Religion and Citizenship
As stressed several times, well-functioning democracies require citizens who take their civic duties seriously, become well-informed about public issues, and vote for parties or policies that are most likely to increase community welfare. Implicit in the notion of a good citizen is a certain community loyalty-patriotism if you will that leads the citizen to associate her interests with the community's. With-luck, citizens will think of the polity as "their group" and some of their instinctive group loyalties will transfer over to the political community. Religion can undermine the democratic process if loyalty to the religious group displaces loyalty to the political community. In the extreme case, religious loyalty can lead to actions that harm the community.
Islam and the Islamic state -- the Caliphate -- came into existence at the same time and thus, in the Muslim world, the distinction between religion and state has never been as sharp as in Christian countries since at least the end of the eighteenth century. Territorial states existed, of course, but the good Muslim did not identify with them in the same way that the good Frenchman or Swede identifies with his state. Ask someone in Paris or Stockholm "What are you?" and his most likely answer would be a Frenchman or a Swede unless he happened to be a Muslim, in which case he would most likely say a Muslim. "About a third of French schoolchildren of Muslim origin see their faith rather than a passport or skin colour as the main thing that defines them." "A Pew poll of Muslims worldwide found that 81 percent of British Muslims said they thought of themselves as Muslims first and a citizen of Britain second. In the survey that proportion was exceeded only by that in Pakistan." Thinking of oneself as a Muslim first and a British citizen second does no harm to democracy if being a
Muslim means praying on Friday and being a British citizen means voting on Sunday, and when one votes one has in mind Britain's welfare. If, on the other hand, identifying first with Islam means identifying more closely with fellow Muslims in other countries than with fellow Britains when the two perceptions of identity conflict, then a good Muslim will sacrifice the welfare of fellow Britains for that of fellow Muslims.
Many Americans, including its political leaders, see themselves at war with terrorism. Some Muslims see America's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and its unwavering support for Israel as implying that it is really at war with Islam and thus an enemy of all Muslims. European countries like Spain, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, and still others that have sent troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, or that seem too sympathetic to Israel, become fellow enemies of loyal Muslims. The fervent patriot is willing to kill and if need be die for his country. In the past, many fervent Christians have been willing to kill and die for their religion, and a few remain willing to do so today. Although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were carried out by Muslims who were not American citizens, the attacks of March 11, 2003, in Madrid, of July 2005 in London, and the thwarted attack on airplanes from London to the United States in August 2006 involved Muslim citizens of Spain and Great Britain. They provide vivid illustrations of how religious and democratic loyalties can conflict to the detriment of democracy.
Religion and Morality
The argument is often made that religious beliefs underpin morality, and thus provide a form of public good by making people better behaved. Christian opposition to birth-control evices and abortions is based on their religious beliefs. Christian citizens who hold these beliefs are effectively saying that the United States and Africa would be better places if abortions and birth-control devices were banned. Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae made it clear that any attempt to have sexual intercourse and prevent an ensuing birth was a mortal sin. Good Catholics who wish to have sexual intercourse but do not want to have a child or contact AIDS must thus choose between committing a mortal sin or risking the birth of an unwanted child or AIDS. The Catholic Church's stance on birth-control devices has thwarted economic development in the poor, Catholic countries of the world by hampering programs to reduce population growth and has contributed to the spread of AIDS. It is difficult to see how the Church's position on contraceptives conforms to any moral system that seeks to promote human welfare in the present life. The same can be said for the unnecessary uffering and death that the United States's ABC model caused in Africa. Terrorist attacks in the name of Islam would also seem to run against most commonsense notions of morality. Nevertheless, the view that religion underpins morality is so widely held that it warrants a closer look.
Religion and War
Local religions have their own myths, spirits, and gods. One tribe finds it unsurprising, therefore, if its religious practices differ from those of a neighboring tribe. Each has its own ancestors, shamans, and history, and thus there is no reason to expect them to share religious beliefs, nor does it matter that their religious beliefs differ. Each tribe is concerned with making its own members better off, and prays to and engages in trade with its own ancestors and spirits. In the past, tribes fought over cattle, women, or territory but not over religion.
As urban societies replaced tribal societies and the state appeared, a single state religion replaced the many local religions. The earliest state religionsshared many characteristics of local religions, however, as, for example, pantheism and animal and other food sacrifices to gods. As with local religions, sacrificed animals or humans in religious ceremonies were consumed by the population, and these ceremonies with their accompanying rewards of food and drink helped leaders of early states to maintain their subjects's loyalty. These killing religions, as practiced by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks, were eventually replaced by the great nonkilling or universal religions, which forbade killing humans and animal and human sacrifices.
