ABSTRACT

1. Religious rituals and practices become the social glue that unites the tribal, racial or ethnic group. Contemporary manifestations of that unity can be seen in ethnocentric expressions, such as “God Bless America” (rather than “God Bless All Nations” or “God Bless All Peoples” or simply, “God Bless Everyone”).

2. Tribal/racial/ethnic religion typically involves supplication to, or manipulation of, some alleged deity (or deities) believed to possess the power to benefit (or harm) the tribe, traditionally including a victory-granting, god/goddess of war. 

3. Loyalty to the tribe and its leaders is the chief element of the religiously sanctioned, if not created, moral code. Loyalty is most strongly emphasized or required in times of genuine or perceived danger to the tribe. The popular and long-standing motto “For God and Country” (Pro Deo et Patria in Latin) well captures the spirit of religiously inspired loyalty, for it suggests that what is done for country is done for God and vice-versa. In effect, the two become indivisible in the mind of the believer/citizen.

4. Tribal/racial/ethnic religion possesses a strict code of moral conduct toward other tribal members including heavy penalties for breaching the code. However, toward non-tribal members the moral code is typically “anything goes” since the other is seen as more beast than human, a potential if not real threat to the tribe’s continued existence. 

5. Today the tribal group is known as the “nation,” and tribalism has become “nationalism.” In practice,tribal/racial/ethnic religion and nationalism have become nearly identical as seen in the now ubiquitous car magnet “God Bless Our Troops” that contains the unspoken but none the less real wish “God Damn/Destroy Our Enemies!”
   
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Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
John Donne

Is religion a force for peace or war? Or to borrow a phrase from the title of Christopher Hitchen’s recent book, God Is Not Great, does religion really poison everything, including the possibility of living in a peaceful world?

The answer is much like posing the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. That is to say, for every example cited to prove that religion has supported warfare and violence, other examples can be presented to show ways in which religion has contributed to not only peace and the avoidance of war but to the betterment of humanity and the world. When the question is posed in this way, the debate is as endless as it is futile unless the “winner” is the side that amasses the greatest number of examples.

There is, however, a more fruitful way to address the question, at least for those who, like me, recognize that all of the world’s major religions have, at one time or another, engaged in “holy war,” or more accurately, condoned the organized use of violence against perceived enemies. The question then becomes one of seeking to understand the various factors at work in the world’s major faiths that have led them to condone, justify, or at least tolerate the use of violence. And equally, if not more, important is the question of whether there may be some underlying commonalities in the world’s major faiths that, transcending differences in doctrine and praxis, result in the sacralization of violence, at least under certain circumstances.

Let me stress that the search for such factors or commonalities is not done with the intent of denying the many positive contributions the world’s major religions have made to peace and human wellbeing. Yet, it is also true that these positive contributions are not the problem that is of so much concern to contemporary society. In other words, it is not the bright side of religion that gives cause for concern but its dark side. Once again, the focus on “darkness” that follows is not meant as a denial of religion’s bright side, though it may very well challenge those who believe religion, or at least their faith, has nothing but a bright side.

The Dark Side

Somewhat surprisingly, my research into the dark side of religion began not with one of the Abrahamic faiths, but with Buddhism, a faith that, at least in the West, is not known for its advocacy of holy wars let alone religious fanaticism. Accordingly, in one of Buddhism’s foundational texts, the Dhammapada, Buddha Shakyamuni is recorded as having said:

All men tremble at punishment, all men fear death; remembering that thou are like unto them, do not strike or slay.

All men tremble at punishment, all men love life; remembering that thou are like unto them, do not strike or slay.

In addition, the first of the five precepts that all Buddhists, both lay and clergy, pledge to follow is “to abstain from harming living creatures” (i.e. killing). Given this, it is not surprising that in 1938 the well-known Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki could claim: “Whatever form Buddhism takes in the various countries where it flourishes, it is a religion of compassion, and in its varied history, it has never been found engaged in warlike activities.”

