Does Christianity Cause War?
Nick Megoran Thursday, 13 November 2008
The story is told of an Englishman attending a conference in Belfast who, on returning to his hotel late at night, is stopped by a group of angry young men with baseball bats. They ask him whether he is Catholic or Protestant. Unsure of the local landscape, he decides it is intelligent to hedge his bets and so replies, ‘atheist.' They pause for a moment, then one of them asks, ‘Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?'
The enduring link between religion and violence is one of the main reasons, in my experience, why people reject Christianity. It is certainly one of the strongest arguments in Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. Citing various passages of the Bible, he describes the book of Joshua as "a text remarkable for the bloodthirsty massacres it records and the xenophobic relish with which it does so."[1] No less an authority than the musician Sir Elton John said religion, turns people into "hateful lemmings" and added that he would "ban religion completely."[2]
As a scholar largely preoccupied with the study of war and conflict, I regard the implication of religion in violence as the greatest intellectual challenge to the claim that God exists. Unfortunately, we don't need to search hard to find ample illustrations. The Crusades and the Protestant-Catholic wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries are well known. And in numerous European and U.S. wars over the past centuries, Christianity has been invoked by political leaders or participants. It occurs repeatedly in texts and speeches justifying European and American expansion around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Jesus commanded Christians to love their enemies—but one would never have guessed as much from the conduct of those claiming to be his followers!
Religion's involvement in historical violence is apparent. However, I do not accept the conclusion that Dawkins and others reach—that the world would be more peaceful if religion in general and, of relevance for this article, Christianity in particular, didn't exist—as following logically from it. I will explain here why I consider their conclusion to be inadequate. First, I will address some general arguments made by these critics and turn a critical spotlight on atheism's problematic relationship to war, then explore what I consider to be the peaceable core of Christianity itself, before concluding with historical examples that more authentically reflect Christianity to be what the apostle Paul calls ‘the gospel of peace.'
Religion, Irreligion, and War
In view of historical examples implicating religions with violence, why should we not accept Dawkins' conclusions that religion causes irrational violence, and simply agree with him that atheism is preferable?
His argument assumes three things: that religion is one of the primary causes of war, that by jettisoning it we would have less war, and that atheism is inherently more peaceable. Each of these assumptions is contestable.
First, religion as the primary cause of war is not verifiable from the historical record. Warfare, as an organized social practice (as distinct from individual acts of violence), seems to have preceded the development of great world faiths, and to be overwhelmingly the outcome of competition for control of resources. In his summary of the material, respected historian of war John Keegan concludes that the archaeological evidence from Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia shows that the earliest appearances of fixed defensive sites correlate to the first agricultural sites.[3] When hunter-gatherers settled and planted crops, these became a target for other hunter-gatherers, resources that did not exist prior to agriculture. War thus began as a way to secure wealth, the resources of others, and to protect one's own wealth. We know that, for all their talk about civilization, a major rationale for the rise and endurance of European empires in the 19th century was the extraction of wealth from other parts of the world. In our day, many wars are fought over resources. If the main export of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia was dates rather than oil, would the U.S. have invested such heavy military resources in the region over the past two decades?
Today, nationalism—the struggle for the resource of territory that is seen as so vital to a nation—seems to be more important than religion. Academic theologians certainly engage in passionate debate over doctrine. However, ‘Catholic' and ‘Protestant' terrorists in Northern Ireland were not fighting over abstract theological and ecclesiastical issues such as the doctrine of grace or the authority of the Pope vis-à-vis church councils; they fought primarily for territory and the constitutional question of whose land is Ulster. Likewise, Al Qaeda's wars appear justified as a global military jihad, but in their local manifestations they are often more about patriotic resistance to invasion: Chechens resisting Russians, Iraqis resisting Americans. As Meic Pearse argues, wars are seldom (if at all) mono-causal; religion may be used to justify them, but is rarely the main cause. If religion was suddenly removed from the equation, it is unlikely that the frequency of wars would decrease.[4]
This second atheist assumption—that jettisoning religion would reduce war—is difficult to prove. In fact, religion often serves to suppress wars. Ghenghis Khan was reported to have said that "The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters." Religions such as Christianity and Islam developed codes of war that opposed such a spirit, arguing that wars should only be fought in self-defense and to right injustices. Medieval Christian ‘just war theory' curtailed the right of rulers to make war only in the instance of rectifying an injustice, and imposed limits on the way that war could be fought. It insisted that all who took part had to undertake acts of penance when the war was concluded.[5] In movements like the 11th century ‘Peace of God' and ‘Truce of God', certain days of the week, holy festivals, and seasons were identified when warfare was forbidden. The thrust of this tradition was that war was inglorious and undesirable, a last resort to maintain a just order in an imperfect world.
