I've heard loads of people blame religion for wars, especially Christianity. And granted there have been a few.
Here's my drill: how many "wars" can you name that are religious-based and how many can you name that are not religious-based?? Then, after we sum it all up--can we truly put blame where it belongs?
Anonymous
Favorite Answer
Religious: The Crusades
Non-religious:
The American Revolution
The French Revolution
The US Civil War
World War I
World War II
?
Wars Caused By Religion
?
Wars Over Religion
jon
Many people have an incorrect idea about the crusades. Whereas atrocities were committed on both sides, this was not simply an example of Christian aggression against an innocent people group. In fact the first crusade was organized in order to reclaim land that had been captured by the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantine Empire was unable to recover territory lost during the initial Muslim conquests under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs in the Arab–Byzantine Wars and the Byzantine–Seljuq Wars; these conquests culminated in the loss of fertile farmlands and vast grazing areas of Anatolia in 1071, after a sound victory by the occupying armies of Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert. Urban II sought to reunite the Christian church under his leadership by providing Emperor Alexios I with military support.
Several hundred thousand Roman Catholic Christians became crusaders by taking a public vow and receiving plenary indulgences from the church. These crusaders were Christians from all over Western Europe under feudal rather than unified command, and the politics were often complicated to the point of intra-faith competition leading to alliances between combatants of different faiths against their coreligionists, such as the Christian alliance with the Islamic Sultanate of Rûm during the Fifth Crusade.
Harold
The religions of Christendom, at least, have a sacred precept available to them that could have helped them avoid the guilt associated with warfare. Jesus stated that his followers would be “no part of the world.” (John 15:19; 17:16) Had Christendom’s religions lived by those words, they would not have united themselves with political powers, approving of and blessing armies and war.
Unfortunately Christendom and there leaders have not learned war no more. But who does?