Does religion create evil?

If you have been watching the news, you might conclude that religion inevitably causes evil. Not so fast.

A torture scene from the Spanish Inquisition. Credit: Shutterstock

A torture scene from the Spanish Inquisition. Credit: Shutterstock

The question of the week: were the Crusades really that “bad?”

Yes, they were. The fighting between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land was horrific, but the “warmup show” was even worse. The Crusaders marched through Europe and destroyed numerous Jewish communities. Those bloody years added several items to the ever-expanding repertoire of Jewish customs: yahrzeit (the anniversary of a death) and yizkor (memorial prayers that are said at festival services). So, let’s just say that Jews don’t need much convincing that the Crusades were, as we say, “bad for the Jews.”


Why are we even talking about this? Because of President Obama’s words at the White House Prayer Breakfast. President Obama told Christians to get off their “high horses” about religious violence, and raised the Crusades as an example.

This had the following effects. Some critics of the President said that he was simply changing the subject (i.e., Islamic terror) and relativizing religious violence. Others whined that the Crusades were (sob) simply misunderstood, because “they (the Muslims) started it (when they captured Jerusalem from the Christians).”

And still others, like author Susan Jacoby, in a recent article in the New York Times, pointed to the Crusades as yet another classic example of the harm that religion can cause: “on the special damage inflicted in many historical contexts by warriors seeking conquest in the name of their god.”

“So, Rabbi,” my devoutly secular friends sneer at me, “wouldn’t you agree that religion simply breeds violence?” They then launch into John Lennon’s “Imagine”: “Imagine no religion….”

Not so fast.

First, let’s admit that all religions have their own (to quote Star Wars) “dark side of the Force.” Every religion has texts in it that religious zealots can choose to interpret violently. Whether or not people actually choose to act on those violent texts is a matter of historical circumstance and, often, personal psychology. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once quipped: “Religion can make good people better, and it can make bad people worse.”

But the same thing is true of money. Some people, driven by altruism, become philanthropists; others, driven by greed, become criminals. It’s also true of sports. Some athletes rise to nobility; others simply do violent things, on and off the field. And yet, no one rejects either money or sports because of their miscreants.

Second, with the onset of modernity, more people died at the hands of militantly anti-religious regimes than at the hands of religious regimes. That bloodletting started with the French Revolution, and it continued into the Communist era. I remember visiting the Museum of Atheism in (what was then) Leningrad — a converted cathedral that contained exhibits to show how foolish religion is.

Third, people will see what they want to see. When it comes to faith, if it bleeds, it leads. Boko Haram kidnaps school girls? Front page news, as it should be. ISIS beheads Egyptian Christians? Ditto.


But here is what is sometimes doesn’t make the news: the sincere people of faith who work in soup kitchens, or who march for racial justice, or who adopt children with special needs. Let’s put it this way: “Selma” could not have occurred without a distinctive religious vision.

The late Simon Wiesenthal was a famous Nazi-hunter. He was also a secular Jew who traced his loss of faith back to the Dachau concentration camp. He once saw a man charge people bread to use the siddur that he had smuggled into the camp. “If that’s religion,” Wiesenthal said to himself at the time, “I don’t want to be religious.”

Upon later hearing that story, someone asked Wiesenthal: “You’re right. It is horrible for someone to charge another person bread to use a prayer book. But what about the people who freely gave their bread away? What does it say about them?”

Finally, there really is nothing wrong with someone being strong — even “fanatical” — in their beliefs. Beliefs are one thing; how you act on them is quite another. Experience has shown that religious fanaticism + a lack of belief in pluralism + state power + violence = hell.

F. Forrester Church, the late Unitarian minister, put it this way: “We all stand in the cathedral of the world. In the cathedral are a multitude of stained glass windows, and light shines through those windows. The light is the presence of God. We all stand at our window, which refracts the light according to the way that our people understands it.

“Relativists say: ‘All the windows are basically the same, so it doesn’t matter where you stand.’ Fundamentalists say, ‘The light shines only through my window.’ Fanatics go one step further: ‘I am going to break everyone else’s window!'”


There is far too much of that going around. The only antidote to bad religion is — good religion.

Let’s find stories of religious heroes and lift them up to the heavens.

 

 

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