Hasn't religion caused most wars?

A charge to take seriously

There is no denying that people have killed in the name of God, including people who called themselves Christians. The Crusades, the European wars of religion, the persecution of Jews and of heretics: these are real, and they are a stain on the history of the church. A fair answer must begin there.

But the claim that religion has caused most wars, or that it is the main source of human violence, does not hold up under historical scrutiny.

1. What the historical record shows

The three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars (Phillips and Axelrod, 2005) surveys conflicts across recorded history. A frequently cited tally of its entries counts 123 out of 1,763 wars, about 7%, as having religion as a primary cause. Such counts involve judgment calls, and different scholars would classify some wars differently. But the general picture is widely accepted: most wars have been fought over territory, resources, power, dynastic succession, ethnic rivalry and political ideology.

Even wars labeled "religious" usually involved other motives. In the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), often called a war of religion, Catholic France ended up allied with Protestant powers against the Catholic Habsburgs, for reasons of state.

Karen Armstrong, a historian of religion who is not an evangelical apologist, argues in Fields of Blood (2014) that blaming religion for violence oversimplifies history. Political theorist William Cavanaugh goes further in The Myth of Religious Violence (2009): the very category of "religious violence", he argues, is hard to separate from political violence and is often used to cast secular states as peaceful by contrast. Both are debated, but they show that serious scholars do not accept the popular narrative uncritically.

2. The 20th century

The bloodiest century in human history was dominated by regimes that were either officially atheist or explicitly secular in ideology. The Soviet Union, Maoist China and the Khmer Rouge each sought to suppress or eliminate religion, and together they killed many millions. The introduction to The Black Book of Communism (1999) put the total killed by communist regimes in the tens of millions, approaching 100 million, though some of its own co-authors disputed that estimate and figures remain debated.

This does not prove that atheism causes violence. It shows that removing religion does not remove violence. Ideologies of class, race and nation have proved at least as deadly.

3. The real source of violence

The Bible offers a more realistic diagnosis than "religion is the problem". James asks what causes fights and quarrels and answers: our passions and desires at war within us (James 4:1–2). Violence comes from the human heart, whether it wears the clothing of religion, nationalism, ideology or greed. The first murder in the Bible, Cain's, has nothing to do with a religious war; it grows from envy (Genesis 4).

4. Measured by its founder

The fair way to judge any movement is by its founder's teaching, not by those who betray it. Compare:

Those who spread the faith by violence did not follow Jesus more consistently; they followed him less. Jesus himself warned that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" belongs to him (Matthew 7:21–23).

Meanwhile, Christians inspired by Jesus' teaching have often been at the forefront of peacemaking: founding hospitals, campaigning against slavery and caring for the poor. Historian Tom Holland, writing as a secular historian rather than an apologist, argues in Dominion (2019) that many of the West's moral convictions, including the dignity of the weak and the victim, owe much to Christianity.

Why it matters

The cross is the place where God absorbed violence rather than inflicting it. Jesus prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34). The gospel does not give us a license to kill; it confronts the violence in every heart, including religious hearts, and offers a new heart. The answer to violence done in Jesus' name is not less of Jesus, but more of him.