peace

The importance of religion in shaping the community with which a person identifies and therefore in shaping a person’s sense of identity is easily underestimated especially by those who live in an increasingly secular world.

Even they, however, if they choose to marry someone from a different religious background, may still be surprised by the strong hostile reaction from older members of their family. In some societies, schooling, health care and family law is determined by the religious community to which a person belongs. Members of different religions or cultural background may live in geographical proximity but there may be no human interaction beyond what is necessary to buy a bus ticket or to pay for the shopping at a supermarket check-out. In Zimbabwe, Marcus and Mary Braybrooke were guests of a white couple who considered themselves very liberal. All their immediate neighbours, who were black, belonged to professional classes. Mary asked, ‘Do you invite some of your neighbours into your home?’ ‘No, it’s not something that we have done yet’, was the reply.

At many interfaith conferences, when there are the inevitable small groups, each person is usually asked to introduce herself or himself. ‘I am Hindu, I am a Baha’i, I am a Buddhist’. It is a refreshing change when someone begins, ‘I am a human being.’ Yet even those in the more secularised West who disclaim a religious commitment have usually been shaped in part by the practices and beliefs of their more religious grandparents.

The importance of religion in an individual’s and a community’s sense of identity is stressed because it is easy for those who have adapted to a secularised and pluralistic society to impose their assumptions on societies in other parts of the world. As Prof Gombrich says, ‘religion is first of all... a badge of allegiance to a group.’

As a result, although the main causes of a conflict may be political and economic, if the antagonists belong to different religions, that difference, and long remembered injustices, will fuel the bitterness and be used to vilify the enemy. Because of this in the popular mind and maybe the media, the conflict may be spoken of as a religious one or even as ‘a holy war.’ Then the expectation is aroused that ‘religious leaders’ ought to be able to put an end to the conflict: but this is unrealistic.