religion is the main cause of war 12 marks

This is because we cannot prove whether establishing restraints on war prevents it or instead by making it more religiously and morally acceptable facilitates war by giving it legitimacy and prevents the human costs from being calculated. The petition in the Lords Prayer for thy kingdom come is for the reign of God after the final conflagration. Examples would be the U.S.s relations with Mexico and Canada, and, most importantly, Western Europe since the 1950s. Paul and the John of Revelation disagreed about the status of Rome, whether it represented just government ordained by God or the antichrist. I will also show that many religiously based justifications for violence are as acceptable as rigorous secular justifications for violence, provided that crucial premises, which religion supplies, are accepted. Priests and people are willing to use the political realm to institutionalize and/or enforce correct worship, doctrine, and ethical practices. . Religion becomes potent when it is so mixed with nationalism that they become indistinguishable and now appear as the dominant force of our day (although nationalism is as difficult to define as religion). Even belligerent powers, and there is a strong correlation with being a great power and the frequency of war, remain at peace most of the time. Its southernmost terminator was Damascus, well north of Jerusalem. It can be what we would call religious obedience to or a right relationship to God or a blessing from God. @user151841 - the silk road never went through the holy land. What we think of as religions have long and complex histories enduring over centuries in all kinds of political and economic systems sanctifying, criticizing, ignoring and escaping from them. Do most wars have religion among their causes? The accusation that religion causes war is especially simplistic when applied to the pre-modern era. Buddhism seems the least likely of a major religion to legitimate war. He claimed that the social gospels claim to create a peaceful society was based upon the enlightenment, not biblical categories. our world. Conflict is caused by giving unchecked access to power to leaders willing to kill to impose their -ism. What seems clear, however blurred the practice, is that the world still recognizes a distinction between a terrorist and a soldier, a war and a massacre. assassinations of political leaders for betraying the true faith has characterized Christianity and Islam. The most extreme, and therefore very popular with my students, variant of the peace/justice theory is by Johann Galtung, who defines a peaceful society as one in which everyone can achieve to the limits of his or her capacity. Religion has often been used to legitimate terrorism, i.e. In Hinduism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there is no one founder or normative canon or myths but layers of traditions contained in Vedas, Puranas, and epics. The causes of war of independence 1857 - SlideShare But that's totally false. There are many common misconceptions about religion that are often taken as unquestioned facts, such as the idea that religious people are inherently anti-science, that a literal reading of holy texts is the "true" religious stance, that faith is incompatible with reason, and that all religions claim to posses sole and absolute truth. Then there are a few religions that are both warlike and war justifying. And if the infidels, heathens, nonbelievers, etc. The world today is a better place for the activities of the NGOs, but recent history does not prove that it is becoming a more peaceful place, if the quantity of wars and numbers of deaths are the criteria. All three said that an obligation to ones neighbor translated into political terms allowed fighting to preserve a peaceful society. An ideal king in this imperfect world should exemplify the dharma and by his charisma can bring order out of chaos and do violence to obtain justice. American Friends in our Revolution adopted strict neutrality as a way of preserving peace. At times religious differences were themselves the occasion for the outbreak of hostilities, though one may wonder whether religion was the cause or merely an excuse for war. So I went to the YMCA and made one out of wood that sufficed when I could not borrow the neighbor boys guns. World War I showed the accuracy of his description of the role of European churches in a war for which historians still search for adequate causes. It has been done by modifications of rather than abandoning a state system and it works because, in spite of a long history of war and different languages, similar economic and political systems have emerged. Religion is not main cause of war, research suggests - Christian Today None of the teachings about peace in the New Testament are about politics or war. The carnage of battle is irrelevant because death is not ultimate but is part of the karmic cycle of rebirth. It would be astonishing if, @MichaelJ. Emile Durkheim insisted that in religion we create idealized images of ourselves and then ascribe ultimate value to our society. Use up and down arrow keys to explore within a submenu. It concluded that, Religion did not stand as a single cause in any conflict. However, one should not rule out independent origins. In other words, even when threatened, seeking peace must be the first course of action. In apocalyptic war, an oppressed people without power living in a totally corrupt world is delivered by a heavenly host of angels after a climatic battle. The belief in an apocalyptic war before the end of time permeates the New Testament in the synoptic gospels and the book of Revelation. After the crusades ended and certainly by 1648, religious differences alone were no longer