need more than mere tolerance; we need a more committed effort to really get to know and respect our religious differences, he writes, to recognize that we can all learn from others, to understand that whatever those differences we are all of equal worth and value across class, race, ethnicity and religion. Respect, a warm acceptance, a mindfulness of everyone’s role in society, is called for, akin to the teachings of Gandhi on tolerance, respect and ahimsa.

So isn’t it just a little demeaning to talk of religious tolerance? Tolerance will never be the full answer. We should be talking in terms of respect, understanding, acceptance, appreciation. Mere tolerance is simply not enough.

And that respect and understanding is only going to come from dialogue between faiths.

9/11 and the media

The other day I wrote about media bias against religion and mentioned Gustav Niebuhr’s excellent book Beyond Tolerance: How People across America are Building Bridges Between Faiths.
Writing about the aftermath of 9/11, Niebuhr tells us that the media misrepresented what happened. The fact is, he writes, American people wanted to preserve humane community after that dreadful event, to look after the vulnerable, to show neighborliness, to demonstrate however they could by their actions that they were all in this together, not pitching one against another as the subsequently declared “war on terror” implies. Niebuhr writes that what was needed from the leaders was a social and intellectual response, as much as a military one. Those who died at 9/11 deserved a monument dedicated to life and hope, he wrote, not a “war on terror.” So many individuals showed responsibility after that event to maintain their communities. How much of that was covered by the media?

Interfaith week and media bias - again!

Did you know we have just come to the end of Interfaith week? No, I didn’t either. There is an International version, World Interfaith Harmony Week, in the first week in February, and I'd love to hear about any similar American initiatives. But for England, Wales and Northern Ireland Interfaith Week this year was November 20th to 26th, and in Scotland it will be November 27th to December 4th!

It wasn’t until I read a fairly muted piece in The Times on Friday about the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks confessing to politicians and Jewish communal leaders at the Scottish Parliament that he finds Christmas carols uplifting, that I discovered, way down towards the end of the item, the fact that “leaders of all faiths” have been celebrating this week as Interfaith Week.

Why on earth hasn’t the media given it more prominence? OK I know there has been lots more going on in the world this week that has attracted the attention of the journalists; not least the attacks on their own kind by the Leveson inquiry on the behaviour of the UK media in hunting down sensitive stories and converting them into the sensational, at the expense of the victims. But why on earth didn’t I know about it from my church activities? I would have incorporated it into my intercessions I prepared for the service last Sunday had I known. And I read quite widely, listen to the news regularly, spend time researching faith issues.

Of course the media trades in bad news, not good. And interfaith initiatives are good news for society. Any interfaith activities that promote dialogue and understanding and respect between them have to be a good thing in promoting a peaceful future for us all.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said to be close to the Chief Rabbi, is quoted in The Times as saying that “One of the things we have cause to be grateful for in this country (1) is the warmth and spontaneity of relationships between leaders in the faith communities.” “Lord Sacks, as quoted in the same article, told the Jewish Telegraph: “The big challenge is to bring the news to the public that the different faith groups get along together and enjoy being part of the British culture.” Williams is further quoted as saying that such relationships are “rare” in the modern world and something to be grateful for. “In history, religious identity has sometimes been the cause of rivalry.” That seems like a masterful understatement and ingenuous comment coming from such a fine intellect. I quote from what he went on to say:
"The point is though that although we have a history that is sometimes one of conflict and rivalry, we have begun slowly but steadily to develop that much richer vision which allows us to say we help one another to be human in our difference. And because our religious identities are not just something that affects one little part of our lives but something that has to do with the most profound and definitive relationships that we have, our relationship to God, to reality, that surely is a reason for not seeing our religious belonging, our religious identity, as ever in competition with other things but rather as the context in which all our thinking, all our loving and all our hoping takes place." and I strongly recommend that his speech is read in it entirety.

Now why couldn't The Times have put across something of that fuller message? Sacks is right. Getting the news to the public will indeed be a big challenge as long as our media continue to be biased against religion in their reporting.

