Archbishop of Sydney

Religion and War

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
7 October 2001

As he did not seem to be too serious a replied in a similar vein. "Yes", a said, "Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedung, Pol Pot. All of them were very religious people".

He conceded these were bitterly anti-religious, but pointed out truly that the attackers were probably Muslim fundamentalists and others at table also cited Northern Ireland, the terrible violence that followed the break up of Yugoslavia, East Timor and the violence against Christians in Indonesia (and some Christian retaliation).

Some letter writers have also suggested that there would be less violence if we were all irreligious.

Many people, off and on during history, have gone to war in the name of religion and more have used religion as an excuse or a banner. A am reminded of the Serbian Orthodox Archbishop a couple of years ago, who pointed out that it was foolish to blame the Orthodox for any Serbian atrocities because only about 2% were baptised.

Religion can be a powerful influence for good or ill, and religions differ from one another as much as science has changed over hundreds of years. Sometimes religion has to plead guilty of military aggression.

But this is only a smaller part of the story. Christianity has worked consistently to restrain and control violence.

Wars have been part of every period of history unfortunately. For us in Australia, protected through distance, the period since the Second World War has been substantially peaceful. Some thought the end of Communism, the finish of the Cold War, might have brought an era of permanent peace. This was an illusion.

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britain, pointed out correctly that unless the terrorists networks are eliminated there will be other attacks with biological and chemical weapons and possibly even with smaller atomic weapons. We hope and pray that this will not be the future, but history might record the years between 1945 and 2001 as a Golden Age of peace for many in the Western World.

The Christian tradition has made a substantial contribution to our enthusiasm for peace and to our peaceful (more or less) societies, especially through Christ's emphasis on forgiveness.

In the Lord's prayer we ask God to forgive us our faults or sins, just as we forgive those who sin against us. In fact the degree we are able to forgive others is one of the most reliable indicators of the true strength of our Christian faith. When Peter claimed we should forgive seven times (and probably thought he was being extravagant) he was flabbergasted to be told he should forgive seven times seventy times (Matt. 18: 21-22)

Despite the activities of some Christians, Christianity is not a war-like religion. Christ moved beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, because he knew the murderous lust for revenge that can surge through the human heart after an atrocity. This is another reason we need a police force, that we are not allowed take the law into our own hands.

a world without religion would see a return to barbarism; societies like Nazi Germany and Stalin's Communist Empire. Christianity has not failed, except when it has not been tried.