acceptable as a just cause and reinterpretations of jihad appeared in some but not all Muslim theorists by the nineteenth century. refuse to accept the truth, the followers are encouraged to convert them, by force if necessary. Both agitated against slavery, but Mott also worked for other crusades: womens rights, temperance, prison reform and, like Garrison, disdained politics. The biggest change is that the Old Testament prophecies about the coming age of peace are applied to Jesus. Theirs was a way of perfection reserved for the most devout. In first Isaiah peace comes after defeat of the Assyrians by Gods miracle and there will be a future realm of peace under a restored Davidic king dwelling in Gods holy mount Zion. Any minister knows that being too far in front of his/her congregation may mean the loss of his job or create weakness in his religious congregation. The best that can be hoped for is a cold peace based upon mutual deterrence or overwhelming force. While we cannot deny that, some battles such as the crusades and the Lebanese civil war were based . A first requisite in answering these questions is to define the terms: religion, facilitates, war. Note that the same purity of motive was required or Arjuna in his dialogue with Krishna. Examples easily spring to mind: the killing of the Central American natives by the conquistadors, the slave trade, [4 further examples]. Even when there is a transnational body, like the Roman Catholic Church, most members of the hierarchy were born and live in the nation their churches are in. A few leaders, often far away from local congregations, do make bold pronouncements, but these are easily ignored under the sentiment that what do religious leaders know about international politics. Equally important, the personal of all organized religions are drawn from the society they serve and will share most of its values, both the good and bad ones. And those gods never made any promises, and never demanded the followers to find new followers). While, for example, it is estimated that approximately one to three million people were tragically killed in the Crusades, and perhaps 3,000 in the Inquisition, nearly 35 million soldiers and civilians died in the senseless, and secular, slaughter of World War 1 alone. While religion was used, on both sides, in service of an expansive and more permissive conceptualization of just cause for war, so too was religion mobilized in opposition to such expansionism, as religious figures in the west and in Islam re-articulated the proper, and more limited, boundaries of the legitimate right of self-defence. Religion gives spirit to public life and provides a beacon for moral order. Because religions require a long perspective and critically examine human motivations and actions, spiritual institutions can provide an underpinning for peacemaking activities. As will become apparent shortly, the teachings of Muhammad were interpreted to create a kind of holy war as well as justice in the conduct of war similar to medieval Christian just war theory. Most likely a pantheist, though his religious statements are so contradictory that it is hard to pin him down. @Michael: not necessarily a "cause", but you're only asking for an argument. Niebuhr disliked just war theories because they could too easily be used to sanctify an oppressive social order and were unduly legalistic and rationalistic. In political science, the social gospel helped to create International Relations; the same anti-war impulse was behind another more recent reform discipline, Peace and Conflict Studies. "Lebensraum" was an explicit aim of Germany in WWII. Eventually the Pandavas are restored to the throne through means allowed by Krishna that violate the just practices of war and contribute to their own downfall. From a Christian point of view, I found this challenging. Age of Dynasties (1400-1559): conflicts over, Age of Reason (1648-1789): religion vanished as a cause of war, to be replaced by conflicts over, Age of Nationalism (1789-1917): wars became increasingly linked to. He says church personnel and institutions were actively involved in the programme of resistance to popular pressures for political reform that culminated in the 1994 genocide, and numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists, and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings. Given that both Catholic and Protestant churches in Rwanda were multi-ethnic, this means that in most communities members of a church parish killed their fellow parishioners and even, in a number of cases, their own pastor or priest. Gods war evolved after the conquest and establishment of the monarchy with its standing army. The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University, is a leading center for the study of Talmud and numerous other areas of traditional Torah study, as well as for professional training of rabbis and educators. A religious war is a war caused by, or justified by, religious differences. Neither is all coercion the same, and killing in war is qualitatively different from other exercises of power. One form of political peace is that of an empire, of which the pax romana remains the primary example. A desire for power or wealth or adventure was, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, enough to make a war caused by a sufficient major fault unjust. Which brings us to the heart of the problem which is the problem of the human heart. PDF Get help and support EXAMPLE HISTORY RESPONSES - AQA And they can most certainly not be used to justify wars (the god of those religions can't be owned by a group of followers. Religion has often acted as a corrective to state violence, with variations of the do unto others what you would like others to do unto you golden rule, which