Download Are Religions Violent?

Is Religion Violent? Are Religions Violent?
Gabriel Moran
Before one can investigate the relation between religion and violence, it is necessary to point
out an ambiguity in the meaning of “religion.” For most of its history, the word religion referred
to practices (worship of god/gods). There was a right way and a wrong way to do it; religion was
either true or false. In the late sixteenth century, the meaning of the term took a dramatic turn.
“Religion” came to mean a plurality of institutions with names such as Judaism and Christianity.
The earlier meaning did not disappear so that the two meanings often mix together which is a
source of confusion.
“Religion” is an instance of what Wittgenstein calls a “conceptual puzzle,”i a term that has
nearly opposite meanings. Asking for a “definition” of such a term makes no sense. One has to
keep asking about the time, place and context for the use of the term. It could be said
paradoxically that “religions” is not the plural of “religion”; instead, it is the plural of “a
religion.”
Religion in its older meaning was singular; there was (true) religion as opposed to false
practices. Religion in its newer meaning is plural; even when only one religion is discussed, the
assumption is that it is one of many religions. Religion in its older meaning is mainly external
action, the performance of a ritual by a community or a member of a community. Religion in its
newer meaning is mainly an institution that houses the interiority of its individual members.
The question “Is religion violent?” is related to but distinguishable from “Are religions
violent?” The first question tends to fall to psychologists and researchers in human development.
The second question is more the interest of historians and social scientists. When the question is
asked, “Is a particular religion violent?” the answer involves social, cultural and political
material in addition to “religion” in its earlier meaning.
It is a widespread claim in secular writing today that religion causes violence or even that
religion is the chief cause of violence in history.ii One cannot begin to respond to this claim
without first sorting out the confusion in the use of “religion.” The usual assumption is that there
is a trans-historical essence of religion, separable from politics, which is found everywhere and
that this religion is a constant source of violence. The particular arrangement of religious
institutions in modern European and North American countries tends to be imposed everywhere.
Violence and Religion (Religious Practices)
The original meaning of “religion” was a set of practices directed mainly though not
exclusively toward God. Augustine was aware of an ambiguity in the meaning of the term
religion that the Christian Church imported from the classical world: “We have no right to affirm
with confidence that “religion” is confined to the worship of God, since it seems that this word
has been detached from its normal meaning in which it refers to an attitude of respect in relations
between a man and his neighbor.”iii
1
How many people who make confident generalizations about religion are aware that in the
late fourth century the “normal meaning” of religion was respect for one’s neighbor? This
ambiguity did not prevent Augustine from writing a book De Vera Religione, which is not a
claim that Christianity is the true religion but an affirmation that genuine worship of God has
always existed. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae has only one question on “religion.”
Religion is treated as part of the virtue of justice; it renders to God what is God’s due.iv
The problem about making any generalization about practices called religion is where to
draw a boundary for what counts as religion. If one starts from the history of the word, rather
than a contemporary idea of religion, we have a better basis of identifying some practices as
religion. Augustine’s note that the “normal meaning” of religion is respect for one’s neighbor
does not refer to an anomaly or coincidence. Religion was respect for one’s neighbor and in a
heightened way for the “creator of heaven and earth.” The two great commandments in the
Bibles are first, to love God with one’s heart and soul; second, to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
These two commands are not parallel; they entail each other. Love (honor, respect, praise,
worship) of God is shown by love of one’s neighbor. The love of one’s neighbor has to extend
to all neighbors if it is to reach God. No doubt there are people who think that they love God
because they do not love anyone else. Such individuals are liable to kill people “in the name of
God.” A main problem is limiting “neighbor” to people on my street or in my community and
failing to discover that the stranger is my cousin.
There is nothing intrinsically violent about worship, respect, devotion, praise or honor
directed to God. The attempt is to make sacred all of life but religion is vulnerable to distortions
because it touches the deepest roots of life. Religious practices commonly involve rituals
concerning food and sex. The rituals place some restrictions on these forces of life; the
restrictions are not intended to be a negation of life. Such rituals create and express a community
bond; religion is not a weekly affair; it is part of the fabric of daily life.
I noted in chapter four the prevalence of “sacrifice” in history, including the present when
the nation-state seems to be the object of devotion. Humans throughout the centuries have had an
impulse to praise, honor and thank the creator and sustainer of life. Unfortunately, the
symbolizing of this acknowledgment that humans do not own the world has sometimes taken the
form of destruction of life. The most gruesome misunderstanding of religion was human
sacrifice, practiced for example in the Aztec empire. Bartolomé de Las Casas, “protector of the
Indians,” while condemning the practice tried to understand it.v Because people take religion so
seriously it can go seriously bad.
If one attends to the actual use of the word religion, its most common meaning for a
thousand years of church history was to describe the life of the monk. The monk was said “to
enter religion” and become “a religious” who led “a religious life.” This language is confusing in
the context of the modern meaning of religions, although the Roman Catholic Church still uses
this language. Most Catholics do not seem to notice the peculiarity of their language in which the
clergy, including bishops and pope, do not lead a religious life. The language is worth trying to
understand though the Catholic Church is badly in need of a reformation of its basic categories.
2
The association of “religion” with monastic communities was not an aberration. The monk
or nun took “evangelical vows,” that is, promises to follow closely the teachings of Jesus in the
gospels. These vows were usually called poverty, chastity and obedience. They were an attempt
to express a poor, chaste, obedient attitude to God embodied in a love for one’s immediate
community and a service to the world.
