A “God and War” audit commissioned by the BBC found that religion played some part in 40% of major wars over the past three millennia, but usually a minor one.
What the secularists forgot is that Homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal. If there is one thing the great institutions of the modern world do not do, it is to provide meaning. Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot guide us as to how to use that power. The market gives us choices but leaves us uninstructed as to how to make those choices. The liberal democratic state gives us freedom to live as we choose but refuses, on principle, to guide us as to how to choose.
Every reflective individual will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? The result is that the 21st century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.
Religion has returned because it is hard to live without meaning. That is why no society has survived for long without either a religion or a substitute for religion.
Wars are won by weapons but it takes ideas to win a peace.
The challenge is not only to Islam but also to Judaism and Christianity. None of the great religions can say, in unflinching self-knowledge, “Our hands never shed innocent blood.”
Today Jews, Christians and Muslims must stand together, in defense of humanity, the sanctity of life, religious freedom and the honor of God himself. The real clash of the 21st century will not be between civilizations or religions but within them. It will be between those who accept and those who reject the separation of religion and power.
There must be an international campaign against the teaching and preaching of hate.
Sources: Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2015
Jonathan Sacks: Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence
Cyrus Durey: Frontiersmen of the Adirondacks: Economic Development in Early North America (ebook and paperback editions)
Frontiersmen of the Adirondacks: Economic Development in Early North America [NOOK Book] (ebook and paperback editions)