There are times when being religious can be quite embarrassing. History is cluttered with battles and persecutions done in the name of God, or rather in the name of what one community supposes God to be. As one browses through the scriptures of any given faith it is hard to imagine that the lived experience arising from these inspiring writings could bring the division, hatred and bias reported in the history books.
I taught Religious Education for a time. Students often asked me what the purpose of this subject was anyway. Tired of trying to defend the inclusion of religious studies in the school curriculum, I used to reply that there was little chance of any of the students being sent to war on the basis of different perceptions of what a terminal moraine might be. Religion was likely to be the only subject in school that could lead them into danger.
In itself this was a sad and cynical explanation, but at the same time I knew, in the deepest part of my conscience, that what I was saying was true. Nigeria, Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Northern Ireland have all suffered religious conflict over the past year. Even the tragedy in the United States has devolved into a religious war with one side calling for a crusade and the other for a jihad. It is not only past events that blot scripture; our actions today blemish the message of peace as coldly as those of our forbearers.
There is a growing trend towards revisionism in history. This tendency has not yet reached a re-evaluation of religion's role in European or world history. While films have portrayed a particular facet of a particular leader's life, nobody is interested in absolving the ordinary Spanish Mass-goers of the 16th century from their culpability for the atrocities of the Inquisition. Nobody is attempting to distance the Elizabethan Anglicans from their blame for what took place in the Tower of London. Nor is anybody attempting to remove the religious element from the Hundred Years' War. But there are others denying the Holocaust or attempting to justify colonial expansion as a way of improving trade and education. It seems somewhat unfair that anything bar religion can be revisited and explained; religion simply has to bear the full culpability of whatever is alleged against it.
Traditionally, religious fervour has been used by tribal and national leaders to elicit support for unreasonable campaigns. That of itself cannot be denied. However, it was not religion per se that was responsible for whatever atrocities were committed in the course of those campaigns. It is the oratorical skill of the despot that leads people to commit crimes in the name of religion but, when the bodies are counted and the mourners forgotten, religion takes full blame and carries it on to subsequent generations of the faithful as a millstone round their necks.
It is time to question his! At all the religious services that we watched or participated in over recent days the constant message from all faiths was the same: peace, peace, peace! Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims all sang from the same hymn sheets in a universal chorus: "May God bring us consolation and let there be justice and peace!" And when the scriptures were rolled up and the faithful wandered back onto the streets, the hawkish oratory of vengeance and war began again.
Nobody really knows where this will all end. But one thing is certain. When history records these days it will be the shoulders of believers that will carry the burden of the blame.
F.MacE.