The “religious life” was to be an intensifying of Christian life, an example to “normal”
Christians of how life need not be bogged down by attachment to material possessions, sexual
practice and independence of choice. Such brotherhoods and sisterhoods need not have included
violence but their discipline of life could slip over into violent activities directed inwardly or
outward toward others. Without someone carefully monitoring who joined the community, it
could attract disturbed individuals.
Monasteries easily became corrupted by an accumulation of corporate wealth, or by a failure
to redirect sexual energy into healthy alternatives, or by dictatorial authority (“the voice of the
prior is the voice of God”). There is still a place for religious brotherhoods and sisterhoods but
only for unusually mature people who grasp the relations between love of near and far neighbors,
respect for one’s own body, and worship of the divine. Modern science, especially psychology,
casts doubt on many religious practices. It is not evident, however, that the modern world has
found a way to discipline personal greed, sexual promiscuity and selfish individualism. Religion
can be a way of putting things in perspective and resisting violence.
Violence and Religions
In the Latin West, the modern meaning of religion emerged with recognition of Catholic and
Protestant as names of different religions. That usage in the late sixteenth century quickly faded
as Catholic and Protestant became widely accepted as parts of the Christian religion. By the early
seventeenth century, Judaism and Islam were seen to fit within the idea of “a religion.” What
other names belong on a list of religions is debatable. It is unclear if Buddhism fits the category
of “a religion.” Hinduism as a religion is even more problematic.vi Some people have proposed
simply getting rid of the term religion but I doubt that is possible.vii However, the ambiguity built
into the term should never be forgotten in any discussion of religion(s) and violence.
This section is limited to Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions because they are the
clearest examples of “a religion.” The issue of violence is particularly acute in the respective
histories of these three religions. The contemporary world urgently needs an answer to the
question, “Are Christianity and Islam fated to violent confrontation because their very natures
dictate it?” Contemporary Jewish religion does not pose the same problem as Christianity and
Islam. However, ideas from the Hebrew Bible are present in Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is
geographically very limited but reverberates around the world. Furthermore, Christian and
Muslim violence cannot be understood without including the accounts of violence in the sacred
scripture of the Jews.
A question could be raised not about limiting the discussion to three religions but whether
three is too many. Can any generalizations be made about religions? Although there is no
common essence called religion on which generalizations can be based, Jewish, Christian and
3
Muslim histories have points of overlap and the religions are rightly called siblings. To outsiders,
Jews, Christians and Muslims look very similar. “God spoke, God spoke to us, God spoke to us
as his chosen few, God spoke to us his chosen few for the benefit of all creation.” To insiders
there are stark differences among these religions and members of each group may resist all
comparisons. While I respect the protest against reducing these religions to a common
denominator, it is of some help in examining violence to notice a similar logic in these three
religions.
The peculiar logic of (these) religions is often lost sight of. Religious language is mostly
poetry, story, and instructions for performance. In the modern world, poetry is thought to be an
acquired taste, storytelling is understood as entertainment mainly for children, and instruction
about behavior is considered an unwelcome intrusion in the life of the individual. The result of
these contemporary attitudes toward the characteristics of religion is that religious literature and
practices have difficulty getting a hearing in the market place.
Universal Intent but Particular People, Places and Events
A surface acquaintance with the Bibles and Qur’an suggests a claim that God delivered to
his people the final and absolute truth. These truths would take precedence over anything that has
happened since then. A deeper acquaintance with this literature, however, makes apparent that
things are not that simple. There are regular warnings against possessive adjectives. “Our” God
is actually the God of the universe who is not our or anyone’s possession. This God deals with
humans in the particularities of their existence, that is, with this group of people, at this particular
moment, in this particular place. Philosophers speculate in language that becomes more abstract
as it becomes more comprehensive. Religions, although they intend universality, never abstract
from a concrete language in which their intention is embodied.
Biblical religion is a story of a people responding to a call; they are to be a model for all
nations but they constantly fail in that vocation. If the Hebrew Bible is considered an epic, it is a
strange kind of quest in which the starring actors never quite get what they want or, rather, what
they think they want. At every stage of the story it becomes increasingly evident that the people
have underestimated the dimensions of the story. The One we thought was our god, a warrior
who would lead us to defeat our enemies, has his own incomprehensible ways. We trust that the
God who chose us as his people will not abandon us, but at times of conflict he seems to be on
the other side as well.
Northrop Frye, a literary theorist, says with only a slight exaggeration that “mythically, the
Exodus is the only thing that really happens in the Old Testament.”viii The term exodus has its
primary meaning in the story of the Israelites escaping from Egypt. That one event is used as a
lens to understand history from the beginning and history as it still happens. In the New
Testament, Luke uses the term exodos to describe the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
A main Jewish objection to the New Testament is that it ends the story which should have
no end. “Christ redeemed the world”; end of story. The Jew looks at the newspaper and asks: Is
this a redeemed world?ix But the Christian story has its own ambiguities and a tension between
4
one event and all events, one community and the community of humankind, human life and the
universe.
The New Testament does not say that Christ walked out of the tomb, a victorious warrior. It
says that “Jesus was raised from the dead by his Father as the first fruits of the earth; the
resurrection is a down payment on a future fulfillment for all.” The Muslim claim to continue the
story of Torah and Gospel is a good reminder to Christians that the fullness of the Christ is still
to be realized in the struggle for peace and justice.x Islam has a rich inheritance in continuing the
story but it also has to be careful to keep the story open to further surprises.