(1) And this extends to America. In an excellent book by Gustav Niebuhr, Beyond Tolerance: How People across America are Building Bridges Between Faiths, he describes in some considerable detail the many initiatives being taken in this respect. (See my blog for August 22nd for review).

Religions cause most of our wars. Do they?

Religions cause most of our wars. Do they? This is one of the most common reasons people give me for not wanting anything to do with religion; but is it true?

According to Karen Armstrong, the religions historian, in her book The Case for God, wars are more about greed, envy and ambition, cloaked perhaps in religious rhetoric to give them “respectability.” We are attached to too many possessions, and Aidan Rankin in Many-Sided Wisdom: A New Politics of the Spirit, also claims that it is this attachment, rather than religion per se, that is the cause of so many wars that are too often blamed exclusively on religion.
Most people when questioned on this mention The Crusades. Yes they were bloody; they were great military expeditions undertaken by the Christian nations of Europe for the purpose of rescuing the holy places of Palestine from the hands of the Mohammedans. But here again we are talking about the fight for possession of land and property.
After reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s tour de force, A History of Christianity, it is clear that the reasons for the crusades were enormously complex, but I think I may still be tentatively persuaded by the views of Armstrong and Rankin. In Gustav Niebuhr’s book Beyond Tolerance, he refers to a night in 1993 when there were forty wars going on in the world, but most of them were fuelled rather than caused by religion.
In any event, yesterday’s behaviour should not necessarily colour our actions today. Surely we should be able to learn from the past, be more mature in our thinking and learn to enter dialogue before resorting to violence? Shouldn’t we have grown up? Perhaps we should be receptive to the teachings of Buddhism on the principle of non-attachment.

Now religion or no, today on the News I hear that researchers have linked wars to El Nino! We know that displacement of refugees through climate change may threaten peace in the future, but “Environmental shifts are already causing wars, argues a team of experts in a new paper in Nature published this month.

Of course, the weather shifts weren't the only reason for the conflict. But in a statement the authors of the research point out: "if you have social inequality, people are poor, and there are underlying tensions, it seems possible that climate can deliver the knockout punch."

I think it was Jonathan Sacks who wrote that excuses abound for war and violence without any need for religion at all! And these tensions of social inequality, poverty and hunger are potent fuels for unrest and war.

We have witnessed this year the most extraordinary events that have been collectively called The Arab Spring. Were not these uprisings more about injustice and inequality and tyrannical rule than religion?

Anne Frank, in spite of the terrible experiences she suffered at the hands of the Nazis in the Second World War wrote in her famous Diary, ‘Despite everything…people are really good at heart.’

If man is essentially good, why then is there so much violence in the world?
Anthony de Mello, an Indian Jesuit Priest and psychotherapist who lived during the middle years of the twentieth century, wrote many best selling albeit sometimes controversial books on Christianity and spirituality. He writes succinctly on the cause of the violence of war:

"Do you know where wars come from? They come from projecting outside of us the conflict that is inside. Show me an individual in whom there is no inner self-conflict and I'll show you an individual in whom there is no violence. There will be effective, even hard, action in him, but no hatred. When he acts, he acts as a surgeon acts; when he acts, he acts as a loving teacher acts with mentally retarded children. You don't blame them, you understand; but you swing into action. On the other hand, when you swing into action with your own hatred and your own violence un-addressed, you've compounded the error. You've tried to put fire out with more fire. You've tried to deal with a flood by adding water to it." (1)

In an essay entitled “The Root of War is Fear,” with a self-evident title, another Jesuit priest, Thomas Merton, tells us that our hatred of ourselves is more dangerous than our hatred of others, because we project our own evil onto others and we do not see it in ourselves. (2)

And Friedrich Nietzsche blames war and violence on the absence of religion. ‘God is Dead,’ he famously wrote in 1882. (3) We had, he said, lost our religion, our faith and our soul, to rationalism, scientific thought and Darwinism. This loss, he predicted, would be the cause of the awful wars that we did indeed subsequently experience in the twentieth century, ‘wars such as have never happened on earth.’ And this he attributed to our fundamental human need for a God to absolve us of our guilt. Without the comfort of this absolution and still guilt-ridden, we would go on to develop barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods, resulting in the robbery and exploitation of other human beings not of our own fraternity. Does this sound familiar?

