Religion: Healing vs. Killing

Children of Abraham

Richard L. Shafer[1]

The other day, I was (re)reading Bill Moyers’ article, Democracy in the Balance, from the August, 2004 issue of the SOJOURNERS Magazine[2]. Moyers’ article begins with a headline: “How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side?” Take a moment to ponder what it means to have a “killing side” in our religion.

Yes, our spiritual history includes some real blood baths! Read the Old Testament to find out how the God of Abraham led the people of Israel in their battles to acquire resources -- land and goods and slaves. Read what they did to their enemies. Our spiritual forbears were not pacifists! As a mild example, think of King Asa of Judah, who raised an army of 300,000, and prayed for the God of Abraham’s help to defeat the Ethiopian army of 1,000,000.

“We will fight against this powerful army to honor your name…The Lord helped Asa and his army defeat the Ethiopians…The soldiers from Judah took everything that had belonged to the Ethiopians…”[3]

We needn’t look far to learn how the God of Abraham (also called Allah) was brought to the Arabian Peninsula, and beyond by Muslim warriors:

“Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love the aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage… Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God’s religion reigns supreme.”[4]

“Prophetic Christianity lost its voice,” Moyers writes. “The Religious Right drowned everyone else out.” Isn’t this what we worry about when we look at “them,” the radicals in the world of Islam, the Muslim version of the “religious right”? In fact don’t some of us worry about “them” of ultra-conservative Jewry in Israel? We worry because their conservatives seem to have drowned out all the rest of their believers. (Actually I worry that many of us might forget that their conservatives do NOT represent their majorities’ beliefs either.)

Most of us know something about Western Europe’s wars during the Christian era, and about white Christian’s wars on Native populations in North and South America, and Africa. And now as we send more and more American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, we hear the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” more and more often, way too often for my taste. Our spiritual history seems to have continued, and to have become our spiritual present.

It seems to me that too few Christians remember Jesus’ teaching about peacemaking, turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile. Too many believe that Jesus’ words about “coming to bring the sword[5]” were about advocating war, but how could that be? So: Shouldn’t you and I nurture the healing side of our religion, and not the killing side? And shouldn’t we join in solidarity with those in other Abrahamic religions who would do the same?

[1] This is one of a series of occasional columns in which the author, raised in the Christian tradition, searches for common ground and common history among the teachings, beliefs and practices of the Abrahamic faiths -- Islam, Christianity and Judaism

[2] He’s written here about his deep concern for the changing cultural landscape of America – more wealth in fewer hands, more political and economic power held by corporations and financial institutions, and more poverty for more people. He links those changes with a rise of the conservative element of Christianity in this nation.

[3] 2 Chronicles 14:9-14

[4] Qur’an 2:190-193

[5] Matthew 10:34-39