The one doctrine that seems to be shared by Jewish Bible, Christian Bible and Qur’an is God
as creator of the universe. The Hebrew Bible in its final form places the doctrine first, but this
insight arrives last, not first. Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions still do not grasp the
oneness of creation and the unity of humankind. If these traditions did understand the doctrine of
a creator God we would not have brother killing brother. The Bibles and the Qur’an warn that
universal brotherhood (and sisterhood) does not come about by proclamation of an abstract truth.
Peace can come about only by patient listening and concrete acts of kindness and healing.
The inner tension of biblical tradition begins with the first two chapters of the book of
Genesis. In Genesis I, the creation of a great cosmos is the main story line: light and darkness,
heaven and earth, land and oceans, sun and moon, birds and fishes, plants and animals. As a final
production, God says: “Let us make man in our image.” Who God was speaking to is a puzzle.
One possibility is that he was addressing the other animals and asking their help in creating the
human animal. The humans are given a central place though they have to be aware that they are a
tiny speck in a vast universe.
The second creation story starts rather than ends with the humans. That might sound more
arrogant than the first story but in relation to the garden created for “Adam” (the earthling) God’s
instructions are to “dress it and keep it.” That is, the man and his helpmate are managers not
owners of the property. They seem to have all that they could desire but for inexplicable reasons
they break the one rule in the garden and find themselves exiled from home.
The shame they feel leads them to clothe themselves and to begin building a civilized world.
The pain of a man’s labor in tilling the earth is matched by the woman’s labor in bringing new
humans into the world. Any “dominion” (Gen I: 26) that humans may have is distorted by their
fall from grace. In the garden the humans named the animals rather than killed them. In the
extensive Christian commentaries on Genesis from the second to the thirteenth centuries, killing
animals is a sign of sin not a celebration of human power.xi
The two creation stories are strikingly different in tone because of the perspective from
which each story is told. In the first telling, the perspective is a universal outlook – a god’s eye
view of the universe. In the second story, the view is a particular one from the ground – a man, a
woman, a tree, a serpent. The tension between the universal and the particular runs throughout
Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. When the two strands are separated, each view can lead
to violence. A “universalism” loses sight of the simple joys and heartbreaking sorrows of
ordinary individuals. In this view nothing should stand in the way of the great design. What may
5
seem to be the only alternative, a particularism of individual details, is likely to spawn wars in
defense of my house, our nation, and the sacred history of one people.
In the contemporary world much of science is biased toward the first story of an
unimaginably vast universe. But without the second story, human life is threatened by
meaninglessness. In a universe said to be 12.9 billion years old, human life is smaller than a
speck of dust. Among people who report such numbers, the assumption seems to be that if only
the general population would recognize how small and insignificant humans are they would feel
some humility and stop doing damage to their environment.
The logic is flawed. Most people now know that the universe is very old and very big in
comparison to human kind. Whether the world is a few billion or a few hundred thousand years
old makes little difference in the way most people act. They need to believe that their actions are
meaningful and that the human quest for justice and peace makes sense. The biblical and
quaranic stories still provide a plausible plot line for billions of people, much to the chagrin of
modern rationalists who offer impressively large numbers and comprehensive theories of the
world’s origin.
In environmental literature, the main enemy is regularly said to be “anthropocentrism.” This
original sin is especially attributed to Christianity (with Judaism included in the phrase JudeoChristian). Lynn White, Jr, in a famous essay, attributed the origin of our ecological problem to
Christianity, which he called “the most anthropocentric religion” that has ever existed.xii Most
readers seem to take that as the ultimate condemnation of Christianity. Actually, it could be
taken as high praise.
Both creation stories in the Bible place the humans at the center where they belong. The
trouble comes from their ec-centricity, going off center and wanting to be on top and in control
of the world rather than remaining at their task of “dressing and keeping” what surrounds them.
There is no “environment” without humans occupying the center. To care for the plants and other
animals, the humans have to situate themselves as the responsible animals who can listen and
respond to the beings in their environment. The choice is between isolated, controlling,
rationalistic man who tries to get on top and a community of men, women and children who try
to live with care and respect for the creatures that surround them.
The three Abrahamic traditions at their best do not choose between universalism and
particularism. They use a logic in which the particular and universal are always together. A
particular place or time is particular insofar as it embodies the (nearly) universal; otherwise it is
simply one of many parts of a larger whole. The universal, to the degree that it exists, is found
embodied in particular people, events and places. Without the particular, the claim to universality
fails to be more than a general and abstract pronouncement which is oppressive when it is not
banal.
Great works of art manifest this logic by which they touch upon a human universality in
their concreteness. Of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Northrop Frye writes: “If you wish to know the
history of eleventh-century Scotland, look elsewhere; if you wish to know what it means for a
man to gain a kingdom and lose one’s soul, look here.”xiii The same is true for a great work of
6
music, painting or sculpture. Anyone who looks deeply enough into a single work may discover
truth and value that are not confined to the time and place of the work’s origin.
No work of art or religion is completely and finally universal; the future is the most obvious
missing element. Each religion has to be careful not to fill in the difference between the truly
universal and the intended universality of a particular religion. A particular religion should not
speak as if it owned all the good words. Room has to be left so that the particulars of two or more
traditions can point to a universality that goes beyond each and all of them. If a religion lays
claim to already being universal, violence is almost inevitable.
Each of the religions has difficulty maintaining the relation between particular and universal.
Dialogue with their two siblings is a big help to keeping open the gap between an intended
universality and the reality of the particular time, place and people.
