Religion and war

Religion can be defined narrowly or broadly, with or without a concept of a supreme being. One definition is any belief system, accepted without empirical or rational proof, that strongly motivates the followers’ values and behaviors. In a secular age, religions are often conceived of as competing, spiritually oriented views of the world, each of which is worthy of respect. However, the strongly religious are apt to insist that their faith is not one of several legitimate worldviews but the only real truth. For example, some Christians, such as evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, have referred to science, atheism, and communism as religions but insisted that Christianity is not a religion. To them, Christianity is not something to be tolerated along with rivals, but rather the only legitimate way to understand the universe.

In strongly religious cultures, religion is not one of several activities but is coextensive with life itself. The modern ideal of religious freedom requires abandoning claims to a monopoly over truth. It is possible only when religions compromise and reconcile themselves to competing views of reality. In their purest form, many religions forbid allowing others to exist. In polytheism, it is possible to add the god of another culture to the pantheon of belief, but not in monotheism. The Ten Commandments of Judaism and Christianity demand monotheism.

When religions offer incompatible pictures of reality, peaceful coexistence may become virtually impossible. Many religions permit, indeed require, imposing one’s own values, beliefs, and customs on others. Given this tension, it should not be surprising that wars can erupt over religion. Even when religion is not the direct cause of war, it can assure each combatant that morality, justice, and righteousness is on his or her side. It can convince each opponent that killing, plundering, enslaving, and torturing the enemy is morally acceptable, perhaps morally obligatory. Even in the absence of a belief in gods or spirits, quasi-religious convictions can justify war and all that it entails in the name of a great cause. Communists felt vindicated in establishing gulags to purge the world of enemies in a class war ordained by history. The Nazi conviction that they were chosen to create a master race reassured them that they were justified in doing whatever they wished to what they termed their racial inferiors. On the other hand, religious morality can restrain brutality. It inspired opposition to slavery and sympathy for victims. Some religions, such as Quakerism, forbid their members to participate in war.

Ancient Civilizations

The religious beliefs and practices as well as the nature of warfare among the earliest preliterate peoples may never be known. Anthropologists make assumptions about their cultures from the nonliterate peoples they encounter. Mythologies can also provide other indicators. There is strong evidence that religion and war were intertwined from the earliest times. Among the pre-Christian Norse, Valhalla served as a paradise for slain warriors. The Aztecs of Mexico attacked surrounding tribes in order to capture victims to sacrifice to their gods. One of the most sacred texts of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, written around the first century c.e. but grounded in earlier traditions, is essentially a war poem. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, a god, reassures Arjuna that he should accept his assigned task as soldier, fated to kill and die if necessary, as part of the divine order of things. In the epic poems of ancient Greece, such as Homer’s Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.; English translation, 1616), the gods play an active part in war.

In China, the emergence of Confucianism as a state religion is tied to the defeat of the Shang Dynasty by the Zhou Dynasty in a civil war about 1066 b.c.e. Confucians upheld the early Zhou emperors, especially Wenwang, as ideal kings. Chinese emperors maintained peace over a vast region, inhabited by different peoples, at times hostile to one another, by claiming a mandate from heaven. So long as that mandate was maintained, Confucian and Daoist theology taught that the people owed the emperor their obedience. However, should the ruler prove unjust, he must have lost heaven’s mandate and revolution was permitted.

Rulers of early nation-states often claimed to be gods or at least divinely chosen. Religion and state could be almost indistinguishable. War was waged under divine sanction. Pharaoh of Egypt was the god of the sky, Horace, and of the sun, Re. The Romans came to treat their Caesars as divine, although it is not clear how literally that was believed. As long as conquered people were willing to recognize the legitimacy of Roman authority, the Romans tended to allow them to retain their local cults, sometimes incorporating the gods of vanquished peoples into the Roman pantheon.

Biblical Times

Conquered peoples sometimes felt their god had failed them and interpreted defeat as a sign that the enemy’s god was more powerful. Under that assumption, conversions were relatively easy, or the religions of ruler and subject people might coexist or even blend together. One important exception was the Jews. Their monotheism did not permit them to assimilate into other cultures. Their holy book treated them as the chosen people of the one true god. Although “the promised land,” Canaan, was inhabited by other peoples, God had mandated the Hebrews to conquer it. The Bible proposed that the early Israelite kings, although mortal men and warriors, were divinely chosen. According to the Bible, the first Israelite king, Saul, lost God’s favor when he defied a divine command to kill every Amalekite after he subdued them. Reflecting a time when Israel and Judea were independent nations with histories of military victories, the early books of the Bible treat war as something glorious, blessed by God. However, some books written after the kingdoms fell display a dramatic shift in tone and values. Produced when the Jews had become a subject people, Isaiah prophesies a golden age when war will cease forever, ironically to be brought about by a messiah descending from the warrior King David.

