Religion and Violence

This section on religious questions and challenges has thus far emphasized what “should” be done according to religious ideals. But everyone in today’s world recognizes that actions are done in the name of religion that hardly seem compatible with ideals or moral imperatives.

Religion, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, is a potent force, in ways that are both constructive and destructive. Consider again Bruce Lincoln’s four-domain definition of a “religion,” and note that it does not portray religion as necessarily being a force for peace in the world. The “discourse” that claims a “transcendent status,” and the “practices,” “community,” and “institution” related to this discourse need not necessarily be based on avoiding violence. As Lincoln argues later in Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, religion has the potential to facilitate and even to escalate violence. Lincoln concludes his book with a list of fourteen “Theses on Religion and Violence,” the last of which states:

Just as the use of violence tends to elicit a violent riposte, so the religious valorization of violence prompts its victims to frame their violent responses in religious terms. In doing so, they normally invert the signs through which their adversaries mark one side as sacred and the other profane. When both sides experience their struggle in religious terms, the stage is set for prolonged, ferocious, and enormously destructive combat.-⁴

This is a frightening and, we can hope, an unlikely scenario. But as we observe frequently in today’s world, even when just one side in a conflict justifies actions by belief in “transcendent” authority, there is a risk of religiously motivated violence, even to the point of taking the lives of others and of losing one’s own.