It is a presumptuous but not an absurd claim of Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions that
the history of the world is reflected in one series of events, and that the life of one people is
representative of the human community. The test of the claim’s validity is whether the small
community turns inward to protect what it thinks it possesses or whether its concerns are to share
what has been given to it and to work at reducing violent conflicts that blind humans to their
kinship.
Immediately following the first creation story we have the story of the first murder. Cain
killed Abel and so it goes. As Regina Schwartz notes, we do not have killing today because Cain
killed his brother; rather we continue to kill for similar petty reasons of jealously, greed and
hatred. xiv We also continue to mistake the insight offered by the biblical story. God asks Cain:
“Where is Abel your brother”? Cain answers: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper”?xv
Instead of answering Cain’s question, God describes the consequences of the murder.
It is regularly assumed that if God had answered the question, he would have said: “Of
course I want you to be your brother’s keeper.” But if God had deigned to answer, his likely
response would have been: “Brothers are neither for keeping nor for killing. I did not ask you to
be your brother’s keeper but to be your brother’s brother.” Respecting the freedom of other
people is a much greater challenge than being their keeper. With professions of good intention,
the powerful of the earth have thought it their right and duty to be the keeper of the poor, the
uneducated, the under classes of the world.xvi
A universal brotherhood and sisterhood is not the simple task of being my brother’s and
sister’s keeper but achieving a healthy tension between freedom and necessity, personal desire
and community wisdom, human goods and earthly balance. The historical record shows constant
failure to live up to what each religion professes, but none of the religions is fated always to
repeat the same errors.
After the 2001 bombings in the United States, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attacks
were “no more a reflection of true Islam than the Crusades were of true Christianity.”xvii That
statement presupposes that Tony Blair (or someone) knows what true Islam is as opposed to false
Islam. However, the comparison that Blair made to the Crusades is relevant. Christians now
7
think that the Crusades are not true Christianity but that was not the case until fairly recently.
The histories of Islam and Christianity do not neatly divide into the true and the false. The
division is more between a Christian or a Muslim ideal and the real historical record. How did
the ideal of Christian love issue in the real horror of the Crusades? How can a contemporary
Muslim understand his religion as sanctioning suicide bombings?
Members of a religion tend to view their own religion as an advocate of peace. Christians
claim that they are peace loving, despite the shocking record of violence that has accompanied
the church. W. Cantwell Smith made the insightful comment that in religious controversies each
side argues from the ideal condition of one’s own religion and the real condition of one’s
opponent.xviii Thus, when Christians say that “Christians love one another,” they speak truthfully
of the Christian ideal. When Muslims say that Christianity is a source of violence they speak
truthfully about much of Christian history.
Those who wish to avoid condemning religions regularly say that religion can be the source
of either peace or violence. While the statement is historically accurate it does not get us very
far. The hard reality is that the potential for peace and the inclination toward violence are
inextricably linked. The difficult task is to understand why and how the potential for violence
and the potential for peace spring from the same source.
(Mono) Theism as a False Hope
In the seventeenth century the project to organize all knowledge according to empirical
observation and mathematical reasoning included the invention of the words theism and deism.
The two words were used interchangeably until well into the eighteenth century. Eventually,
“deism” became the name of a rational system opposed to “traditional” religion. Theism went
down a different track in allowing revelation as a supplement to rational or natural religion.
Theism thus became an abstract genre under which Jewish, Christian and Muslim are specific
objects.xix
Opponents of Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions assumed that if you strip these
religions of their distinctive doctrines and rituals, they would show the same essence. All three
religions were taken to be instances of theism. It is surprising that so many Jews and Christians
accepted the reductionistic deal; Muslims were more resistant.
Within Western enlightenment religion (in its older meaning) was to be confined to the
private life of the individual. Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions were given a private space
within the state bureaucracy. The three theisms would be tamed of their violent tendencies by
submitting to a system of toleration in which only the state would exercise violence.
What was lost in becoming a theism was the rich texture of a tradition that has the potential
for both peace and violence. What was born in the seventeenth century was a “supreme being”
who either disappears after giving the world an original fillip or who controls every moment as
an oppressive ruler. The religion of rationality that promised to eliminate past religious wars has
never succeeded in taming the violent inclinations of human beings who are not led by reason
alone.
8
In the modern classification of theisms there are three columns: a-theism (0 gods), monotheism (one god) and poly-theism (two or more gods). Another possibility, pan-theism, does not
usually get classified as a theism. People who want no part of theism get classified as “a-theists.”
Some “atheists” show characteristics associated with being religious, for example, respect and
reverence for all that exists.xx If atheism is the alternative to theism, many Jews and Christians
can be called atheistsxxi. There are other people who proclaim their atheism and are obsessed
with attacking theism. Mary Midgley asks: If the house is empty, why keep ringing the door bell
and running away?
The term monotheism approaches redundancy. In the philosophy of Western enlightenment,
any reasonable theist should be able to see that there is one and only one being called god.
Nietzsche may be right that the doctrine of a single deity is “the most monstrous of human
errors.”xxii But Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions do not begin by arguing to a single deity
who presides in heaven. Each of them begins from a transformation of ordinary experience
through belief in an unnamable One who is present in all creation.
“Polytheism” was created as a description and criticism of Hinduism by Westerners. There
appeared to be a profusion of Indian “divinities” in contrast to the one watch maker in the sky of
deism/theism. The charge of polytheism also spilled over to what seemed to be many divinities
in Roman Catholicism. “Polytheism” was never a neutral category within the genre of theisms;
like atheism it was a negation of “monotheism.” The hope of some modern authors that
polytheism might be a way out of monotheism is illusory.