Many theologians at the time did not recognize this limited accommodation to warfare as authentically Christian. Nonetheless, from the earliest times to the Middle Ages, the repeated criticism of Christianity was that it suppressed the ability of people to engage in warfare. In the 2nd century, the pagan writer Celsus complained that widespread adoption of the Christian faith would leave the Roman empire defenseless; in the 16th century Machiavelli bewailed the fact that in his time "most men think more of going to heaven by enduring their injuries than by avenging them", and that "the arts of war" were thus being lost. The existence of modern conventions outlawing certain armaments (like chemical weapons) and practices (such as deliberately attacking civilians, or executing enemy prisoners), however imperfectly applied, are the offspring of a tradition of Christian thought. If religion, and Christianity in particular, had not existed, the martial spirit would have been less suppressed.[6]
Third and finally, Dawkins assumes that atheism is inherently more peaceable than religion. That is not clear theoretically: if people are simply matter rather than beings made in the image of God and of limitless value to him, it is not clear why their lives are worth preserving. Historically, the most destructive wars have been in the last two centuries. This is not merely because populations are larger and technology more destructive, although that certainly plays a role. The most destructive wars, from the French Revolution and its imperial aftermath to the First and Second World Wars, have been waged to a significant extent by secularists or atheists. Cambodia's killing fields and Stalin's terror-famines were mass slaughters orchestrated by atheists in the name of an atheist doctrine. In reviewing Dawkins' The God Delusion, for The New York Review of Books, H. Orr says, "Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual facts that (1) the 20th century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before."[7]
Christianity and Warfare
Though warfare is associated with Christianity, it has rarely been the main cause of war, and the problematic record of atheism and secularism does not promise a better alternative. But I also want to make the case that Christianity, as it is rightly understood and practiced, is the very essence of peace and the greatest antidote to violence in history.
Grasping the distinction between Christianity as rightly or wrongly understood and practiced is key. Some may retort that such a distinction is spurious because Christianity, like any worldview, is open to multiple interpretations. It is undoubtedly true that Christianity is open to numerous readings, but it is not open to innumerable readings. As a belief system that is subject to the scrutiny of an established canon of scripture, traditions, and practices of interpretation (focused on an historical founder), Christianity has authoritative points of reference to which all interpretations of it are ultimately subject. Jesus Christ himself told his followers that they must be ‘salt' in the world—that is, a relatively small quantity in a larger mix that acts disproportionately to purify and give taste—but that that salt could ‘lose its saltiness' and so become useless, worth only throwing away.[8] When the church encourages and foments warfare, it loses its saltiness. But that is not what Jesus intended.
As I read it, the Bible teaches us that we were made by a God who is ‘good' and who intends humans to live in relationships with each other. These relationships ought to mirror his character as we live peaceably and unselfishly with each other. However, humanity has clearly not achieved this, and war is perhaps the ugliest and starkest example of such a breakdown in relationships. The theological expression for this at the most general level is ‘sin'. The Biblical narrative is one of God's work in history to restore these relationships. He sent prophets and teachers who provided guidance and moral frameworks, but the climax was sending his son, Jesus, whom, the Bible teaches, lived a (perfect) human life, died on the cross and rose again. He did this to reconcile the world to himself—to take the punishment that the human race deserves for all its wrongdoing, forgive us, and thus re-open the possibility of restored relationships with God and each other, renewing humanity.