Were Suzuki’s statement true, it would mean that Buddhism was the great, and possibly sole, exception to the earlier claim that all of the world’s major faiths are guilty of having sacralized violence at one time or another. Butas the distinguished True Pure Land scholar-priest Inoue Enryō (1858-1919) makes clear, as early as the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Buddhism had been invoked in Japan to justify warfare by the “army of the Buddha:”

In Russia state and religion are one, and there is no religious freedom. Thus, religion is used as a chain in order to unify the [Russian] people. Therefore, when they [the Russian people] see Orientals, they are told that the latter are the bitter enemies of their religion. It is for this reason that on the one hand this is a war of politics and on the other hand it is a war of religion. … If theirs is the army of God, then ours is the army of the Buddha. It is in this way that Russia is not only the enemy of our country but of the Buddha as well.

Further, following Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in July 1937, Japan’s most distinguished Buddhist leaders lined up in support of Japan’s military aggression, describing it as nothing less than a “holy war.” For example, in 1939 Sōtō Zen Master Harada Daiun stated:

[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way].

As the Asia-Pacific War progressed, especially in the years following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the leaders of Japan’s traditional Buddhist sects were ever more strident in their statements of war support. When, in a final act of desperation, the Japanese military turned to the use of the infamous kamikaze suicide pilots,Buddhist leaders saw in these fanatical acts no less than “complete enlightenment.” In May 1945 Sōtō Zen scholar-priest Masunaga Reihō wrote:

The source of the spirit of the Special Attack Forces [i.e. kamikaze] lies in the denial of the individual self and the rebirth of the soul, which takes upon itself the burden of history. From ancient times Zen has described this conversion of mind as the achievement of complete enlightenment.

Sacralizing Violence

In struggling to understand how Buddhism, or at least Buddhist leaders, had diverged so fundamentally from the teachings of their founder, I could not help but recall that I had once asked the same question about Christianity. That is to say, given the Judeo-Christian commandment “Thou shall not kill” and Jesus’ teaching to “love your enemies,” how does one explain, for example, the immense slaughter accompanying the multiple Christian Crusades of the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries? Is it possible that despite the great differences in doctrine and praxis among the world’s great faiths, in this case Buddhism and Christianity, these faiths might share more in common than is generally recognized, especially in regard to the sacralization of violence?

In the midst of pondering these questions, I came across the following seminal quotation from Martin Marty of the University of Chicago:

Positive thinkers and public relations officers for the faiths would repudiate this notion or evade the fact. They want religion to be nothing but gospel, good news. Apologists for the faiths usually minimize the distress that can come with religion or that religion can produce. You will not read about the destructive element in religious impulses in the advertisements for the church of your choice. Yet if the pursuit of truth is still to be cherished as a foundational theme in the academy, one must note the feature of religion that keeps it on the front page and on prime time: it kills.

Or, if, as the gun lobbies say of weapons—that they do not kill; people do—one must say of religion that if it does not kill, many of its forms and expressions motivate people to kill. Experts on what motivates the scores of wars or, as some would have it, “tribal conflicts,” today know that not only do many belligerent partisans wear names like “Protestant” and “Catholic,” “Shi’ite” and “Sunni,” “Jewish” and “Sikh,” but leaders and followers alike fire on the demonized Other, the enemy, in the name of God or the gods.

And, as we have seen above, Marty might well have added: “in the name of the Buddha.” Marty was not, of course, the first student of religion to recognize that “religion kills.” As the seventeenth-century mathematician, physicist and theologian Blaise Pascal noted in Pensées, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

One of the most significant aspects of these quotes, apart from their brutal honesty, is that they don’t place the blame on any one religious tradition. It is not “Islam kills,” or “Christianity kills,” but rather “religion kills.” For Pascal, it was religious conviction that led the faithful to do evil “so completely and cheerfully.” But as to the reason(s) why this was so, both men remained silent.

Students of religion, however, are not the only ones to have recognized this phenomenon. For example, the sociologist Peter Berger noted:

Whenever a society must motivate its members to kill or to risk their lives, thus consenting to being placed in extreme marginal situations, religious legitimations become important. … Killing under the auspices of the legitimate authorities has, for this reason, been accompanied from ancient times to today by religious paraphernalia and ritualism. Men go to war and men are put to death amid prayers, blessings, and incantations.