The flattening out of Jewish, Christian and Muslim ways of life into belief in a single deity
can be seen as an attempt to find common ground. The statement that “we are all monotheists”
seems to provide a starting point for Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue. Numerous conferences
have been held under the banner of “one God, three faiths.” The apparent agreement is
misleading. It would be more accurate and more productive of serious dialogue to begin with the
premise of “one faith, three gods.” Each participant would then be assuming that Jews,
Christians and Muslims direct their act of believing to the One beyond names but that their
traditions cannot leave behind the images, language, and historical experience that are particular
to the tradition.
For genuine dialogue, the indispensable starting point is a trust in the “good faith” of one’s
interlocutor. While it is true that faith is tied to particular beliefs which differ from one tradition
to another, faith as openness and trust can be a bond of unity. Religious tolerance can be
understood as accepting another person despite what they believe, or accepting another person
because one appreciates what it means to believe. Understanding the beliefs of another person or
tradition is difficult work, but the openness of faith can be presumed present unless there is
contrary evidence.
Land
One of the chief tests of the particular as embodying the universal is the attitude toward
land. “Our” god who speaks to us inevitably includes land as what is promised to us, a place that
9
is ours. The claim is often backed by military force tied to a religious belief that God has drawn
the lines. Religion cannot be separated from land; the issue is possession. Can people
appreciatively dwell in a land without the mistake of thinking that they own it. Modern wars
continue to be fought over border disagreements. Human communities are concerned with land
because they have to live somewhere. The relation to land shows up with distinctive variations in
Jewish, Christian and Muslim literature.
In the Bibles and the Qur’an, God not only chooses particular people but particular places
that become sacred or holy. Even when the contemporary world tries to shake off religion, the
idea of sacred places continues to be strong. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, battlefields are
most often the holy places. Here is where our god of battle defeated your god. War monuments
can be a form of religion at its worst, celebrating conquest and destruction. Land where
thousands have shed their blood does deserve to be remembered but the only war monuments
that are helpful are those that memorialize the dead on both sides.
The key distinction in religion’s relation to land is the difference between space and place.
“Place is space which has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now
remembered and which provide continuity and identity across generations….Place is space in
which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been
issued.”xxiii
Space is outside other space; one space borders on another space; there is only so much
space in a country, a continent or the earth. Places have more possibilities although places cannot
be entirely separated from space. The attempt to possess a space is to compete with others who
wish to possess the same space. In contrast, loving one’s place does not have to be a threat to
others; in fact, loving one’s place helps people to understand why other people love their place.
The Abrahamic religions are about being uprooted from the place one knows and becoming
a pilgrim or sojourner in search of a place that is true home. The journey is both symbolic and
physical; home is where the community now dwells, an embodying of the “heavenly Jerusalem.”
The biblical story begins with Adam who is formed from the earth and always tied to the earth.
Adam and Eve dwell in a garden but quickly find themselves in exile from their first home. The
rest of the Hebrew Bible is about the quest for land, of people leaving home and journeying
toward a promised land.
The journey is never completed. For centuries, the Jews were scattered across the world.
After the cataclysm of World War II a homeland was established in the land of ancient Israel.
The home is actual for some Jews, symbolically important for all Jews. The relation between the
ancient holy land and modern Israel remains problematic. Some Jewish settlers believe that the
land they call greater Israel is theirs by divine promise.
The Christian movement announced itself as a universal religion destined to spread across
the world. The promise attributed to Jesus that all nations would be converted in his name has
not been fulfilled. With a parochial view of the world, the medieval church may have thought
that the goal of converting everyone was still within its reach. Despite a continuing spread of the
Christian message today, the Christian church is a minority in the world and constantly
10
becoming a smaller percentage of the world’s population. Christian theologians now generally
see the church’s mission as a light to the nations, a model city, a demonstration of love of
neighbor. The potential to be a mediator of peace increases as the church comes to see itself as a
sign of salvation instead of a conqueror for Christ.
Even as it tried to spread across the world to become catholic or universal, the church did
not lose its necessary roots in particular places. “The Christian tradition has been very clear in
locating the story in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Galilee.”xxiv As the Christian
movement spread out from the “holy land,” other places took on a holy character. The places that
Paul visited – Ephesus, Thessalonica, Philippi – are retained in Christian memory as places to be
venerated. In time, Rome and Constantinople rose above the rest of the places of importance.
Later, shrines of devotion appeared in Santiago, Spain, Guadalupe, Mexico, Lourdes, France,
and numerous other places.
The idea of pilgrimage was central to Christian and Muslim thinking from their respective
beginnings. The New Testament portrays Jesus as living in the desert for forty days, symbolizing
the chosen people’s forty-year pilgrimage to the holy land. A pilgrim is not a wanderer but
someone who has a definite place to be reached, whether or not the journey is completed.
Every Muslim recapitulates the journey of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. A
pilgrimage to the holy sites is one of the five pillars of Islam. Everyone who is able must go to
the central place from which all places of worship radiate. A church or a mosque can be any
place on earth because every place is holy. Christians and Muslims have built magnificent
churches and mosques, impressive architecture which is taken to be a way of worship.
Periodically, reformers have had to insist that the more important thing is the people in their
place; the building can be an expensive distraction.
