To many, the statement “Religion causes violence” seems intuitively true. After all, one can easily summon to mind a huge number of examples, from the Crusades to warfare connected with early Islam, to the September 11th attacks and sectarian warfare in the Middle East, and on and on and on. Some liberal-minded people, particularly those of an atheist bent, will rattle off these examples as clear proof that religion is a force for evil in the world.
But what if it’s more complicated than that? What if there’s less evidence than one might think that religion causes violence? That’s the provocative thesis of an upcoming new article in Contemporary Voices: St Andrews Journal of International Relations, a journal launched in April of 2018 (available as a preprint), authored by Joshua Wright and Yuelee Khoo at Simon Fraser University.
The paper is mostly dedicated to a literature review which summarises a wide array of findings about the supposed link between religion and violence. Overall, Wright and Khoo argue that the literature points in both directions, and that there’s little reason, at this relatively early juncture in understanding the connection between religion and behaviour, to believe that there’s something unique to religious ideologies that cause them to foster violence.
...In their conclusion, Wright and Khoo make a final point that should give pause to anyone who thinks the research literature, at present, offers a comprehensive look at the link between religion and violence. As they explain, “What makes religion unique … is a belief in the supernatural, the meaning of this belief to the individual and the group, and the internalization and integration of religious identity to the individual.” And yet “Direct study of supernaturalism is noticeably absent in the literature.” If the authors are correct, this means researchers have so far left out the single most important aspect of religious identity – leaving an incomplete picture as to whether it really does have a unique effect on the likelihood of violence or not.