The language that the Bible uses so often to describe this is ‘peace'. As the apostle Paul, one of the most important writers of the New Testament and founders of the early church, put it in his letter to the Ephesians, Jesus is ‘our peace', who made peace by his death on the cross and his resurrection. Paul exhorts the believers to ‘live at peace with everyone', and calls the Christian message ‘the Gospel of peace'. What did he mean? The foundation of Christianity is that humans can know ‘peace with God' and be restored to that relationship for which we were created.
This has significant social and political consequences. The Bible asserts that the Church, the body of all believers, is God's visible demonstration of what he has done and is doing. What amazes the apostle Paul in his letters is that the church has broken down social divisions between people—men and women, rich and poor, and in particular national enemies, in his case ‘Jew and gentile'—and all are united together in Jesus Christ, part of a new, essential, fundamental grouping. Peter calls this a holy nation, an ‘ethnos', or ethnic group—the church.
Whereas secular nationalism depends upon processes of exclusion and separation, this ‘holy nation' is open to everyone to join, and those who become its ‘enemies', who persecute it, are not to be hated and fought, but loved and blessed. Jesus overcame his enemies by his death, defeated them in his dying love for them, and set Christians the same example to follow.
The early church was Jewish and grew amid an oppressive and degrading colonial occupation, where people were waiting for a military ‘Messiah' to overthrow hated Roman rule and establish a peaceable commonwealth. The Jewish nation of Jesus' time was heading inexorably for armed revolt: numerous localised uprisings and acts of resistance culminated in a wholesale revolt in AD 66. Yet the first personally-identified non-Jewish convert was a Roman officer, Cornelius![9] Jesus explicitly forbade his followers from acting violently against their enemies. The church was to be a body of peacemakers, concerned with justice and righteousness, with an internationalist ethic that reflected the unity of humanity as envisaged by its creator.
In his assessment of how Christianity spread so rapidly in the early church, historian Robin Lane Fox says it proclaimed an attractive message that spoke to the weak points of Roman culture. One weakness was a penchant for violence. At a time when war and violence were seen as the norm, the Christian gospel of peacemaking was immensely attractive. Its practices of national reconciliation, ethno-social inclusivity, rescuing unwanted children from infanticide, the refusal to allow its members to serve in the military, the rejection of gladiatorial games, and the like, constituted a striking practical ethic of life in a culture that normalised and even celebrated death.[10]
The church was established as a body intended to provide a glimpse of what renewed humanity will look like when Christ returns at the end of human history. When he does, according to the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church, then all war and sorrow and pain will end as death is finally and irrevocably overcome and the world is made anew. In the meantime, the church is to live in the light of that and demonstrate its reality. As Rev. Dick Sheppard put it in 1924, "Love in its highest manifestation is the richest, most persuasive, loveliest, nicest thing God has to offer ... This love which comes of God through Jesus Christ is the only weapon we need."[11]
Examples of Christian Peacemaking
When Christians forget the call to be a transnational body of peacemakers, and justify wars or allow their members to participate in violence, they ‘lose their saltiness'. But three examples below demonstrate how peace-making Christians can transform the world.
First, in a study for the Oxford Research Group in 2001, Dylan Matthews surveyed 50 cases of effective peace action by non-state organizations. Examples were taken from all over the world, and included work done on conflict prevention, containment, de-escalation, and reconciliation. All of them were non-violent. In his own analysis, the author says one of the ‘remarkable' findings was that nearly half the interventions were carried out by people with some spiritual (mostly Christian) basis for their activities. He considers this surprising, as religion played no part in the selection process of examples. For Christians, however, this should not be unexpected. Christianity provides strong theological grounds for insisting that peace in its fullest sense is possible, and has at its heart the mandate for all Christians to be peacemakers.[12]
Second, Soviet archives recently opened to historians have shown that the decision by Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War was influenced by thinkers close to the Soviet politburo who had been part of networks of Eastern bloc and Western bloc Christians and scientists. These networks had questioned the geopolitical antagonism and argued that coexistence was possible. Until then, the Soviet Union believed that war with the capitalist West was inevitable, and its military and economic planning prepared for this. Through these networks, Gorbachev was exposed to, and persuaded by, the idea that co-existence was possible, and thus decided to negotiate arms reductions with the U.S., withdraw his troops from Afghanistan, and allow the Soviet Union's Eastern European allies/satellites to chose their own political destinies. Other factors were certainly at play, including the economic difficulties of the Soviet economy and a rise in nationalist sentiment in the Union's constitutive republics. But nonetheless, Christians played an important role and acted as ‘salt' to defuse the most dangerous military stand-off in world history.[13]