From its founding in the seventh century C.E., Islam represented a threat to the Christian
vision of itself as the worldwide religion. Islam spread with astounding speed across most of the
world. Many of the places that Christianity thought of as holy places fell to the new religion. In
the eleventh century, after the final split between western and eastern churches, Christianity
found itself on the defensive. Several popes at the end of that century decided to rouse the
Christians of the West to a counter-offensive.
Thus began one of the most disgraceful projects of Christian history known as the
Crusades.xxv The “way of the cross” was scandalously applied to a series of wars that were
ostensibly to liberate the holy land and holy places. Nineteenth-century Christians romanticized
the crusades, obscuring the historical facts. Secular historians of the twentieth century tended to
dismiss the religious character of the wars, seeing them mainly in economic terms.
What can get lost in trying to understand the crusades was that popes and other prominent
leaders drew upon the population’s belief in the value of pilgrimage. “Pope Urban II associated
military campaign with the most charismatic of all traditional penances, the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem.”xxvi It is easy to be cynical about a badly organized army that set out to liberate
people and land; nevertheless, many people thought they were fighting a holy war. Before
scoffing at the idea that anyone could believe in a holy war we have to recognize how recent
11
wars continue to be presented as ordained by God and requiring the “sacrifice” of a nation’s
youth.
Far from disappearing from memory the crusades or at least the language of crusade took on
new and ominous meaning in recent history. There was no Arabic word for “the war of the
cross” until the nineteenth century but it became a rallying cry for an Arab nationalist movement
and a pan-Islamic movement. Sayyid Qutb, the influential Egyptian thinker behind much of
Islamic political activity, said “western blood carries the spirit of the crusades within itself. It
fills the subconscious of the West.”xxvii
The United States, with its peculiar mix of Christianity in its politics, has been especially
inclined to describe its wars as crusades. At least since Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of an
idealistic war that would make the world safe for democracy, leaders have used the word crusade
seemingly innocent of its connotations for Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians. Dwight
Eisenhower called his history of World War II “the Crusade in Europe.” He explained his choice
of title by saying “the forces that stood for human good and men’s rights were this time
confronted by a completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated.
Because only by the utter destruction of the Axis was a decent world possible, the war became
for me a crusade in the traditional sense of that often misused word.”xxviii Eisenhower was
confident that he was using “crusade” properly but he was using a word for medieval religious
wars against Islam to describe the war against Germany.
One could almost sympathize with George W. Bush for the uproar he created by his use of
“crusade” a few days after Sept. 11, 2001. Someone should have warned him against saying “this
crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”xxix He was stunned by the intense
reaction to such a commonly used term; he wisely avoided the word in his address to Congress a
few days later. Bush’s use of “crusade” played right into the role that Osama bin Laden had
prepared. Concerning the invasion of Afghanistan, Bin Laden said “the battle is between
Muslims – the people of Islam – and the global Crusaders.”xxx
On the Muslim side of the conflict, the term jihad, which is used thirty-five times in the
Qur’an, has become well known.xxxi The most militaristic wing of “radical Islam” is called
jihadists. For some people, jihad signals that Islam is a violent religion intent on military
conquest. In reaction, defenders of Islam sometimes claim that the meaning of jihad is spiritual
and inner. If one takes seriously the Muslim relation to place, the “struggle” of jihad cannot be
completely spiritualized. The “greater jihad” refers to personal transformation but the “lesser
jihad” as external expression has often involved armed struggle. The Qur’an introduced an
ethical concern into war, though the fact of war was assumed. Similar to Christian attempts to
put limits on war, Muslim law distinguished between combatant and non-combatant. Muslims
were supposed to fight only against oppressors and “if the enemy desists, they must also cease
hostilities.”xxxii
An often quoted line from the Qur’an is “there can be no compulsion in religion.”xxxiii If that
command were always observed, it would dramatically decrease the potential for violence in a
missionary religion. Critics are quick to point out that compulsion can take many hidden and
indirect forms. Not just toleration of others but mutual respect is needed for lasting peace.
12
Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in relative peace under Muslim rule in medieval Spain.
Sidney Griffith warns that this convivencia has been somewhat romanticized.xxxiv Jews and
Christians were “protected peoples”; their rights were limited but they were not persecuted.
Griffith refers to the remarkable fact that from the mid-seventh to the end of the eleventh
centuries fifty percent of the world’s confessing Christians lived under Muslim rule.xxxv Most
Christians are perhaps unaware of how dependent on Islam medieval Christianity was for its
science, mathematics and philosophy. The tragic centuries-long conflict leading up to Bush
versus Bin Laden was not the past’s only possibility and not the fate of the future. Christians and
Muslims need bilateral understanding which is unlikely without much more work at internal
reform and reinterpretation of doctrines based on a solid knowledge of tradition.
Revelation: Bad Choice?
Just before the advent of the Christian movement biblical thought was mixed with
Hellenistic and Eastern philosophies. It was a time of apocalyptic movements. A secret
knowledge of how the world ends was central to these groups. Apocalypse meant a revelation of
the final truth. Not by accident the word apocalyptic became associated with violence. Those
who have a picture of how the world ends are not inclined to be patient about obstacles to
realization of the final truth. Any attempt to live by revelation (apocalyptically) almost inevitably
leads to violent conflict with the give and take of ordinary experience. The term apocalypse
(revelation) was used in a few places in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible but without a
special meaning or prominent place. There is no reference to God revealing himself.