1. De Mello, Anthony, Awareness: the Perils and Opportunities of Reality, New York: Image Doubleday, 1992, p.182. Cited by Alastair McIntosh in ‘Cold War Psychohistory in the Scottish Psyche,’ internet version

2. Thomas Merton, 1972 Thomas Merton: New Seeds of Contemplation, New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation 1972, pp. 112, 122 and Chapter 16 ‘The Root of War is Fear.’

3. Nietzsche, Friedrich, from Die Frohliche Wissenschaft, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) paragraph 125 Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82, sourced on internet. Also The Gay Science (Philosophical Classics) Friedrich Nietzsche with Thomas Common (Translator)(New York: Dover Publications, 2006)

Religious persecution - let's build bridges between faiths

Stories of religious persecution too often seem to take back stage to all the other demands on media time – the economy, health care, political issues of the day. But a short search across the Web soon brings up numerous examples of appalling religious persecution going on here and now across the globe; Muslims persecuting Christians, Christians persecuting Muslims, the persecution of Jews, etc. (Just a few stories and resources are given below). And it seems that whilst many of us have our deeply held prejudices and often inaccurate assumptions about religions, we are too often simply unaware of the individual and very human stories of suffering and tragedy at the hands of persecutors that are being acted out at this moment. Few will then give any further thought in their daily lives as to what they could themselves contribute to alleviating the misery of so many.

This is a hugely important issue. Not only do we diminish ourselves as human beings if we fail to care for the plight of our fellow beings. Religious persecution of course threatens our whole future security on this planet. And is it so very difficult to offer a hand of friendship and hospitality to a fellow human whatever his faith, color or culture?

There is a wonderful story in the Sep/Oct 2011 issue of Sojourners, of American Christian hospitality to Muslims awaiting completion of their own mosque. In Peace Be Upon Them - A Tennessee church welcomes its Muslim neighbors, author Bob Smietana writes:
“Two years ago, the pastor of Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee, on the outskirts of Memphis, learned that a local mosque had bought property right across the street from the church. So he decided some Southern hospitality was in order.
A few days later, a sign appeared in front of the church. "Heartsong Church welcomes Memphis Islamic Center to the neighborhood," it read.
That small act of kindness was the start of an unlikely friendship between the two congregations, one that made headlines around the world. Members of the mosque and church have shared meals together, worked at a homeless shelter, and become friends over the past two years. When Stone learned that his Muslim friends needed a place to pray for Ramadan because their building wasn't ready, he opened up the doors of the church and let them hold Ramadan prayers there….. and so on – I recommend the whole article to my reader.

I recently finished reading the latest book by Gustav Niebuhr, the great nephew of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of America’s most distinguished theologians.Beyond Tolerance: How People Across America Are Building Bridges Between Faiths is a reprint edition of his book published just a year previously.
I posted my review on Amazon from which I quote below.

