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Neighborhood Church

Big Bag of Questions: Does Religion Cause Violence?

Big Bag of Questions: Does Religion Cause Violence?

Forrest Jenan & Jordan Brokaw

Locations & Times

Neighborhood Church

5505 W Riggin Ave, Visalia, CA 93291, USA

Sunday 8:00 AM

Vote for the February 11 Question

• Does Christianity have a future? • Do I have to agree with everything in the Bible to follow Jesus? • What’s the benefit of belonging to a church? • Are we living in the end times?
https://clr.cm/AXb4
TWO PREVIOUS QUESTIONS:
Will Jesus make my life better?
Aren’t all religions basically the same?
TODAY'S QUESTION
Does religion cause violence?
Religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age, but if so, it will first be necessary to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
Bertrand Russell
We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. . . . As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction and the destruction of all hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.
Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great
Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. . . . It was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.
Raymond of Aguilers
How they rejoiced and exulted and sang a new song to the Lord! he tells us. This day, I say, will be famous in all future ages, for it turned our labors and sorrows into joy and exultation.
Raymond of Aguilers
It’s a confronting fact of history that a church originally designed to mark the place of the unjust and brutal crucifixion (and resurrection) of the humble man from Nazareth became the venue of jubilant songs and prayers to celebrate a ruthless military victory in Jesus’s name.
John Dickson
Bullies And Saints
We who formerly hated and murdered one another now live together and share the same table. We pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us…. We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder, and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools…now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One.
Justin the Martyr
Following Jesus is about laying down our weapons and embracing divine love.
What is my blindspot?
• 1,763 documented wars
• Only 123 had a religious component
• Less than 7 percent of all recorded wars

Encyclopedia of Wars
History simply does not support the hypothesis that religion is the major cause of conflict. The wars of the ancient world were rarely, if ever, based on religion. These wars were for territorial conquest, to control borders, secure trade routes, or respond to an internal challenge to political authority.
Rabbi Alan Lurie
What is the lasting legacy of Christianity?
Loving your enemy. Doing good things for evil people. Never taking vengeance. Responding to violence with nonviolent love—even if it brings suffering. These are not options, but the primary character traits of those who claim to follow a crucified God.
Preston Sprinkle