In trying to control outbreaks of the spirit, church officials domesticated the idea of
revelation. The main body of Christendom made revelation a process that had come to an end in
the past. Once the words were on paper the revelation was thought to be complete and to be
safely in the hands of official interpreters. This movement to control the idea of a divine
revelation has never been entirely successful. If God has made clear the final truth, no authority
can supersede God’s authority.
Neither the New Testament nor the Qur’an is a book of divinely revealed truths. Each is an
embodying of divine speaking that invites a human response. In Christianity, Jesus as the Christ
is the “word of God”; the scriptures witness to that word. In Islam, the word of God is a heavenly
Qur’an which cannot fall into human hands.
Despite claims by some Christians and Muslims to possess God’s revelation, God remains
hidden and has his own ways. Although the New Testament and the Qur’an indicate a finality in
what God says, each of them points beyond itself to divine ways outside human comprehension
and control. The Qur’an affirms that every community has its own messenger; each people has
its own “law and path and way of life.”xxxvi In Christian history, Christ is the end, but Christ has
not ended. In Christian language, Christ is savior of all; God has other ways than membership in
the existing church of believers.
These doctrines of Christianity and Islam may seem of interest only to Christians or
Muslims. But world peace has a stake in how Christians and Muslims appropriate their own
religions. The term revelation was probably not the best vehicle of understanding but the idea
13
cannot simply be excised. If the term revelation is to be used by each of the three religions it
should be restricted to a divine activity. The human response is the act of trusting or believing
which issues in (Christian, Muslim, or other) beliefs.
Nothing that is in human words is divine revelation. The Bible has survived all forms of
modern criticism; it continues to be witness to a heavenly word of God. The Qur’an has not been
subject to similar instruments of criticism but there is no reason that modern scholarship cannot
support the earthly text as recitation of the heavenly book.
The mystics of all three religions have lived by the principle that “No understanding of the
Holy Book is possible until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it was revealed to the
prophet.”xxxvii This mystical stance is a threat to a clerical class and to authoritarian rule.
Christian and Muslim religions have a potential for democratic structures which have never
been realized. Reformations starting from the fourteenth century were the backdrop for modern
secular democracies but the churches still trail behind in developing their own democratic
structures.xxxviii Religions do require their own form of authority and distinctive practices that
join past, present and future. A more limited and precise use of the term revelation would remove
a large obstacle to thinking about reform.
Tradition
Reform of institutional structure and a better use of the term revelation are tied to the idea of
tradition. Tradition is a helpful word in drawing any comparisons among Jewish, Christian and
Muslim religions. One might paradoxically say that tradition is more compatible with religions
than the word religion itself.
The word and the idea tradition seem to have originated from a reform in Jewish history.
The Pharisees, who were the reformers, wisely chose to avoid directly taking on priestly
authority. The priestly class, having control of the texts, were the only ones who could say what
God wanted. The Pharisees, instead of engaging in ineffective rebellion, professed equal
devotion to the written word but laid claim to a second source: what was not written. To call this
second source “oral tradition” would be redundant. Tradition was the name for what was passed
on orally.xxxix
This brilliant stroke liberalized the community but it had its own dangers. Officials who
wield authoritative texts can be narrow-minded, but at least they are constrained by what is
written. Tradition, as a separate source, secrets whispered in the ear, so to speak, has few
restraints. What saves tradition is that it eventually produces its own written record before again
breaking out orally. Tradition becomes not an entirely separate stream but the context for
interpreting the text. Commentary is followed by commentary on the commentary, and tradition
becomes a layering of interpretation and inevitable debate.
“Tradition” begins as a verb, the act of handing on. It can include writing but connotes in
addition the oral, aural and tactile. There is a tendency in human life, exacerbated in the English
language, for verbs to become nouns. This tendency has especially affected “tradition” which
14
becomes equated with things left by tradition rather than the continuing process of handing on.
Martin Luther was careful to distinguish between misguided accretions in Christian history that
were called traditions and the living process of tradition. As the Lutheran historian Jaroslav
Pelikan phrases it, “tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the
living.”xl Or as H.G. Gadamer paradoxically states, “tradition exists only in constantly becoming
other than it is.”xli
When the boundaries for any particular tradition are too vague, the term loses its usefulness.
Abstracting from differences creates a single tradition in name only. The existence of intense
differences within a group of people does not mean that the tradition does not exist. Spirited
debate among Jews does not mean that there is no Jewish tradition. Is there a Christian tradition?
Perhaps there is, although it is more often necessary to refer to a Lutheran, Calvinist or Roman
Catholic tradition. Is there an Abrahamic tradition? The differences are too great for all three
religions to be a tradition, though of course the interrelations of Jewish, Christian and Muslim
histories are important.
Reform of traditions is carried out mainly by the insider who knows not only what to reform
but how to do it. “The great advantage of tradition which is as long as that of any of the historic
religions is that it gives the chance to appeal to more than one strand in it; it may at times be the
reformer’s strongest ally.”xlii Every religious tradition has such disparate strands; the richer the
tradition, the closer these strands come to contradicting one another. The citing of a few
sentences out of context can be misleading about any tradition. Liberalizing reform has to come
from reformers who are deeply not superficially conservative.
Who speaks for a religious tradition? Most well-formed traditions have officials who are
appointed, ordained, or chosen to re-present the tradition. But unless one believes that such
officials have a direct line to the deity, they are dependent on the most thoughtful and wellinformed advisors within the tradition. The main job of the official may be to assure that a wide
range of views can be heard and that debates are not ended prematurely. Dialogue between
traditions presupposes serious dialogue within a tradition. Throughout the centuries Jews have
been better at agreeing to disagree than have Christians. The minority in the Jewish community
could later become a majority; there were no declarations of heresy.