Successively conquered by Babylon, Assyria, Persia, and Greece, Jews generally cooperated with rulers who tolerated their religious practices. Despite the pacifist strains of Isaiah and other prophets, the Jews of Palestine could be quite bellicose in defending their religion. When Alexander the Great conquered Judea, he did not interfere with Jewish worship. However, one of his successors, Antiochus IV, decided to impose Greek culture on subject peoples and around 167 b.c.e. constructed a statue of Zeus in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem and forbade such practices as circumcision and observing the Sabbath. Feeling defamed, a priestly family, the Maccabees, organized a guerrilla war, drove the Greeks out, and established a new independent Jewish state, with the kings and high priests both coming from the Maccabee family. Once independent, the Maccabees continued to wage war in Samaria, Transjordan, and among the descendants of the Edomites, forcing them to convert to Judaism. They also suppressed Jews who adopted Greek values and practices. For all their militarism, the Maccabees refused to fight on the Sabbath.

The later Maccabees allied with Rome and allowed Judea to fall under Roman control. Initially, the Romans tolerated the religion of Jews who did not challenge Roman authority. Jews were allowed to live and prosper throughout the empire, especially in Alexandria and Rome. Commonly, the Romans permitted conquered peoples to continue worshiping their gods, providing they acknowledged the Roman gods, including Caesar. However, monotheistic Judaism did not allow this accommodation, and guerrilla movements to resist Rome emerged in Judea. The Romans executed Jewish prophets and messiahs who challenged them. Among them may have been Jesus of Nazareth.

One party, the Zealots, committed to purging Judea of all pagan elements, allegedly kidnapped and killed Jews who cooperated with Rome. They organized an uprising to which Rome responded with a legion of 60,000 led by future emperor Vespasian and his son, Titus. In the bitter struggle, Rome sacked Jerusalem and in 67 c.e. burned the Holy Temple, leaving only a wall standing, which still remains. Rather than surrender, the Zealots refortified at Mount Masada and in 73 c.e. committed mass suicide, preferring death to capture.

Christianity and Islam

Like the Jews, early Christians were unwilling to recognize the Roman pantheon and the divinity of Caesar. Accordingly, they too were subject to persecution. In 64 c.e., Emperor Nero blamed them for a fire in Rome and massacred them. Christianity became a capital offense for which one could be pardoned by sacrificing to a Roman god or Caesar. Christians evoked further hostility by their refusal to serve in the army. Throughout the second and third centuries c.e., anti-Christian riots would occasionally erupt after natural disasters or military defeats. The persecutions ended when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Although previously Christians had been pacifists, now Roman soldiers wore Christian insignias on their shields. Constantine attributed his victories in a series of civil wars to the blessing of the Christian God and claimed he was mandated to suppress impiety throughout the empire.

With the collapse of the empire, the church assumed substantial state authority, eventually owning one-third of the land of Europe and maintaining the largest army in Europe. Most kings were crowned by the pope, receiving their legitimacy through divine right.

After about 632 c.e., Christianity experienced a new serious monotheistic rival, Islam. Traditional Islam had no concept of separation of church and state and believed the devout were chosen by Allah to spread the word through jihad, or holy war. Within a century of the death of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic empire had conquered most of the Middle East, including Palestine, North Africa, and Persia, and extended into Spain and India. Within the Islamic empire, Christian, Jews, and later Hindus and Zoroastrians were tolerated but given inferior status. However, those deemed pagan were forced to convert. Once converted, apostasy carried the death penalty.

Islam may have conquered France and taken over most of Christian Europe had it not been defeated by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. Charles Martel’s grandson, Charlemagne, used his army to defeat challengers to Pope Leo III, who then proclaimed him Holy Roman emperor. Charlemagne subdued pagan Saxon tribes in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, forcing them to convert to Christianity. His empire encompassed much of modern France and Germany but split up soon after his death.

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all consider Palestine a holy land. It is the site of the original Jewish nation, the homeland of Jesus, and the place where Muhammad is said to have ascended into heaven. When the Christian Byzantine Empire was threatened by Islamic Turks, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus sought help from the pope. In 1095, Pope Urban II declared that Christendom should raise armies to protect Byzantium and recapture Palestine. In 1099, the Christian army captured Jerusalem, slaughtering its Islamic and Jewish residents. Christian crusades established a series of new states around the Middle East, including the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, and the countries of Tripoli and Edessa. When Edessa fell to the Muslims in 1144, Pope Eugenius III asked for a new Crusade. Armies led by Emperor Conrad III of German and King Louis VII of France united in Jerusalem in 1148 and attacked Damascus in 1148 with 50,000 men. From 1154 to 1187, the Muslims recaptured Damascus, Egypt, and Jerusalem. Pope Gregory VIII called for a third Crusade. Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa organized the largest army but drowned before confronting the Muslims. However, King Richard I the Lion-Hearted of England conquered Cyprus, then allied with Philip II Augustus of France to besiege Acre and slaughter its inhabitants. This crusade ended with Richard negotiating permission for Christians to visit holy shrines but recognizing Muslim control. In 1198, Pope Gregory VIII called a fourth Crusade to attack Egypt. The Crusade instead attacked Christian Constantinople and undermined the Byzantine Empire. The Children’s Crusade of 1212 resulted in thousands of children being lost or enslaved. Three more Crusades resulted in Christian defeat. In 1268, the Muslims recaptured Antioch and slaughtered its entire population. By 1291, all the states created by the crusaders in the Middle East fell to Muslim hands.