Again, what the preceding comments all share in common is that they look beyond any one religious tradition in seeking to understand the complex and intricate relationship that exists between religion and violence, especially in the form of state-sanctioned warfare. Secondly, although they accurately describe this phenomenon, these comments do not explore in depth the rationale or causes of what they bear witness to. Let us therefore direct our attention to this question.

An Aircraft Called Religion

For obvious reasons in light of 9/11, the paradigm of an aircraft lends itself to an exploration of the complexities of the relationship between religion and violence. This paradigm is also helpful in revealing the fundamental nature of this phenomenon. That is to say, an aircraft is, in and of itself, “value free,” for it can as readily be used to transport large numbers of people quickly and safely as to bomb and destroy cities and their inhabitants (or crash into the side of buildings). In other words, an aircraft’s “morality” is not built in but rests completely in the hands of those who operate it.

Viewed historically, it is readily observable that when the Wright brothers first succeeded in powered flight in December 1903, their goal was transport, not destruction. Nevertheless, it was not long before an Italian aviator, Lt. Giulio Gavotti, recognized the potential of his aircraft for more than simple reconnaissance during the Italian invasion of Libya. Thus, on November 1, 1911, Lt. Gavotti flew over a Turkish camp at Ain Zara and manually dropped four Danish-made hand grenades over the side, marking the first aerial bombing in world history. It had taken only eight years for a colonial power to “weaponize” the airplane, employing it as part of the Western world’s quest to acquire Arab oil.

Although this article will identify abstract or universal principles of sacralized violence, for purposes of clarity it is critical to introduce these principles in tandem with concrete illustrations revealing how these principles have manifested themselves throughout history. These illustrations have been selected taking into account their familiarity to a primarily American readership, and thus many if not most of them will have some connection to this country’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

Some readers may find that what follows unfairly targets this heritage. In one sense that charge is accurate, for it is not difficult to demonstrate that Judeo-Christian adherents have not always lived up to the highest ideals of their faith. But it is also true that, if space allowed, something similar could be said about adherents to all of the world’s major faiths. Thus, the illustrations that follow are no more than a sampling of universal principles at work across the world’s faiths.

Finally, the aircraft paradigm has one further advantage in that an aircraft is made up of a complex mix of distinct parts, for example, wings, motors, fuselage, pilot(s), and so on, all of which are essential to its successful operation. At their best, these parts function harmoniously in accomplishing whatever “mission,” peaceful or otherwise, may be given them. When scrutinized carefully, the complexity of a modern aircraft is truly amazing even though today’s passengers typically take it for granted. Yet, issues of war and peace as they relate to the “aircraft called religion” are far more complex; for they relate to that most complicated of all mechanisms—the human heart and mind (and beyond).

Wing = Tribal/Ethnic Religion (Anthropological)

If there is any single feature of an aircraft that distinguishes it from other forms of transportation it is its wing, for it literally keeps the aircraft afloat on a sea of air. Should it fail in flight, disaster is almost immediate. The wing of the aircraft called religion is its tribal or ethnic character, that is, its anthropological roots. At first glance many readers may wish to deny this claim, not least of all those who are familiar with the writing of philosopher of history, Karl Jaspers.

However, before examining what he had to say, let us consider the key features of this particular wing:

1. The focus of religious rituals and practices is on the collective good (rather than individual salvation).

2. Religious rituals and practices become the social glue that unites the tribal, racial or ethnic group. Contemporary manifestations of that unity can be seen in ethnocentric expressions, such as “God Bless America” (rather than “God Bless All Nations” or “God Bless All Peoples” or simply, “God Bless Everyone”).

3. Tribal/racial/ethnic religion typically involves supplication to, or manipulation of, some alleged deity (or deities) believed to possess the power to benefit (or harm) the tribe, traditionally including a victory-granting, god/goddess of war. With the advent of monotheism, the god or goddess of war seemed to disappear but in reality was incorporated into the unitary deity as one of its aspects, for example, a jealous God who demands justice rather than solely a God of love.

