Don't blame faith

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Religion often is blamed for causing many of the world's problems - particularly wars. Critics cite as proof the Crusades, the Inquisition, the bloody battles among various Christian churches after the Protestant Reformation and conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Kashmir and Sri Lanka.

Not so fast, Dinesh D'Souza argued in an opinion column in The Christian Science Monitor (11/21). Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history, wrote D'Souza, Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The best example of religious persecution in America are the Salem witch trials, which took fewer than 25 lives, D'Souza said.

About 10,000 people are believed to have been sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition and perhaps 100,000 others died of malnutrition or illness in jail, D'Souza said.

As tragic as these numbers are, D'Souza said, compare them to "the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people."

Plus, he noted, many "religious wars" were not fought over religion, but over rival claims to territory and power, such as the wars between England and France.

"The same is true today," D'Souza said. For example, despite theological arguments by Hamas and extreme orthodox parties in Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is basically a dispute over self-determination and land, not religion. The tensions in Northern Ireland and the Balkans also stem from ethnic rivalry, not religion, D'Souza said.

While religion is not completely innocent of wrong-doing - and certainly Muslim extremists are cause for concern, as is the rhetoric of some Christian extremists - these are not representative of the core of these religions.

As D'Souza noted, "If religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity."

Jesus preached and lived peace, love and forgiveness - seventy times seven times. He both taught turning the other cheek and willingly gave himself over to death. He would never advocate war. Early Christians even refused military service. Our recent popes have consistently argued against war in favor of dialogue to resolve differences. Religions - because they are the lived beliefs of humans - are not perfect. But their tenets also are not violent and bloodthirsty.