is not only found in Christianity. The American military in Gulf War II sought to fight Saddam Hussein using smart weapons to minimize civilian casualties. Such a perspective can justify rebellion against corrupt leaders or suppression of schismatics or heretics. But if it isnt religion that causes war, what does? Over centuries the king or warrior caste became subordinate to the Brahmin or priest caste who led pure lives and conducted the rituals necessary to please the gods and guarantee victory in battle. The only response to such statements is to order another pint & change the topic. Many wars have led to large numbers of people leaving their countries yearning for a better life. 24 "Religion is the main cause of war and the root of most suffering in the world" These wars were for territorial conquest, to control borders, secure trade routes, or respond to an internal challenge to political authority. I love watching the people I care about open the gifts Ive chosen/made for them. Instead, war is caused by clashes between different groups, bad government, high levels of corruption and poor relations with neighbouring countries. Peace can be a past, present, or future condition. Are they right? This paper is based on J. W. Frost. 2. fought by groups defined by religion against other groups also defined by religion. However, there are. Is Christianitys impact on war best defined by the practices of the higher clergy, men or women, educated or un-educated, devout or fellow travelers? Involving God as part of a war campaign does not make a war a holy war - for a war to be a holy war, religion has to be the driving force. Found the internet! In fact, they are almost one. If we count such cases as religious wars, would that change the answer in any significant way? A third form of peace is a stable peace, when war becomes so remote as to become unthinkable. Is Religion the Cause of War? Lesson (GCSE: Religion, Peace and Augustine did not condemn an initiator of hostilities, because a just war was correcting an already existing fault, was self-defense. Shiite teaching, resembling Christian eschatology, sees a decisive break with normal history with a superhuman figure necessary to create a lasting peace. In such a case, non-violent resistance was the preferred option but, as a last resort and if the rulers employed violence to preclude political change, violence could be morally justified. rev2023.6.27.43513. I propose that few wars ever have this basic motive, but rather use religious motivation to promote passion into soldiers and justify seemingly unjustifiable conflicts. If you need to flag this entry as abusive. Put like this, you can see why people say that the history of Europe in the second millennium AD was a history of religious violence. In New Zealand, the peace that first came to Maori through Christianity initially resulted in increasingly peaceful relations between various Iwi. Quoted in Jonathan Raban, Truth About Terrorism, NY Review of Books, Jan. 13, 2005, p. 22). The sooner all religions are gone, the sooner the world will be a peaceful place. While some claim that Communism itself is a "state religion" -- because it has an absolute dictator whose word is law and a "holy book" of unchallenged rules -- such a claim simply equates "religion" with the human desire for power, conformance, and control, making any distinctions with other human institutions meaningless. History simply does not support the hypothesis that religion is the major cause of conflict. Some writers more sympathetic to religion attempt to argue that those examples show that religion is not really the source of the world's problems, and that even so-called religious conflicts are not really religious underneath. We hear reports from various commentators attributing this increase in violence around the world to religion. Is it morally wrong to use tragic historical events as character background/development? Some of the other causes, because of the length of time that can pass since the offending act took place are probably not just causes either. Do you have any insight on how many of the non-religious wars used religion to sell the war to the people of the countries involved? The present time of troubles is a sign of the impending eschaton. Atheist author Sam Harris goes even further by calling religion, the most prolific source of violence in our history[2]. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. p120-122: The violence and destruction imposed in the name of Christianity has a long history: the medieval Crusades [4 further examples]; and we could go on, of course. The lesson plan and PPTs contain all the information and task details to run the lesson smoothly - a starter activity based on a picture, learning objectives slide, 1 minute peer discussion, main market place activity - differentiated with 2 worksheets - and the information for the activity on the 2nd Powerpoint -also different by detail and key words, lesson also works well with a follow up 12 Mark exam question. Whittier believed in all of these causes, but crusaded only against slavery and, because he saw the potential from political activities, in 1840 supported the Liberty Party. It covers every major war, rebellion and revolution from the last 5,500 years. With what seems like disturbing regularity, the media reports horrendous acts of violence. Just wars are, as the slogan indicates, just wars. Only the first of these causes is completely outside the scope of the conventional idea of a just cause. Religion, then, was not thought of as somehow separate from the rest of life and therefore could not be specifically identified as the cause of war. As he envisioned a future where the world is perfected by the conscious acts of human