4. Loyalty to the tribe and its leaders is the chief element of the religiously sanctioned, if not created, moral code. Loyalty is most strongly emphasized or required in times of genuine or perceived danger to the tribe. The popular and long-standing motto “For God and Country” (Pro Deo et Patria in Latin) well captures the spirit of religiously inspired loyalty, for it suggests that what is done for country is done for God and vice-versa. In effect, the two become indivisible in the mind of the believer/citizen.

5. Tribal/racial/ethnic religion possesses a strict code of moral conduct toward other tribal members including heavy penalties for breaching the code. However, toward non-tribal members the moral code is typically “anything goes” since the other is seen as more beast than human, a potential if not real threat to the tribe’s continued existence. It is thus that the enemy becomes dehumanized as, for example, “savage redskins” in early American history; “Japs” in World War II; “gooks” in Vietnam; and “camel jockeys,” or “towel-heads” in Iraq.

6. Today the tribal group is known as the “nation,” and tribalism has become “nationalism.” In practice,tribal/racial/ethnic religion and nationalism have become nearly identical as seen in the now ubiquitous car magnet “God Bless Our Troops” that contains the unspoken but none the less real wish “God Damn/Destroy Our Enemies!” Further, in what appears on the surface to be a step toward racial harmony, members of minority ethnicities and races (including women) are now, after a long struggle, admitted to the body politic, though only on the condition that they profess loyalty and adopt the valuesof the traditional male power-holders, for example, WASPS in the case of the United States.

Some readers may now be shaking their heads in disagreement, for even if the preceding features were true of religion in our tribal pasts, many if not most adherents of contemporary universal religions would deny these characteristics apply to them. They claim that the founders of their respective faiths, for example Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha, were the saviors or religious teachers of all humanity.

Within the academy, scholars of religion might point to Karl Jaspers, who coined the term “Axial Period” for the era between 800-200 B.C.E. when changes took place in human and religious culture that were so radical that it was as if human consciousness had undergone a giant turn on its axis. In contrast, prior to the Axial Period the many and diverse human cultures were basically tribal, racial or ethnic in nature—their identity and cohesion found in a common pool of blood and genes, their existence dedicated to insuring their own survival. However, following the Axial Period these tribal cultures gave way to cultures focused on spiritual wellbeing, that is, the “salvation” of the individual. Moral and ethical systems became, at least in theory, universal in nature, recognizing no tribal, racial, ethnic or (later) national boundaries.

Significantly, this change occurred independently in many different cultures at nearly the same time. Examples include the Greek philosophers; Semitic prophets (up to and including Jesus and Muhammad); Indian seers (Buddha and Mahavira); and Chinese thinkers (Confucius and Lao-tzu). The trans-ethnic, trans-racial, trans-national religions that developed from the teachings of these spiritual leaders eventually spread from their points of origin to create the Christian-influenced West, Islam-influenced Middle East and Buddhist/Hindu/Confucian/Taoist-influenced Asia.

Nevertheless, it is critically important to realize that these newly created universal religions did not obliterate, at least not totally, the earlier tribal/racial/ethnic cultures. Instead, they merely subordinated them to a higher set of values. Like seething molten lava, the values of these earlier cultures were ever ready to burst to the surface when the opportunity presented itself. This in turn resulted in inevitable conflict, especially during periods of crisis, between two sets of norms: “individual and universal” versus “collective and limited.”

In light of the above discussion it can be readily recognized that when, during the Russo-Japanese War, True Pure Land scholar-priest Inoue Enryō referred to Russia as “not only the enemy of our country but of the Buddha as well,” he had turned the founder of his universal faith into a tribal or national deity for whom Japanese Buddhists should fight and die.

Yet, one cannot help but wonder why Japanese Buddhists were so easily taken in by this ruse? That is to say, why weren’t they able to see through, or reject, the tribalization of their faith?