For centuries, Iberia was a theater of Christian-Islamic confrontation. The peninsula broke up into numerous small states, some Muslim, some Christian, regularly at war with one another. In the middle of this strife were the Jews. At their height, the Muslim areas created great civilizations, noted for their artistic and scientific achievements. In general, the Jews flourished under the Muslims but were persecuted under the Christians. A series of Christian victories by the thirteenth century drove the Muslims to a small area around Granada. Finally in 1492, the united Christian kingdoms of Aragon and Castile drove the Muslims out of Spain altogether. To solidify Catholic control, the Inquisition was launched to purge the country of Muslim and Jewish influence. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled 170,000 Jews who refused baptism. About 300,000 converts remained. Special courts existed to test the piety of those accused of heretical beliefs or practices. Torture was a common means of examination, and thousands were executed.

Christian Civil Wars

The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1457) did not begin as a religious war. It was primarily a dispute over English claims to the French throne. However, it produced the French heroine, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl who believed she had received a divine vision choosing her to lead the French army to victory. After routing the English from Orleans and helping to restore the dauphin to the throne as King Charles VII, she was captured by French opponents of Charles. She was handed over to the English, who tried her for heresy on the grounds that she claimed to receive direct communication from heaven without the mediation of the Church hierarchy. Although burned as a witch, she was also acclaimed as a saint.

The emergence of Protestantism produced a series of civil wars. Martin Luther’s break with the Catholic hierarchy in the sixteenth century unintentionally inspired peasant uprisings in Germany. Luther insisted it was the duty of Christians to submit to earthly authority. Soon, Germany was divided into Protestant and Catholic states, with occasional wars breaking out between them. A revolt of Anabaptist peasants in Austria resulted in its leaders being burned at the stake.

In France, the first Protestant to be burned at the stake was Jean Vallière in 1523. Nevertheless, there were 2,150 Protestant churches, called Huguenots, in France by 1561. Protestant involvement in a plot to kidnap fifteen-year-old King Francis II and replace him with Louis I of Bourbon resulted in the execution of everyone involved except Louis. News of a massacre of French Protestants in 1572 was warmly greeted by King Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XII. Estimates of the numbers killed vary from 2,000 to 70,000. Civil wars persisted in France from the 1560’s until the 1620’s, when Louis XIII consolidated Catholic control but agreed to tolerate Protestants. That agreement was revoked in 1643, and in 1685, 400,000 Huguenots were expelled from France.

A divorce, not a theological debate, provoked the Protestant Reformation in England. In defiance of papal authority, King Henry VIII divorced Catherine, daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Henry confiscated Catholic Church property and required the nobility to acknowledge him as head of the Church of England. Those who did not faced execution. After Henry’s death, Queen Mary I, his daughter by Catherine, earned the title “Bloody Mary” for the number of executions of Protestants that followed from her attempt to restore the Catholic Church. Mary’s successor was Protestant Elizabeth I. In 1588, King Philip II of Spain, widower of Mary, sent a naval armada to seize England and restore it as a Catholic country. Historians view the armada’s defeat as marking the decline of Spain and rise of England as a world power. Although Catholicism was never restored as a state religion in England, a civil war between opposing Protestant sects resulted in the beheading of King Charles I in 1649. The Crown has been subordinate to Parliament in England ever since.

Religions’ Impact on Later Wars

Christian attempts to colonize the rest of the world received religious sanction when Popes Alexander VI and Julius II divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. Many believed they had a religious duty to save the souls of heathens, even if it meant enslaving or slaughtering them. Often less technologically advanced people were willing to convert because they saw the superiority of the Christian army as a sign of the superiority of their god. The Spanish conquest of Mexico was made easier because the Aztecs wondered if Spanish general Hernán Cortés might be an incarnation of their god, Quetzalcóatl. Nineteenth century Britons claimed to bear a “white man’s burden” to bring Christian civilization to heathen peoples. In the 1840’s, when the United States seized Mexican territory and expanded to the Pacific, it claimed it was fulfilling a manifest destiny granted by Providence. Although the United States was supposedly a secular nation, President William McKinley justified colonizing the Philippines in 1898 as satisfying an obligation to Christianize the natives. As Europeans relinquished control over their empires, religious conflicts often raged in former colonies. Religious tension in the British Raj of India was so great that it was divided into separate Hindu and Muslim countries when the colony obtained independence. Nevertheless, war broke out between the two new nations, India and Pakistan, with Hindus and Muslims attacking each other within their own borders. A revolution against Western influences in Iran in the late 1970’s led to the restoration of early Islamic law under which women risk stoning if they show their full face in public. In Israel in the 1990’s, Chasidim (followers of Hasidism or Chasidism) would throw stones at cars driven on Saturday. Both Jews and Muslims claim the land of the former British Mandate of Palestine was given to them by their respective gods. Often, a religious conflict between cultures can be settled only with a secular solution. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there was no guarantee of finding universally accepted secular values that would put an end to religious wars.

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