“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one-another.”Jonathan Swift
“Religion seems to be connected with violence virtually everywhere. . . . In recent years, religious violence has erupted among right-wing Christians in the United States, angry Muslims and Jews in the Middle East, quarrelling Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, and indigenous religious communities in Africa and Indonesia. . . . The individuals involved in these cases have relied on religion to provide political identities and give license to vengeful ideologies.”—Terror in the Mind of God—The Global Rise of Religious Violence.
“Ironically, nations with fervent religion often have the worst social evils. . . . The saturation of religion has failed to prevent the severe crime level. . . . The evidence seems clear: To find living conditions that are safe, decent, orderly, and ‘civilized,’ avoid places with intense religion.”—Holy Hatred.
“Baptists are much better known for fighting than for peacemaking. . . . When the [American] slavery issue and other developments divided the denominations and then the nation in the nineteenth century, Baptists North and South supported the war effort as a righteous crusade and assumed that God was on their side. Baptists also identified with the national effort in wars with England (1812), Mexico (1845), and Spain (1898), justifying the last two ‘mainly on the grounds of bringing religious liberty to oppressed peoples and opening new areas for mission work.’ The point is not that Baptists desired war rather than peace, but that, for the most part, when war became a reality Baptists supported and participated in the effort.”—Review and Expositor—A Baptist Theological Journal.
“Religious motivation to combat has been located by historians in most eras and among virtually all the world’s diverse peoples and cultures, and usually on both sides in any given war. The hoary cry that ‘the gods are on our side’ was among the earliest and most potent of incitements to battle.”—The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650—An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization.
“Religious leaders . . . need to reflect more critically on their own failure to provide more effective leadership and witness to the true fundamental values of their respective faiths. . . . It is true that all religions aspire to peace but it is questionable whether religion has ever fulfilled that role.”—Violence in God’s Name—Religion in an Age of Conflict.