Responsible spokespersons in every part of the Christian tradition have to search for
consensus about limits. There will continue to be disagreements about the exact place where the
intolerable begins. But a group narrowly based on an ideology of hatred and violence (for
example, the white Aryan nation) ought not to be given the respect that is due to a group that
draws on rich and diverse streams of Christian tradition.
Most educated people recognize that not everything in their tradition is true, good and final.
They are aware that there have to be continuing efforts to improve what the past has given us to
work with. Every religious reform is in the direction of the one true religion but to claim that my
tradition has arrived there is not a credible position.
A serious dialogue between religions does not begin with skepticism about other people’s
beliefs and a supposed bracketing of one’s own beliefs. Instead of methodical doubt, dialogue
15
begins, in Peter Elbow’s phrase, with methodical belief.xliii Methodical doubt settles comfortably
into one view; methodical belief forces us into unfamiliar and threatening ideas. The student of
religions has to sleep around with a multiplicity of beliefs while not renouncing his or her own
beliefs.
The first aim of religious dialogue is to find places within each tradition where people can
meet one another in mutual respect. This step requires detailed knowledge of the language
within the tradition that can be an obstacle to dialogue. An intermediate aim, therefore, is “to
transform contradictory statements into different but not contradictory ones.”xliv For example, if
Christians say Jesus is the messiah and Jews say Jesus is not the messiah, one statement is true,
and one is false. Bur if Christians say Jesus is the Christ and Jews say Jesus is not the messiah,
both statements could be true. That step would lead to helpful inquiry into the ways that Jesus
did and did not fulfill the messianic expectations of his time, how the term Christ, originally a
translation of “messiah,” acquired other meaning in history, and how Christians can look forward
with Jews to the coming of a messianic era while believing in Christ.
Both religious traditions can be helped by that conversation. The ultimate aim of religious
dialogue is mutual transformation. The Jew becomes more Jewish, the Christian more Christian.
Instead of deadly conflict, the Jew and the Christian become partners in opposing the injustices
that conflict with the better world that Jews and Christians articulate in different but related
ways.
John Cobb has written that “true openness to other traditions will require that we make their
history our own.”xlv I would add that this appropriating of history must be done very carefully
with recognition that it might be misunderstood. Haven’t Christians always practiced this
openness with what the Jews call the Bible and Christians call the Old Testament?
Cobb uses as an example that “we Christians will view Muhammad as our prophet as well.”
That possibility could be an interesting topic of conversation between Muslims and Christians
but probably not something that the Christian Church should immediately assert. I see no
problem in an individual Christian affirming Muhammad as a prophet. For the Christian
tradition to say he is “our prophet as well” could be a presumptuous appropriation.
i
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 18.
For refutation of this belief, William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009) does a thorough job.
iii
Augustine, City of God (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972). XI.1.
iv
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), II-II. 80.1
v
Bartolomé de Las Casas, “In Defense of Human Sacrifice,” in Witness: Writings of Bartolome de Las Casas (New
York: Orbis Books, 1992), 162-67.
vi
Peter Harrison, “’Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990).
vii
W. Cantwell Smith in his important book The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: New American Library,
1964) suggested that the terms faith and tradition could replace religion
viii
Quoted in Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1997), 168.
ix
Lionel Blue, To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 98.
x
Reza Aslan, No God but God (New York: Random House, 2005).
ii
16
xi
George Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” Science, March 10, 1967, 1203-07.
xiii
Northrop Frye, Educated Imagination (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 64.
xiv
Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1997), 2.
xv
Gen 4:9.
xvi
William McKinley, referring to the Philippines
xvii
New York Times, Oct. 9, 2001.
xviii
W. Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: New American Library, 1964),
xix
Nicholas Lash, The Beginning and End of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14.
xx
Some of the writers on the “new atheism” recognize that their views could be called religious. Sam Harris, The
End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); see Andre Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
(New York: Viking Press, 2007).
xxi
Many Jews and Christians could agree with Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Penguin
Books, 1973), 62: “It seems to me that the religious instinct is indeed in vigorous growth – but that it rejects the
theistic answer with profound mistrust.”
xxii
Quoted in George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 38.
xxiii
Walter Brueggemann, The Land (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 5.
xxiv
Brueggemann, The Land, 185.
xxv
Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).
xii
xxvi
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 31.
Sylvia Haim cited in Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity and Islam, 74.
xxviii
Quoted in J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 147.
xxix
Reza Aslan, Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror (New York: Random House,
2009), 59.
xxx
Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity and Islam, 75.
xxxi
Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Modern
Library, 2006), 36.
xxxii
Qur’an 2:193.
xxxiii
Qur’an 2:256.
xxxiv
Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 154-55.
xxxv
Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, 11.
xxxvi
Qur’an 10:47; 5: 42-48.
xxxvii
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture,
1986), 181.
xxxviii
Brian Tierney, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982).
xxxix
Ellis Rivkin, Hidden Revolution: The Pharisees’ Search for the Kingdom Within (Nashville: Abington, 1978).
xl
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 64.
xli
Catherine Zuckert, Postmodern Platos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 101.
xlii
Kathleen Bliss, Future of Religions (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 43.
xliii
Peter Elbow, Embracing Contraries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 63.
xliv
Cobb, Transforming Christianity and the World.
xlv
Cobb, Transforming Christianity and the World, 60
xxvii
17