The truth is that tribal/racial/ethnic and universal religions are not as far apart as they first appear to be, for there is a bridge that not only unites them but readily leads believers to conflate the two, leading to a failure to recognize the inherent conflict. The name of this bridge is loving or compassionate self-sacrifice. In the case of Inoue Enryō, it can be seen when he added:

Buddhism is a teaching of compassion, a teaching for living human beings. Therefore, fighting on behalf of living human beings is in accord with the spirit of compassion. … Beyond that, however, it is the conduct of a [self-sacrificing] bodhisattva seeking to save untold millions of living souls throughout China and Korea from the jaws of death.

Needless to say, these sentiments are by no means limited to the Buddhist tradition. In Islam, for example, we find the following explanation of martyrdom: [In Islam] the martyr witnesses and sees the truth physically and thus stands by it firmly, so much so that not only does he testify to it verbally, but he is prepared to struggle and fight and give up his life for the truth, and thus to become a martyr.

In Christianity we find it in a somewhat unlikely place. Namely, following the Nazi blitzkrieg on Poland in 1939, Germany’s Roman Catholic Military Bishop Franz Joseph Rarkowski praised his nation’s soldiers, saying:

Their sacrifice for Germany’s honor and future lacked nothing of human greatness and glory. And this dying was not only beautiful and sublime in the human sense but towers beyond into a higher world. It is a holy death: for those who have fallen have consecrated and sanctified all their war services through their oath of allegiance, and have thus entered their sacrifices in the legends of God which are preserved in the archives of Eternity.

Some readers may feel it is unfair to call upon a fervent Nazi supporter, albeit a Roman Catholic military bishop, to represent Christianity. If so, what is one to make of the Rev. James R. McGonegal, pastor of Saint Ignatius of Antioch Church in Cleveland, Ohio? On July 17, 2004, The Cleveland Plain Dealer carried an article describing Rev. McGonegal’s eulogy for a fallen U.S. soldier in Iraq:

Sgt. Joseph Martin Garmback was killed last week in Samarra, Iraq. … “Joey loved being a soldier. He was so self-sacrificing,” said the Rev. James R. McGonegal. “This man knew something about living and dying, and giving his life for someone else.” Many dried their eyes when McGonegal assured them Garmback was going to a better place, a safer place. “He is safe at home, at last, at peace,” McGonegal said.

Needless to say, Rev. McGonegal, a Roman Catholic, did not discuss how many Iraqi children of God Sgt. Garmback might have killed prior to “giving his life for someone else.” More importantly, if the references to the particular war in which the soldiers sacrificed their lives are removed, is there any fundamental difference in the underlying religious message between the two Church representatives above? In both instances eternal life was the certain reward for sacrificing oneself for one’s country, no matter how much killing of the other was required.

And what of the soldiers who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their country? What makes it possible for them to overcome the basic human instinct for survival? In a lecture by Richard Koenigsberg entitled: “If One Aspires to Achieve Peace, One Needs to Know Why People Love War,” he noted, “Soldiers are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to preserve the common love object. What is the beloved object in the name of which people wage war? People wage war in the name of their nation and its sacred ideals.”

Expressed in slightly different terms, soldiers are willing to die for something outside of themselves that is more important to them than their own lives. In other words, they sacrifice themselves in the process of self-transcendence. Like self-sacrifice, self-transcendence is a goal that both tribal and universal religions share in common. In the Christian tradition, for example, it is expressed as “love your neighbor as yourself” or “no greater love hath a man than that he lay down his life for a friend.”

On the surface, self-transcendence readily gives the appearance of being a universal value until, that is, one questions the goal or object of that transcendence. When the goal is identification with one’s nation (rather than all of humanity or God’s children, for example), the reality is that while the individual self may have been transcended, it has joined millions of like-minded people to create a new, more powerful, and equally self-centered, collective self called the “nation.” Just how attractive the nation can be in terms of eliciting loyalty unto death is revealed by P. H. Pearse, founder of the Irish revolutionary movement, as he observed the daily carnage in France during World War I:

The last sixteenth months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.

Thus does the homage of millions of lives given for one’s tribe, a.k.a “nation,” become equated with “august homage … offered to God.” The anthropological nature of the wing on the aircraft called religion remains alive and well, never so clearly as in wartime.