Following up on a blog post from Oct. 1, 2014, I just read Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. In the blog post I commented on her essay, "The Myth of Religious Violence," which appeared in the Guardian and served as a trailer for the book.
Armstrong's purpose in Fields of Blood is to examine claims placing the responsibility for the savagery of history (and current events) at religion's door. We know well these claims. The repeated axiom that religion has been "the cause of all the major wars in history." That religion has been humanity's most violent institution. Armstrong then traces much history to make clear the erroneous nature of these assertions.
The book is a semi-scholarly 400 pages and is therefore for people seeking to dig into this issue; this isn't a light read. That said, for those looking for a serious and sustained look at the religion-violence issue—normally the stuff of political debate shows—Armstrong provides sound historical treatment of the matter. She runs through the imperial and spiritual histories of India, China, Europe, and the Middle East; the development of the major world religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the three monotheistic faiths; and the relationship between religion, politics, and the people over the centuries.
From The Epic of Gilgamesh to the War on Terror, Armstrong notes that religion, as we now know it—as being an individualized spiritual orientation—is a relatively new development. It was the Enlightenment and the writing of figures like British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) that gave rise to our idea of the secular and the division of church and state. (This thinking would also give rise to the myth that religion has been the problem.) Prior to the seventeenth century, religion and politics were intertwined. And because of the expansionism and warfare intrinsic to empire, empire naturally employed a religious vocabulary. "Since all premodern state ideology was inseparable from religion," Armstrong observes, "warfare inevitably acquired a sacral element" (p. 15).
With the emergence of the modern nation-state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the business of expansionism carried on, but was now animated and justified by the secular religion of nationalism. Instead of acting in the name of God, everything endeavored by the state was for the sake of the nation. As even a cursory glance over the twentieth century shows, removing matters of religion from the affairs of state did little to diminish the brutality of concentrated power, and the consequent body count.
Beyond demonstrating that religion hasn't been the culprit, Armstrong argues that the secular world would do well to reconsider the moral lessons offered by the major world faiths. Specifically, modernity has become out of touch with the Golden Rule and "the sacredness of every human being—a conviction at the heart of traditional religions that quasi-religious systems [i.e., nationalism] seem unable or disinclined to re-create ..." (p. 341). As Armstrong also points out: "All three Abrahamic faiths began with a defiant rejection of inequity and systemic violence, which reflects the persistent conviction of human beings, dating back perhaps to the hunter-gatherer period, that there should be an equitable distribution of resources" (p. 226).
In studying the issue of religion and violence, the more one looks, the more one sees that there is no correlation. Opinions about religion being inherently aggressive and a fomenter of warfare don't bear slightest scrutiny. Moreover, and ironically, those who blame Islam for the volatility of the Middle East are themselves employing "quasi-religious" thinking, rigidly adhering to the belief that "we" are righteous and "they" are wicked. Attitudes like this are in need of the enlightenment to which they lay claim, along with a dose of history done honestly.
Armstrong's Fields of Blood provides such a dose. It is carefully constructed and well researched; the sources cited are chosen from the standard, dependable literature. Though the book is somewhat long, Armstrong covers a lot of ground and does so clearly. I would have preferred more pauses for analysis and connection making, but I understand her decision to go heavy on history. It is, after all, what the conversations needs.
