Religion’s Role in Man’s Wars

“THERE has never been a people that did not have some form of religion,” says The World Book Encyclopedia (1970 edition). Yet, historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote: “War is one of the constants of history.” Are these two constants, war and religion, somehow connected?

Indeed, throughout history, war and religion have been inseparable. Of Egypt, one of history’s first world powers, Lionel Casson explained in the book Ancient Egypt: “The gods were given tribute for every military victory; and hungry for even greater wealth, the priests grew as eager as the pharaohs for further foreign conquest.”

Similarly, clergyman W. B. Wright said of Assyria, another early world power: “Fighting was the business of the nation, and the priests were incessant fomenters of war. They were supported largely from the spoils of conquest.”

Regarding what he termed “barbarian Europe,” Gerald Simons wrote: “Their society was a simple one, explicitly organized for one activity, the waging of war.” And religion was involved. “Many legends tell of swords inhabited by demons, or acting as the agents of gods,” noted Simons.

Yet, the situation in the Roman Empire, which was considered highly civilized, was similar. “Romans were bred to warfare,” explained Moses Hadas in the book Imperial Rome. Roman soldiers carried into battle standards that bore emblems of their gods. One encyclopedia observed: “It was not unusual for a general to order a standard to be cast into the ranks of the enemy, to add zeal to the onset of his soldiers by exciting them to recover what to them was perhaps the most sacred thing the earth possessed.”

War and Professed Christians

The emergence of Christendom on the world stage did not change matters. In fact, Anne Fremantle wrote in the book Age of Faith: “Of all the wars men have waged, none have been more zealously undertaken than those on behalf of a faith. And of these ‘holy wars,’ none have been bloodier and more protracted than the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages.”

Amazingly, even today little has changed. “Fighting and dying under religious flags go on with a violent persistence,” Time magazine reported. “Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ulster trade killings in a kind of perpetual motion of futility. Arabs and Israelis stand tensely at borders of territorial, cultural and religious dispute.” Furthermore, ethnic and religious differences have been responsible for horrible massacres in the former republics of Yugoslavia, as well as in Asian lands.

Incredibly, professed Christians often go to war against members of their own faith. Thus, Catholics kill Catholics on battlefields. Catholic historian E. I. Watkin acknowledged: “Painful as the admission must be, we cannot in the interest of a false edification or dishonest loyalty deny or ignore the historical fact that Bishops have consistently supported all wars waged by the government of their country. I do not know in fact of a single instance in which a national hierarchy has condemned as unjust any war . . . Whatever the official theory, in practice ‘my country always right’ has been the maxim followed in wartime by Catholic Bishops.”

Yet, that is not the maxim of Catholics only. An editorial in the Sun of Vancouver, Canada, noted: “Protestantism in no way can claim to escape these forces of nationalistic divisiveness. It is a weakness of perhaps all organized religion that the church follows the flag . . . What war was ever fought in which God wasn’t claimed to be on each side?”

Apparently not one! Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick admitted: “Even in our churches we have put the battle flags . . . With one corner of our mouth we have praised the Prince of Peace and with the other we have glorified war.” And columnist Mike Royko said that Christians have never “been squeamish about waging wars on other Christians.” He explained: “If they had been, most of the liveliest wars in Europe would never have occurred.” Notable among these was the Thirty Years’ War in Germany between Protestants and Catholics.

Surely, the facts are all too evident. Religion has been a supporter and, at times, even a promoter of wars. Thus, many have pondered the questions: Does God actually favor one nation over another in time of war? Does he take sides when nations fight? Will there ever be a time when war will be no more?

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Into enemy ranks, Roman soldiers cast standards that bore emblems of their gods