beings, the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote, "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Crusaders never went that far. Search within r/islam. By the 11 th century, Peace of God documents list categories of people - priests, merchants, serfs - who are not to be preyed upon. Finally, many religious organizations are organized within a state. Another analogy, using more classic terms: the myth of Sisyphus. It is understandable that these misconceptions persist, though, because they come from the loudest voices on the extremes, and like other polarizing positions in politics and culture are simplistic ideas that promote easy "us vs. them" thinking. Read more. Until recently, conventional wisdom held that religious wars in Europe stopped at the peace of Westphalia in 1648; from then on wars were fought over balance of power or secular ideologies or empire. Answer: There is a belief among people that declares religion as the main cause of wars worldwide, and it has been the main cause of violence throughout the history of humanity. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Peace can also be what we, but not the ancient Hebrews, see as more secular: security, prosperity, health, justice. 4 Pages. Holy war is a basic ingredient for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism and both the devout and those who want to exploit the traditions for political ends will find in the canon fodder for another kind of cannon. I think we can easily see why that is: To be "most" it must be over 50%. A Quaker matron pronounced, " I hate war." Not even close. Against the Augustinian-Niebuhr perspective that all actions were flawed by original sin, Quaker A.J. So, just to look at Christianity, does one define it as a transnational body aiming at universal institution but with state forms Roman Catholicism, or as state sponsored forms Church of England, Russian Orthodoxy, or as a denomination like Methodists and Disciples, or in a sectarian way Jehovahs Witnesses or Quakers. Historians, by and large, agree that most wars fought for resources and thus are caused by the greed for worldly or physical gain, be it land, women or money. In Pacem in Terris and Vatican II, the church endorsed both just war theory and pacifism. socio-political divisions are justified and enforced on religious lines. The term son of man,. All three men saw a desire for peace as natural, as God-given, but as unrealizable on earth and all criticized pacifism as a political tool. Even using this stringent definition, a religious war could also be an ethnic or a nationalistic war and apply to one side but not the other. Hide or show the sub-menu options for Meet Swarthmore, Hide or show the sub-menu options for Academics, Hide or show the sub-menu options for Campus Life, Hide or show the sub-menu options for Admissions & Aid, Hide or show the sub-menu options for News & Events, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Policy, Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility. Unchecked violence for its own sake is universally condemned. Most violence in the service of the order was aimed at the destruction of chaos, or Isfet. Briefly put, does domestic politics in some complicated fashion end up determining international relations or do the systemic features of our interstate politics govern the incidence of war and peace? In the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem comes after the time of troubles, including war, and takes place at the throne of God after the judging of the quick and the dead. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. use escape to move to top level menu parent. Deciphering the Hindu teachings on peace is complicated by the enormous variety of traditions and the fact that there is no one canonical text or agreed upon set of beliefs. This a GCSE lesson that goes into detail about whether Religion is the cause of war. We have declared war on terrorism, but in Afghanistan treated both the Taliban and foreign fighters as not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention and recently seems to have treated some Iraqis the same way. 2002 Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University Answers | Episode 13 - Is Religion The Main Cause of War? Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism are non-warlike religions. Peace is the highest religious aspiration for which we must work. Some of these are rather disputable. In that context it can be hard to determine whether the religion was intrinsically evil and violent, or was turned that way by the extreme context it existed within. (Answers S3E9). Still, religious organizations have and can continue to play a supporting role in the integration of Europe. The main and continuing influence of biblical descriptions of Gods role in war would come through Christianity. Against this has to be placed the equally terrible history of large-scale nonreligious violence and cruelty. And not all warlike religions can be used to justify/launch wars. Arjuna, a mighty Pandava warrior who has never before in the epic shown any ethical sensitivity, now hesitates to fight because he will be shedding the blood of his relatives. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. The most prominent of these religious theories are non-violence, principled disobedience irregardless of consequences, nuclear war pacifism, just war pacifism, and programmatic pacifism. And while in medieval Islam and Christianity, there were elaborate rules for division of booty, both religions condemned making war for the sake for getting riches. Until he obtained true peace in heaven, a Christian soldier had an obligation to support the fragmentary peace of a well-ordered society.

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