Answering the Charge: Religion Sponsors War and Other Injustices

This material comes from the book by Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008.

In the section Titled "The Church is Responsible for So Much Injustice," Keller quotes Hitchen's argument that "religion takes racial and cultural differences and aggravates them" (55). Keller admits that Hitchen's argument is valid. "Religion 'transcendentalizes' ordinary cultural diferences so that parties feel they are in a cosmic battle between good and evil" (55). Of course, if you are at war with evil it is pretty easy to justify violence and destruction. And we all can point to examples.

Keller cites Alister McGrath's rebuttal of this argument against Christianity. "The Communist Russian, Chinese, and Cambodian regimes of the twehtieth century rejected all organized religion and belief in God. A forerunner of all these was the French Revolution, which rejected traditional religion for human reason. These societies were all rational and secular, yet each produced massive violence against its own people without the influence of religion. Why? . . . when the idea of God is gone, a society will 'transcendentalize something else, some other concept, in order to appear morally and spiritually superior. The Marxists made the State into such an absolute, while the Nazis did it to race and blood. Even the ideals of liberty and equality can be used in this way" (55).