Because they forbade killing, one might have expected the nonkilling religions to have brought an end to interstate warfare. Yet they were soon co-opted by the state. They benefited the ruling classes by substituting rewards in Heaven for comfort and sustenance on Earth and thus did away with the need for great festivals that provided food to the people. Although nonkilling religions forbade killing, they allowed exceptions for just wars. Militant Buddhist kings appear as early as the second-century bce. Wen, founder of the first Buddhist empire in China, the Sui Dynasty (589-618 ce), remarked that "Buddhists made excellent soldiers, because of their faith that death in battle would only draw them closer to paradise." Much the same can be said for Islam. Mohammed urged his followers to spread Islam, and martyrdom in pursuit of this cause was supposed to lead to Heaven. This belief, along with the belief that the Day of Judgment was immanent, played an important role in getting Islamic fighters to kill and die for Islam (Chapter Six). Thus, the nonkilling religions actually intensified warfare by producing better warriors because of the reduced fear of death and the promise of Heaven if one died in battle: "Indeed, were it not for their ability to sponsor and encourage militarism and harsh measures of state control, there would be no world religions in the world today."
Thus, instead of bringing wars to an end, nonkilling religions introduced a new kind of war -- the religious war. As Hobbes noted when reflecting on the English civil war, no such war existed in the ancient world. One needed Christianity and the goading of Presbyterian preachers to produce a civil war over religion. However, Christianity is not alone in this respect. Islam has had its religious wars, and Hindus killHindus "Over whether Shiva or Vishnu is the higher Lord." More generally, universal religions, with their claims that only their followers can have access to Heaven, have proved to be effective means for identifying the members of one's tribe and stirring the instinctive loyalties and hatreds that such tribal associations engender.
Much of the second millennium in Europe was devoted to wars over religion. They began at the end of the eleventh century with the First Crusade. The Crusades, it should be emphasized, were an attack by practitioners of the supposedly pacific Christian faith on the supposedly more warlike Muslims. Moreover, the catalyst for the First Crusade was Pope Urban II who agitated energetically and effectively for the re-conquest of the Holy Lands. The Crusades were then followed by further battles between Muslims and Christians as the Ottoman Turks extended their empire into Europe. The Reformation gave European Christians an excuse to fight among themselves, which they did with great zeal for a century and a half. The major fighting came to an end in 1648 with the signing of the treaty known as the Peace of Westphalia. One might have expected that the Prince of Peace's emissary on Earth would have welcomed this end to hostilities, but no; Pope Innocent X vigorously opposed it.
Although it is perhaps understandable that contradictory claims about the nature of God would lead to wars, one might expect that universal religions aversion to violence would make their practitioners avid and effective opponents of wars that were not religiously motivated. Such, however, has not generally been the case. Probably no war in history has had less justification than "the war to end all wars" precipitated by a deranged assassin in Sarajevo. National honor and a desire for more territory in the Balkans appear to have been behind Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia. The other protagonists joined in to honor their treaty commitments. Such justifications should not have sufficed to convince clergy that killing in the name of country was morally justified. Yet this was not the case. Leading clergy in all countries became ardent supporters of the war.
Just as victory in battle had convinced the followers of Mohammed that God was on their side, Prussia's victory over France in the war of 1870-1 convinced Protestant Germans that God was on their side, and in particular, that God favored Protestantism over the Catholicism of "Godless France."
Early victories in World War I reinforced the view in Germany that God was on its side. As the theologian Alfred Uckley put it, "God is the God of the Germans. Our battles are God's battles. Our cause is sacred, a wholly sacred matter. We are God's chosen among the nations. That our prayers for victory will be heard is entirely to be expected, according to the religious and moral order of the world."
Given the popular view in Germany that the Franco-Prussian War was a war of Protestantism against Catholicism, it is not surprising that Germany's Catholic clergy were rather reticent about the war's merits. They were ininhibited in praising the German cause in World War I, however:"As a Catholic field chaplain explained in April 1915, German patriotic idealism was at war with the 'barbarism of the Russians, the atheism of the French, and the insatiable cupidity and mercantile spirit of the English." For the French, on the other hand, the war was a crusade to save Christian civilization from German barbarism. British clergy were also forthright in supporting the war. In a sermon delivered in September 1914, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, bishop of London, urged the soldiers before him onward with the following stirring words:
But when we have said all that, this is a Holy War. We are on the side of Christianity against anti-Christ. We are on the side of the New Testament which respects the weak, and honours treaties, and dies for its friends, and looks upon war as a regrettable necessity... It is a Holy War, and to fight in a holy war is an honour... Already I have seen the light in men's eyes which I have never seen before.