Finally, one of my heroes is Andre Trocmé. One of the most remarkable episodes of World War II occurred in the French village of Le Chambon, of whose Protestant church Trocmé was pastor. Before the war, he set up an international school that taught children the radical ethic of non-violent Christian discipleship, a way of life he also inculcated to his parishioners through teaching in the church. When the war came, because he despised fascist brutality, he led the surrounding area in resisting first Vichy France and then the Nazis. He did not accomplish this by joining the armed resistance, whose methods he also considered contrary to the teaching of Christ. Rather, moving from symbolic resistance to active organization, he helped create an extensive system to protect and conceal Jewish refugees. Jews came to them from all over France and occupied Europe—including Germany. The people of Le Chambon saved the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands. Trocmé survived the war, including time spent in a prison camp and on the run from the Gestapo, to become an important figure in post-war Franco-German reconciliation, which laid the foundations of the European Union as an entity, ending the cycle of Franco-German conflict that had caused three massive wars in less than a century.[14]
Conclusion
I began this article by considering historical cases of Christian bellicosity and Dawkins' assertions regarding religion's role in historical violence. The juxtaposition of violent examples with those of Christian peacemaking illustrate the key argument of this article. When the church forgets its call to radical peacemaking, then it ‘loses its saltiness' and may indeed contribute to violence. But when it remembers it, it can be a remarkably transformative agent for peace.
That is not to say that this is easy. As the sorry histories of atheism and secularism, in both democratic and non-democratic variations, show, humanity's best dreams and hopes can turn horribly sour. Due to its origins and the nature of its authoritative points of reference, Christianity provides more solid and practical resources for suppressing the military spirit in a negative sense, and making peace in a positive one. This claim is not made complacently. As a scholar of conflict, I am painfully aware that the historical intersections of Christianity and violence prevent any glibness. Rather, they should provoke Christians to reflect on the errors made and to explore ways to practice the faith more authentically.
It is not easy to be peacemakers in a world of war, with all the passions it inflames. The 19th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, wrote that Christianity is not hard to understand: ‘love your enemies' is so simple that even a child can understand it. No, what is difficult, he said, is to put it into practice. The church's historic testimony is that God has equipped Christians—including scholars—for this task, and he has called them to pursue peace in their communities and abroad.
[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. (London: Black Swan, 2007), 280.
[2] "Sir Elton: Ban organised religion" BBC News, 12 November 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6140710.stm (Accessed 13 November 2008).
[3] John Keegan, War and Our World. (London: Random, 1998), ch. 2, "The Origins of War".
[4] Meic Pearse, The Gods of War. (Nottingham: IVP 2007).
[5] Darrell Cole, "Just war, penance, and the church", Pro Ecclesia 11, no. 3 (2002), 313-328; O. O'Donovan, Just War Revisited. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
[6] This argument, and the examples of Celsus and Machiavelli, are largely taken from Pearce's book, ibid.
[7] H. Allen Orr, "A Mission to convert", The New York Review of Books 54, no. 1 (2007), www.nyrb.com (Accessed January 2007).
[8] Bible, The Gospel According to Matthew 5:13.
[9] Bible, Acts of the Apostles, ch. 10.
[10] Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine. (London: Penguin, 1986).
[11] Cited in S. Thomas, "Faith, history and Martin Wight: the role of religion in the historical sociology of the English school of International Relations", International Affairs 77, no 4 (2001), 905-929.
[12] Dylan Mathews, War Prevention Works: 50 Stories of People Resolving Conflicts. (Oxford: Oxford Research Group, 2001).
[13] Michael MccGwire, Perestroika and Soviet National Security. (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1991); S. Dalby, "Post-Cold War security in the new Europe", In J. O'Loughlin and H.van der Wusten, eds., The New Political Geography of Eastern Europe. (London: Belhaven Press, 1993), 71-85.
[14] Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. (London: Michael Joseph, 1979).