This is such an interesting, well- researched and important book on such a vital topic; it always saddens me that gems such as this seem to command relatively little interest as compared with the mass of best selling trivia so widely available. We should all care more about the serious issues that are going to affect the future of our families and our world.
Here we have a serious call for us to use our religious differences to forge peace rather than inspire hatred. Gustav Niebuhr calls for an end to what he calls the “rough trade in raw insults” between religions, for example as seen so often on the internet, and says that we need more than mere tolerance; we need a more committed effort to really get to know and respect our religious differences, to recognize that we can all learn from others, to understand that whatever those differences we are all of equal worth and value across class, race, ethnicity and religion. Respect, a warm acceptance, a mindfulness of everyone’s role in society, is called for, akin to the teachings of Gandhi on tolerance, respect and ahimsa.
Despite what much of the media would have us believe, we are seeing an increase in those who want to use our religious diversities constructively, to work towards a better future for us all. Indeed in 2004 there were apparently more than 1000 such organisations in the US building co-operative inter-religious bridges, and this number continues to grow rapidly. Neibuhr charts the history of some of the most significant of these initiatives to illustrate what has been and still can be done.
He tackles some tricky areas often seen as blocks to any real inter faith co-operation and explains why and how these may be overcome: for example the truth claims of the different religions; the history of the Christian view of salvation and the perceived need to evangelise and convert those of other faiths; the historically difficult relationship between Jews and Christians. We are told that in the US and elsewhere, and contrary to popular perception, those who think that only their religion is the ultimate truth are now in the minority. We are all made in God’s image and God must therefore surely want us all to work together and respect each other – and most if not all beliefs call for the love of neighbour regardless of tribe, race or nation; the so called Golden Rule.
Niebuhr cautions us to look beyond the media bias against inter-religious dialogues. He shows us that so much good work is going on at local level but that the media prefer to report on the bad and negative aspects of faith. In particular he gives evidence of US media bias against Muslims. He provides plenty of illustrative stories of cross religion initiatives, of religions coming together to serve others, of co-operating on social projects, sharing places of worship, assisting with rebuilding programmes of mosques, churches, synagogues, etc., as well as promoting dialogue. And he writes in some detail of the overlaps between our faiths seen for example in our teachings on compassion and hospitality.

We have to choose dialogue not violence. We have to believe, and have hope, the author writes, that human communication can matter. After all, denouncing religion is futile, and anyway our different traditions provide life -giving possibilities if we allow them to. Those who died on 9/11 deserve a monument dedicated to life and hope, not a war on terror. We have our basic humanity in common, we are all created by the same God in His image, and as per Isaiah 56:7, “mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”
This important book goes a long way to help us understand just how much is going on in our communities towards inter-religious tolerance and understanding and how much more we can still do, with the potential for the force of ideas to counter the force of arms. The message throughout the book is that a bottom up approach is needed, driven by individuals. Our policies and laws can only do so much towards holding our societies together.
This is, as the strap line of the title makes clear, primarily about religion in America, where it is a source of public identity for many. But the interest in this book should not be so confined – the issues are, after all, global.
I like the way the final bibliography is sorted between the different categories of source material, a recent trend reflecting the range of such material that is now so readily available. There are some duplications of information within the text, and I found disconcerting the way the text sometimes jumped around in some chronological confusion – evidence of some late cutting and pasting of the manuscript perhaps! But this is a small point when measured against the importance of this interesting and well- researched book.
This should be compulsory reading and on the book- shelf of all those who have an interest in furthering peaceful relationship between faiths, for the building of a healed and better world for us all.


Other resources/stories - although of course beware any media bias!
http://persecutionblog.com/ weblog on Christian persecution
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pastor-in-iran-awaits-decision-on-execution-53249/

The Iranian government continues its persecution of Iran's Baha'i community http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials/More-Religious-Persecution-In-Iran-128021093.html  
from which I quote:
“State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland recently voiced concern over the persecution of religious minorities in Iran: "While Iran's leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass, and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing," said Ms. Nuland. "We join the international community in continuing to call on the Iranian government to respect the fundamental rights of all its citizens and uphold its international commitments to protect them."”



http://www.christianpost.com/topics/persecution/
gives many stories of church persecution across globe
for example:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/iran-seizes-6500-bibles-to-stop-deceiving-christian-missionaries-54076/

http://www.christianpost.com/news/girl-in-uganda-loses-use-of-legs-after-leaving-islam-for-christ-54057/

http://www.christianpost.com/news/nepals-churches-live-under-threat-discrimination-54261/

http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-assulted-for-watching-jesus-film-near-bin-ladens-compound-54019/

and from Wikipedia on the persecution of Muslims “In January 2010, a report from the University of Exeter's European Muslim research centre noted that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes has increased, ranging from "death threats and murder to persistent low-level assaults, such as spitting and name-calling," for which the media and politicians have been blamed with fueling anti-Muslim hatred.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims


http://thepersecution-org.blogspot.com/ 
on The Persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community